⏺️🎙️ Strategies For Handwriting & Fine Motor Skills

Does your child struggle with handwriting or fine motor tasks? Whether it’s holding a pencil, forming letters, or building hand strength, developing these skills can be challenging—but with the right strategies, it can also be fun!

In this workshop, we’ll explore:
✅ Practical, engaging activities to improve handwriting skills
✅ Tools and adaptations to support fine motor development
✅ Ways to make writing less stressful and more enjoyable

Led by our expert, Stacy Badon, this session will provide hands-on strategies to help your child feel more confident with writing.

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Transcript

So we are here to talk about fine skills. And fine motor skills is one of those topics that is super important, but it is often forgotten about in school and therapy. And it's one of those things that we have to look at in order to build some of the other skills that we are trying to build in terms of independence and communication.

So we're going to talk about fine motor skills in relation to handwriting and self help, and just a little bit about myself. I am an educator, formal speech pathologist for kiddos at the school, and I'm an advocate, a volunteer. I love everything sensory. I am very fortunate to co host a podcast with an amazing autistic gentleman in New York.

And I'm a parent of three grown boys and two little girls are my grandchildren. I am a friend and colleague to the most amazing autistic human beings. And I've been with Autism 360. 1960s since the very beginning, I put this picture up just to give you a little idea of myself and my perspective, and this kind of falls into our topic of fine motor and I always say, coloring is not enjoyed by every child and coloring outside the lines is not a bad thing.

Coloring is not a necessary developmental skill. Actually, some of the best artists are the ones that color outside the lines. All right. In this master class, I will explore the challenges of fine motor skill development, and I will also provide you with some practical solutions so that you can support the skill set or the goals of the person in your life who is, I assume, on the autistic spectrum or possibly ADHD.

Or both. All right, keep in mind that this is general information not necessarily tailored to your loved one just because of the age differences. I will touch on all age groups and at the end I'll give you a little insight if you feel like you need more specific help, but get your questions ready.

All right. So let's talk about what is fine motor skills. What are fine motor skills? And I think it's important to talk about what fine motor skills are because often it's one of those things that is  put into a goal or addressed in an evaluation, but no one really tells you what that is, right? And most people think of handwriting, and fine motor skill development is, it involves a lot of different things.

Threading a needle, which we don't all thread a needle but threading things through whether it's sewing or threading something through to make a craft. Tearing paper requires fine motor skill. Crushing things. Sometimes we try to get our kids to play games and they struggle. because their fine motor skills may not give them the capability to crush efficiently.

Twisting bottle tops, opening, pinching things, tying shoestrings, and the handwriting and utensil grip. Those are the common ones that we see for goals that we look for in terms of assessments when they're doing all those check boxes and checklists. Developing these manipulative skills will promote adequate maturation of eye hand or hand eye coordination, which fosters that foundation for reading and writing and everything else that we do.

However, Just because we want the maturation of hand eye coordination to occur or we want to improve fine motor skills, it doesn't mean that our goal is for our kiddos to do everything perfect or everything all the time. That's not lowering expectations, it's just being realistic and knowing what supports to put in place.

So when we look at some, and these are just basic in terms of fine motor expectations, coloring is my big one, because I find that for some reason coloring is always an activity that parents do, or an activity they do in,  Pre k or kinder or year one, not year one, I think it's prep in Australia, but coloring is not something that all children enjoy.

So not coloring doesn't mean a child is lacking fine motor skills. It may just mean they don't really like coloring and coloring is not a necessity in life. It is something that. We have available. It's something that lots of people enjoy. I myself don't really like to color. I remember as a child didn't really like to color.

But we were given color by numbers, right? Coloring activities because it was something that they gave us to do. So I mentioned it because it is something that is usually an expectation, but I don't think it's an expectation that needs to have a lot of energy and time into it because you can get a job.

If you don't know how to color, you can live your life. If you don't know how to color, right? There are certain things that we don't have to know how to do in order to participate as an independent adult. And the reality is there are lots of kids all over the world that never have coloring books. And they're okay. 

I know coloring is fun for some, but it's not for everyone. But it is one of those expectations, so I like to definitely bring it up.  Cutting with scissors is one of those skills that, yes, we look for, we assess for, it is something that we use at home, we use at school, we use when we do crafts. I have scissors in my kitchen.

