Utensils

DawnLilly

DS is really great at using a fork or spoon. I'm wondering though, should I break the "I'm gonna hold this like shovel" thing now or can it wait? My dad still holds utensils like a shovel and I find it's a pet peeve of mine. I find it really unrefined.

unaveragejane

A tripod grasp for holding pencils and crayons doesn't usually develop until they're a few years older, so I would assume that utensils kind of fall under the same category. I'd be thrilled if DS knew how to use utensils already, even caveman style.

PhantomPower

I'd let it be for now. That's great that your LO is using them already! 

DawnLilly

unaveragejane said:

A tripod grasp for holding pencils and crayons doesn't usually develop until they're a few years older, so I would assume that utensils kind of fall under the same category. I'd be thrilled if DS knew how to use utensils already, even caveman style.

That's great to know! Thank you I didn't think of there being a correlation like that.

unaveragejane

DawnLilly said:

A tripod grasp for holding pencils and crayons doesn't usually develop until they're a few years older, so I would assume that utensils kind of fall under the same category. I'd be thrilled if DS knew how to use utensils already, even caveman style.

That's great to know! Thank you I didn't think of there being a correlation like that.

It also just occurred to me that something I learned from occupational therapists is that your muscles tend to develop strength and coordination  in a progression from the middle of your body outward...so core, then shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers. He'll probably need to do a lot of movement with his shoulder and elbow for now b/c he doesn't have fine muscle control developed in his wrists and hands yet. ...And that wraps up my nerdy portion of the evening. lol

EMOmamma

My 2.5yo can now use a pencil correctly and I noticed he does the same with utensils. (Mealtimes are such madness I had to pay attention last night lol). He wasn't always this way so you can maybe expect the transition sometime after 2. (Totally have no data to back this up other than what my 1 kid did)