Monday 22 April 2013

BLW: Learning the Pincer Grasp

One of the reasons I love BLW is that I am absolutely fascinated watching Millie’s learning and improving dexterity.

For example, she’ll be holding a piece of food, like a bread stick, in her fist and has finished eating the bit that sticks out the top of her hand but can’t get to the piece that’s still in her fist. Originally, when she couldn’t get to that food, she would just open her fist, drop it and move to the next food item. Now, she will place it down on the table and pick it up slightly different, sometimes using her other hand to help her.

The other fascinating development is watching her slowly master the ‘pincer grasp’ which is where we use our thumb and forefinger to pick up small objects. Knowing that babies when you first start to wean them (at 6 months) can’t pick up food items such as peas and dry cheerios (or the Aldi Harvestmoon equivalent in our house – Multigrain Hoops!) it can be easy to just avoid offering them until much later but I have offered these items to Millie from the start. Yes, she used to struggle to pick them up and then give in. Then she could pick them up in her fist then drop them when she couldn’t get to the food. Now, however, she has progressed to using a sort of side grasp. Its not a clear pincer grasp yet but certainly a pre-curser to it and I would say she is not far off fully mastering it.

To show her progress, I’ve taken a video of her eating the above mentioned Harvestmoon Multigrain Hoops. She has picked up food with a better grasp than in the video but not when I’ve had my phone/camera to hand but you get the idea.

The video also shows how she is using both hands in co-ordination to help her get food to her mouth and passing from one hand to the other.

Keep watching for the very cute (in my biased opinion) hoop wave at the end!

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