Motor proficiency is essential in early childhood for overall motor development and considered as the basis and building blocks of more complex movements skills [1,2]. Critical ages for children to develop motor proficiency occur between ages two and seven with the ideal age being three or four [3]. Children who are more proficient in motor skills are more likely to actively participate in physical activities and in more advanced sports skills [4,5]. In addition, young children who are physically active are more likely to maintain health-related fitness throughout adolescence and adulthood [6]. With age, sports and game play becomes more complex and fundamental movements are required in order to participate. Children without motor proficiency may have a harder time keeping up with their peers and might make them less likely to participate. Children do not "grow out" of motor difficulties naturally; they have to develop the motor proficiency. Otherwise, children's physical activity, fitness, and motor skill might decline as they enter adolescence [7]. The absence of both fine and gross motor proficiency may negatively impact children's relationships with peers as well as their participation in future physical activity. For example, Thompson et al. [8] found that skill development, social interaction, and health were at risk in children with movement difficulties.
 
The Individuals with Disabilities Act part A and B [9] suggests that motor skill data can be used to determine the presence of developmental delay for preschool children. In the past decade, there has been a plethora of research demonstrating that young children who are economically disadvantaged show significant delays in gross motor skills such as locomotor and object-control skills. For example, Goodway et al. [10] examined gross motor proficiency using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2) [11] with 469 disadvantaged Hispanic and African American preschoolers in the Midwest and Southwest. The results showed that the majority of preschoolers scored between the 10th and 17th percentile for locomotor skills and the 16 percentile for object-control skills. In addition, Pope et al. [12] assessed object-control skills in 111 Hispanic children enrolled in a Head Start program using TGMD-2 and found 83% of the preschool-aged children scored in the poor performance category, which was below 25th percentile. Similar findings of the motor proficiency delays in object and locomotor skills have been noted in intervention studies with preschool children prior to the intervention [13-15].

Citation: Liu T, Hamilton M, Smith S (2015) Motor Proficiency of the Head Start and Typically Developing Children on MABC-2. J Child Adolesc Behav 3: 198. doi: 10.4172/2375-4494.1000198

 

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