“肌肉”寶寶好處多 Muscle children have more advantages

大小肌肉的發展和小朋友的成長學習有密切的關係，其中包括自理、智能、社交、語言等發展。領思兒童發展中心註冊職業治療師蔡莉莉指出，大肌肉和小肌肉是籠統的分類，大肌肉主要指頸肩、背部和腿部的肌肉。而小肌肉所指的是手臂、手腕、手掌、指頭的肌肉，有時也包括舌頭和嘴唇部分。1

自理能力是指孩子照顧自己的能力，包括進食和清潔的能力。大小肌肉運動得好，才能學懂自理。家長要訓練大小肌肉和自理能力，可讓孩子自己拿著湯匙嘗試進食，又或者在洗澡時讓孩子拿著毛巾拭擦身子。

在智能方面，大小肌肉的發展使孩子能夠自行探索世界。小孩能夠自行走動，以手指和口腔牙齒探索新事物，促進學習。此外，各種工具也要依賴手部的小肌肉才能操作。前蘇聯教育家蘇霍姆林斯基曾經說過：兒童的智慧在他們手指尖上。手是孩子探索周圍世界的主要工具，手部肌肉訓練，不僅可以提高手的控制能力和手指動作的靈活性，還可以發展手眼協調能力，促進腦的發育。2家長可以讓孩子玩配對形狀的遊戲，給機會小朋友去感覺玩具的形狀，自行摸索嘗試，家長不宜過急指出形狀和配對的關係。要讓孩子透過觸感掌握形狀的概念，深化學習。

社交方面，大小肌肉發展能讓孩子投入其他孩子的世界，有助將來投入群體生活。一到兩歲的孩子雖然較少主動和其他小朋友結交，但是父母可以帶他們到公園，讓孩子和小朋友在同一個環境內同時玩耍，這種平行遊玩(parallel play)的過程，也能培養小朋友的社交概念。

最後，語言發展亦要依賴小肌肉中，舌頭、口腔和嘴唇的運用。大小肌肉的發展是基礎，而智力以至語言的發展則建立在這個基礎之上。

Fine motor and gross motor are bound up with children’s growth and learning, such as the development of self-care ability, intelligence, social ability and language skills. Choi Leilei, registered occupational therapist at Links Child Development Centre, points out that gross motor and fine motor are general classifications. Gross motor is mainly neck, shoulder, back and leg muscles and fine motor is arm, wrist, palm and finger muscles and sometime tongue and lips are included in fine motor.

Self-care ability is the ability of children taking care of themselves, including the ability of taking food and cleaning. If children’s fine motor and gross motor can be fully trained, they will understand self-care ability. There are some ways to help parents train children’s fine and gross motors and self-care ability, for example, let children use spoons to have meals by themselves or let children use towels to clean their body when taking a shower.

As for intelligence, the development of fine motor and gross motor can make children discover the world themselves. Children can move around on their own and they can discover new things by fingers and teeth, which can develop their learning ability. Apart from that, all tools are operated by fine motor in hands. Sukhomlinskii, an educator of the former Soviet Union, said children’s intelligence was on their fingertips. Hands are the main tools for children discovering the world. The training of hand muscles can not only improve control ability of hands and flexibility of fingers, but also develop cooperation of hands and eyes and facilitate brain development. Parents can let children play the game of shapes matching, which gives children a chance to recognize the shape of toys and parents shouldn’t point out the relationship between shapes and matching as soon as possible. Parents should let children discover things on their own and let children know the concept of shapes by touching so as to deepen learning.

As for social ability, the development of fine and gross motors can help children enter other children’s world, which is helpful for children to live in groups. It is rare that children aged one to two year-old initiatively make friends with others, but parents can take children to parks to let children play with others in the same environment, which can develop children’s concept of social ability in the process of parallel play.

Finally, language development depends on the usage of fine motor, such as tongue, oral cavity and lips. The development of fine and gross motors is the basis and the development of intelligence and language is based on the development of fine and gross motors.