[EF]#15 Between Child Development and Games

Child development refers to the sequence of physical and emotional changes that occur in a child from birth to the beginning of adulthood. During this process a child progresses from dependency on their parents or guardians to increasing independence. A first developing skill that children needed is gross motor development. Gross motor development are those which require whole body movement and which involve the large muscles of the body to perform everyday function such as standing, walking, running, and sitting upright. It also includes keeping balance, precise movement such as jumping, skipping, and hopping, and also eye-hand coordination skills such as throwing ball, catching ball, and kicking ball. Besides gross motor development, children also develop fine motor skills. Fine motor skills are finger and hand skills such as writing, cutting, opening lunch boxes, and tying shoelaces. The development of these skills relies upon the age appropriate development of physical skills providing the stable base from which the arm moves with control. Gross and fine motor development is really important to help children keep their attention and concentration, writes, reads, and counts.

It is really important to have games that can help children develop their gross and fine motor skills. When I was child, we have a lot of games that help us to develop our motor skills such as benteng-bentengan (game played by two groups, each groups chose a place as a base, the person that touch the other group base and scream “benteng” will win), hide and seek, running around, Indonesia skipping rope, engkle, and a lot more. It was really fun and makes my body moved around. Beside that game, I also played congkak, cards, monopoly, marbles, bekel, and board games. Those games not only help to develop children gross and fine motor skills, but also their social skills.

How about nowadays? Thank you for technology, children can play on their gadgets. That helps them to develop their cognitive skills, but how about their motor skills? They just need to do finger movement, but not whole body movement. Playing too much games on gadgets also can make them has game addiction. It would be great if beside they play with games on their gadgets, they play at the playground together with their friends too, so their motor and social skill can develop too.

* Child Development Theory from Lifespan Development, 12th edition (Santrock) & here
** This post is submission for English Friday Challange
*** Feel free to be grammar Nazi 🙂