I use scissors all the time and scissors are one of those things that we practice and an occupational therapist can help if our kiddo is struggling with using scissors. However, cutting scissors is not just about fine motor. It is about core stability. It involves having bilateral coordination. So scissors is not just moving your fingers and cutting.

It involves a lot of other things. So it's important to know that if your child is struggling with cutting, ask about bilateral coordination. Ask about core stability. Find out if there are supports that can be put in place to help your kiddo learn the technique of coloring.  Handwriting is a skill that is,  how do I say this?

It's necessary, but not necessary. So  handwriting is something that we learn because handwriting is a skill set for communication, right? And for doing schoolwork. We write notes, we do worksheets, but we live in a wonderful time of technology where handwriting is not a necessity for everything. I'm not saying that children don't need to learn how to write their name, however, learning to write.

Is different than learning to formulate a sentence, right? So if the activity and the expectation is to write your name, then you're looking at a goal of hand writing, right? The actual motor planning of handwriting. If you are looking at a child writing a sentence or using a word in a sentence or writing a paragraph, that is not about handwriting.

That is about formulating a cohesive sentence. Okay. Communication statement or paragraph and that can be done with technology. Handwriting and motor planning have nothing to do with formulating a paragraph. So it's important to know that sometimes those motor planning, fine motor difficulties can get in the way.

Of our kiddos showing us what they know, some kiddos can actually tell you verbally the paragraph and you can just dictate and write it down for them, or they can use text to talk. So thinking and keeping in mind that handwriting is a skill that we expect, but it is not a necessary skill for everything to show what they know.

Folding is one of my personal favorites because I am a firm believer in all Children learning how to take care of their clothes, folding them, washing them, putting them away. This is a skill set that All kids can learn at different ages. You don't have to wait until they're teenagers. Young children can fold their their socks.

They can fold their underwear. They can fold small towels or big towels. They can put their clothes away. And the reason this is important is because it actually helps to develop fine motor bilateral coordination. But also, it's an important life skill. So folding can An expectation of being able to fold is something that transfers to a lot of different skill sets for independent living.

Now, that doesn't mean the folding has to be perfect. I know we all have a certain way we fold towels, a certain way we fold our dishcloths, but we have to give a little grace to others, our spouses and our children. to be able to do it in a way that works for them. And it's okay if it's not perfect. So it's an expectation to have, but it doesn't have to be perfect. 

So one of the things that parents worry about or not worry about, do I worry? Should I worry? I'm not sure if I should worry or when should I worry? Is fine motor skill development, how much I need to push for that. And when should I use accessibility and accessibility, I'll show you some examples of that.

And when we're thinking about an autistic individual, when they're little, when they're older, there are certain fine motor planning Difficulties that are  just a part of the way you're wired, right? And think of it in terms of yourself, right? There are certain fine motor skills that I don't do very well.

I'm not very good at doing like knitting, right? That's a fine motor skill that's really difficult for me. However, I can do a fine motor skill of playing the piano or the guitar. So it is different. It's a different task, and it requires different motor planning. There's no need for me to force myself to learn how to knit, right?

There's no need to force myself to learn how to tie my shoes if I have a motor planning machine. difficulty, I can use accessibility to compensate, to support myself, right? Remember that autism is a different way of processing information. It is a neurodivergence of processing in the brain, but it is also a disability when supports are not in place.

So an autistic individual is disabled when they don't have the supports in place. Just as a person who maybe is non ambulatory due to a car accident, if they don't have their wheelchair, then they are disabled and they can't navigate the environment. However, with their wheelchair, They can navigate independently and go shopping and drive a car.

There's all kinds of things you can do with accessibility when you  do not have use of your legs. So it's the same for individuals with autism. We just have to know which accessibility they need and why they need it. So these are some of the accessibilities. We've all seen pencil grips. I like pencil grips, but I think pencil grips are also one of those things that we have to keep in mind.

Every pencil grip is not for every child. So a lot of times parents will say, Oh, I tried pencil grips and my child still resisted, right?  Maybe it's not the right pencil grip, or maybe a pencil grip is not the right. support accessibility. Maybe they need a slant board, right? A slant board is something that brings the paper not so perpendicular to you so that it's easier for your motor planning and your core support to be stabilized.

It's just like this young man in this picture where he is able to stabilize the paper, have it at a different angle, and it's easier for him to write. I think he's drawing a picture. So pencil grips are good to try. I usually throw out a bunch of them in the tape on the middle of the table and have the kids pick and they try out which ones they want to try and see if anything works. 

