By the time your child reaches 5 or 6 years of age, the children's finger muscles are more developed and strong enough to grip a pencil correctly, using only three-fingers—their thumb, index, and middle finger. You may notice that your child switches back and forth between using a five-finger and three-finger grip as they practice writing.
Children can hold their pencils incorrectly for a number of reasons;
They may not have been taught how to hold it correctly
They may have poor fine motor skills
They may not find the grasp comfortable
It is important that we help children build their fine motor strength and dexterity to enable them to hold their pencils correctly we can do this with some simple games and day to day adjustments;
Use resistance putty (Theraputty) to help them build general hand strength. Finding hidden coins in putty and then using a pincer grasp to post these into a money box. Then rolling out the putty into a long snake and pinching it to make dragon scale, it’s important to make sure they use a pincer grip when doing this and not a key grip.
Use tweezers with your child. Encourage them to have three fingers on the tweezers and the last two fingers tucked in. You can give them something to hold with the last two fingers if they are having difficulty with this. It’s great fun to use tweezers at snack time as children are motivated by treats and novelty. Grapes, raisins, popcorn, Maltesers and jellies work great.
When your colouring with your child, break all of the crayons into small pieces. Using short stubby crayons naturally encourages a tripod grasp.
Try to encourage your child to rest the ulnar side (the little finger) of their hand on the page when they are writing or coloring. This helps to stabilize the hand.
Using a mini stylus when on tablets or phones will also help to encourage a more functional grasp as this follows the same principle as using smaller crayons.
Teach correct pencil grasp using a song or rhyme. Handwriting Without Tears use the crayon song to teach correct grasp and children love to sing and practice with the song. You can get this song on their Get Set For School CD and the words are on the book inside the case.
If children continue to struggle with holding their pencils in a functional grasp I will recommend using a pencil grip to encourage this. Different grips work better for different children and there is a certain amount of experimenting needed to find one that suits.