Another alternative is technology. Technology. I know that some of us feel that technology is something we need to limit, which, yes, boundaries are important, but technology is a great way to get accessibility. And I'm not sure if a lot of you are aware, but even accessibility with things iPad, not just for writing, right?

You can use your iPad for writing. If writing on paper pencil is difficult, sometimes a stylus with digital writing is easier for fine motor planning and fine motor skill  accessibility and demonstrating a task. But it's also, if you look into your accessibility of any of your technology, phone, iPads, tablets, there are lots of things that you can do.

And one of the examples I will share is, I have a little I have a five year old turning six soon, and she loves to make videos, but she struggles with doing screenshots because screenshots require bilateral coordination. It requires pressure from both fingers motor planning to press both of those things.

Guess what, you can set iPad  to an accessibility where you just have to tap once or twice, and it does a screenshot. I use it on my phone, just because. It's fun.  So my point is just because someone can't do the fine motor of pressing to do a screenshot. There are accessibilities available and it's called accessibility.

There are accommodations and modifications that help you do the same task independently. It's okay. It's not about fine motor development. So we all do the same thing the same way. It's about fine motor development. developing those skills, but supporting their needs along the way. And so the top three are ones that can help with writing and for scissors and cutting.

I don't know if you can see the small picture, but there are many different ways that you can have scissors that make it easier. Sometimes we don't get enough strength in our wrist, right? In order to cut, to do it the typical way. Sometimes we don't have that core stability and bilateral coordination to actually hold the paper and manipulate the scissors so we can get different kinds of scissors.

And I say this to all teachers and parents, they make these items because they're needed. They make them so that people who have struggles and challenges with fine motor planning. have a way to do things independently. It's about finding the supports and making sure they're in place, not building the fine motor skill to do it like everyone else.

I'm not saying that you can't shoot for the stars, but the goal is for our kids to grow up or to even be at a young age where they can do things on their own independently. Not everything, but cutting their cut and paste, right? Being able to write their name. So thinking in terms of having those alternative ways to access cutting and using different kinds of scissors, you can ask your child's teacher or occupational therapist about those things. 

Another one of my favorites is keyboarding. I always say this is a great time to have a disability, because technology has made it so much easier. So much easier, and the other part of it is, and not that, I think it's super important, but I do understand the need for social acceptance, right? In, in terms of, especially our teens and young adults.

Not always wanting to appear different, right? They're going through that stage of trying to fit in. And even though you may embrace different, which I think we all should, different is a great thing. It still makes it easier when you can type, because remember what I said about writing a paragraph. The paragraph formulation is not about the motor skill of writing.

It is about formulating  an idea that has a sequence of order that communicates something to the reader. So typing a paragraph is acceptable. And these should be accommodations that should be available in your child's school. It should be on their individual education plan. It's very important to have those things available.

One of my other favorites is shoes. So a lot of times I see parents focusing on tying their shoes. They have to learn to tie their shoes. Guess what? You really don't. If you never learn to tie your shoes, you can still be an adult. You can still get married. You can still work.

You can still cook. You can still have children. You can still be a Oh my gosh, public speaker. And I say that because there is an autistic gentleman. I believe his name is Carrie and he cannot tie his shoes, but he is a public speaker. He can do other things, right? He can work and earn money and be independent.

So there are lots of alternatives to shoestrings. There are lots of different shoes, there's Velcro shoes, there's slip on shoes. And I say all the time, there are children around the world that never see tennis shoes or shoes with a shoestring. They wear sandals or they walk barefoot and they develop just fine.

So breathe a little bit with some of these skills. Don't stress over them. You can just have different shoes. If your fine motor planning doesn't allow you to buckle a belt, just wear pants that don't need a belt. It's very simple. It's not about everybody doing everything the same way or doing everything.

It is about what is the strength of the individual, how can we support that and accommodate, and what goals do we need to have in order to build those skills. And hopefully that made sense. If not, I will answer the questions that you have written. All right. So types of fine motor activities that we typically are familiar with are grasping things, right?

Like picking up something this pincer grip you all may be something you're used to hearing because kids pick up Cheerios, and that develops that pincer grip that is very important for holding a pencil. Scissor activities is something that we're all very familiar with. Sensory activities are also incorporated with fine motor.

Whether it's sorting through things or getting that sensory sensation or proprioceptive input with play doh or clay.  Midline crossing is very important. That's that skill of when your kids can clap. You know how we get excited when our toddlers can clap. That's because they're developing what we call midline crossing, where the two sides of your brain cross and communicate, right?

So those are important things. And in order for you to have the grasping, the midline crossing, the scissor activity, You need body stability, so those activities are going to help develop the fine motor and body stability is important for handwriting for cutting with scissors for grasping items. All of these things are intertwined.

Alright, so I'm going to go back to the old days.  Basic activities that promote motor skills.  A long time ago, we used to do all kinds of activities outside. We would play outside for hours and our parents were inside. Or maybe they were sitting on the porch in the south where I grew up. Parents sat on the porch.

However, we used to have monkey bars. We used to have things that we could develop fine motor skills with. We had blocks. We had Legos. We were digging in the dirt with shovels, gardening, helping our parents. All of these things helped to develop fine motor skills. But now we live in a stage of  More inside time  less digging in the dirt.

Monkey bars have gone away for safety purposes. So now kids are not getting a chance to develop those skills in a naturalistic way as we used to. So we have to create ways. right space for them to do this. And when we are creating these ways, we want to also encourage our kids to do the activities in different positions.

Sometimes you can kneel and do your Legos. Sometimes you can sit on a yoga ball for stability in order to do your handwriting. And sometimes you can put your blocks and stack them while you're on your hands and knees. It's a really fun challenge, but it develops all of those skills. I feel like. In general, autistic Children struggle with fine motor for various reasons,  but  it's a skill set that we are starting to see a decrease in development for all kids across the globe because kids are not outside running, jumping, playing, digging, getting dirty, everyone's swiping on a tablet or swiping on a phone Or navigating their computer, and we don't have as much time moving our bodies as we used to, so we have to create that.

We have to create that. It's really important. It's almost like we've progressed ourselves to play that doesn't build the skill set that we need for  child development. Alright. So why are fine motor skills important? Fine motor skills are important for various reasons, but one of the ones that we focus on, especially when our kids are entering school or entering  secondary level education,  we have to think about their writing.

Their motor skills, opening a locker, opening their juice juice pouch or milk carton, opening a water bottle. They need to have that hand strength. They need the dexterity in their hands and fingers before they are asked to manipulate a pencil on paper. And it's important to know that before you do the pencil paper, You have to develop the fine motor, you have to develop the hand strength, you have to develop the dexterity, and that means you don't start with pencil and paper, and the reality of appropriate child development is.

Writing your name is not developmentally appropriate until age four or five. It really isn't. It's not necessary. Your children aren't signing checks. They're not signing things. They're always going to have an adult with them. So it is not a necessary skill. But I find that schools have pushed down this goal of children writing their name.

We're not working on the things that we were talking about earlier, which is causing a lot of problems in the classroom because we're not working on the things that develop the strength and the dexterity. We're just going straight to write your name and that is not what we want to do.

That's why kids are frustrated. That's why parents are frustrated. So working on dexterity has to do with all kinds of gross motor movements, right? That gives you that stability and that's I'm going to show you some activities for developing those fine motor skills, strength and dexterity, but that's where you want to start.

You don't want to jump to coloring and pencil on paper. They have to develop those skills.

All right, so in the stages of developing those skills, and I'm going to let you guys look at this for just a second all right. So fine motor skill development, the objective, and most of you will recognize this based on your child's goals when they develop goals for therapy or for school.

The objective is for the child to have the eye hand coordination, right? To be able to know how to move things within their eye and hand. Coordinating and when they're infants, they're all over the place. And then they grab that bottle or they grab their noonie or they find their toe and that's always a fun surprise.

So they learn and develop that. We also want to work on getting that higher level of precision and muscle strength. So that's where that control is on staying in the lines, which. If you call out of the lines, I don't think it's a big deal. I really don't think it's a big deal. But coloring I'm sorry, writing within the lines that you have is requires that precision, right?

A lot of our autistic kiddos have trouble with that and not just children. It, it will follow into middle school and secondary and sometimes into adulthood, but that's okay because we have technology and we have other supports that can help with that. But it is important to know that sometimes the proprioceptive feedback to the joints is not always being received.

And if kiddos or adults that are autistic are not getting enough proprioceptive to get the information to their joints. Precision and muscle strength is going to be very difficult. So we need to be aware of that, right? We need to be aware of our child's sensory profile. How is their proprioceptive system taking in information?

Is that interfering in their precision? And then the muscle tone has to do with that hand strengthening. And that's where the Play Doh, I know a lot. A lot of folks know when they go to occupational therapy, there's clay, there's Play Doh. All of those things, kinetic sand, digging in a sensory bin, all of that develops everything for eye, hand eye coordination, precision and muscle strength, developing that muscle tone.

And the key to developing fine motor skill is to start with simple. Start with simple. Don't jump into the big stuff, right? Because it will come. It will we have to start with developing the foundation and build on that foundation. And if we start with, and I'm saying this because, I'm saying this more than once because I find that Jumping to writing your name is starting so early and kids are frustrated and then the children, the parents are frustrated and it's not necessary and it's really important to know what you need to work on in order to build fine motor skill.

It's not just practicing writing your name, you have to build the foundation. How do you do that? Play Doh or clay?  Play Doh or clay? does a couple of things. One, it gives lots of proprioceptive information to the hand joints and your fingers  and your wrist as well. Also puzzles, but I will say this. If a child is frustrated with puzzles, then I would not choose puzzles to build fine motor skills, right?

I would do puzzles in a different way for different activities, but you want the activities for building fine motor skills to be something that your child enjoys, to be something that they want to engage in, because if they want to engage in it, Then they're going to do it more, which will help to build the foundation.

If they have a sensory aversion to Plato, you just have to find another way for them to get that. It can be doing wall pushes, right? Hands up against the wall. And you will have resources accessible to you after this webinar that will give you some of those ideas as well. They're listed. Building blocks.

Why do we get Legos for our kids when they're little? Why do we get Legos for our kids when they're older? Because it is a really good way to build everything around motor planning, fine motor skills, color schemes. There's so much you can do with Legos. However, if your kiddo is not into building Legos, but you want them to use Legos for building that foundation.

You can make Legos fun. You can put stickers on Legos. You can't have their favorite favorite topic or their favorite character. I had a kiddo that loved trains. Didn't really care for building because fine motor was really a challenge for him. So what I did was I got the big Duplo blocks and I got train stickers and each block had a car for a train.

So he would line up and stack the blocks to make a train.  And that is how we worked on  building Legos. I had another kiddo that loved colors. Everything was about colors. Didn't really care for building with Legos or blocks, but they love to sort colors. So what would I do? Bring a bunch of different Legos and I would say, Ooh, let's put the colors together.

And putting them together with stacking all the blue together, stacking all the yellow together. So I got a little foundation building for fine motor skills. They were engaged and interested because it was all about colors for them. All right. Another one is using. Tweezers or tongs. I think for I have clothes pins because I am from the USA, but I think in Australia it's called a peg. I think it's called a peg. So anything that your child can squeeze, right? Squeezing something develops that hand strength, that risk stability. And that's why you have where they pick up pom poms, right?

Or they Squeeze and pick up little items with a tong or tweezers and put it in another bucket. You'll see that in occupational therapy, but you can do all this at home. All of this at home.  Finger painting needs to make a comeback. I think we've forgotten about finger painting. I don't think we do enough finger painting.

and 2025. So I think finger painting should make a comeback. You can finger paint in the bathtub with the bath paints. You can finger paint on paper. You can finger paint on the sidewalk, right? Because finger painting helps with dexterity. It helps with precision. And it's fun. It's really fun. If your kiddo doesn't like messiness, I've done, believe it or not, I've done finger painting where one of my kiddos that just does not like messy hands, we just put a glove on, we just put a glove on their hand and they finger painted with the glove so they didn't get messy.

But they were able to participate.  So there's always ways that we can support our kiddos to do activities, especially activities that are purposeful in building a skill set like fine motor skill development. Sensory play is really good because it gives that proprioceptive input, but also proprioceptive input with crashing or jumping or pushing or pulling something or carrying something.

All of that is going to help develop that that muscle strength and that tone for fine motor skill development. So there's lots of things that you can do that don't involve paper, pen, and scissors to build a foundation, to develop those fine motor skills.  And it's lots of fun stuff. All right, so let's talk a little bit about what that can look like.

In terms of the fine motor skills and why it's crucial for autistic individuals. And usually it's crucial because it may impact their daily life activities. Or impact their overall independence in the daily life activities. That's why it's important to have those supports in place, right? So that they can build those skills.

But while they're building them, there's other ways for them to get the task completed. And for overall independence, that is the same. And in terms of I have independence and red, because I wanted to talk a little bit about independence is not always about doing it. On your own, that's not what independence is or all on your own.

So for example, someone may say a teacher may say I don't want them to use the keyboard for writing their paragraph because they need to do it on their own. Doing it on their own with a keyboard is working independently. No one's. Writing the paragraph for them. They're doing it just in a different way.

Maybe folding their clothes, right? Independence with folding clothes is getting the task done independently, but that doesn't mean you don't have supports like a folding board. You see them in the shopping malls, right? They have a folding board to make it easier and quicker to fold. There's nothing wrong with that.

Doing it on their own independently doesn't mean it has to look like. the way you do it or the way their sibling does it. It needs to look like how it looks for them to be supported to be able to do it. And I am a firm believer, especially when it comes to folding, start young.  It doesn't matter if their underwear are folded crooked.

They're practicing. Let them match their socks and put them together. These are skills that you can build starting when they're young, and when they get older, it's a little bit easier. But if you haven't started young, it's not too late. They can still take over doing some of their folding, or start with towels.

Start with towels. Don't over obsess on the perfection, though. Sometimes I find that parents want it to be perfect, and you just need to let it be.

In terms of our academic success, right?  That's one of those things where when you have academic success, and fine motor skills are necessary for writing, for drawing, for using scissors, and everyone's all worried about, is my child going to be able to go to the next grade? Writing, drawing, and scissors can have accommodations, modifications, and supports.

So make sure your child has that on their individual education plan.  Self care and independence. That has to do with buttoning clothes, tying your shoelaces, brushing your teeth. Once again, get supports. Find utensils that have a heavy weight if your child is still building muscle tone. Buy clothes that don't need to be buttoned.

I'm not saying that someone has to wear clothes for the rest of their lives that are never buttoned. I am saying that there are different ways you can support so that they can have independence. Maybe when they're younger, don't get clothes that need to be buttoned, get clothes that can be snapped.

I have a mother that her Son is 16. He loves to wear button down shirts or the collar. That's his style. But he really struggles with the hand strength for buttoning. So all she did was put little Velcro dots on the inside and he just Velcro dots. And the buttons are there and no one knows. It's fine.

There is always a solution for independence.

Alright, social interaction.  So when we think of fine motor skills, we usually think about completing tasks or getting dressed or things they have to do in school. Social interaction requires fine motor skills as well. Let's say you're playing a board game or you're building blocks or Legos with a friend.

Or you are trying to make arts and crafts. It is important to know what supports your child needs. Maybe sometimes it's even a matter of adjusting the height of the chair for the board game or the blocks to make it easier for them to access it. So that they can have social interactions that are successful.

A lot of times our kids will opt out because they don't think they can participate because they struggle. So if we know the supports they need, then we can provide it and then they can participate all right. Motor planning and coordination. Motor planning is a very important skill that we can't see because the motor planning is in the neuro, the neurology, but it is important for bilateral coordination for everything.

Sitting, bike riding, eating, everything we do requires motor planning. And executive functioning jump starts the motor planning. So this is something very important for you to ask your child's occupational therapist about and ask your child's teacher, do you think maybe they need support with motor planning and coordination?

It's not as simple as just saying, Oh, they're not really coordinated. That doesn't that's not what we want to say, right? We want to say, Oh, they're having trouble with their coordination. What can we do and why? And if it's a motor planning issue, then we can address that in occupational therapy.

The other one that I find really interesting in the independent daily skills is the things that we struggled with when we were younger, we end up struggling with when we're older, such as opening jars and using a phone. It's like our fine motor skills start getting a little tricky when we're older, but when kids are younger.

Things like opening their milk cartons, opening their juice pouches, um, things like going in the refrigerator and, or opening a bag of chips, right? Can be really difficult. Pulling the peeling off of an orange is an independent daily living skills if you're feeding yourself a snack and you are in college or you are a teenager and you can get your own snacks.

So understanding how to support the needs. Sometimes it's something simple as to start the peeling of the orange and then the person can finish, right? Because a lot of times kids really want to do it on their own. They want to do it on their own. They want to do it on their own. But they need the adult.

To be patient. They need the adult to be supportive. And that's where I think the anxiety comes into play when they feel like they're pressured because they can sense the impatience of you not of them not being able to open something.  Find your inner patience. Find your interpatients your interpatients because it goes a long way for your kiddo.

All right.  I wanted to show these again. And this is just accessibility and I wanted to show those again for the purposes of you thinking of questions, but also thinking of what you can incorporate and provide for your child. Thank you very much!