Author: Trisha Saldanha| February 25, 2021
Is your child over 4 years of age and still needs help with their buttons? Read on to know how this parent, with a little help from Sethu, taught her son how to button and unbutton his shirt.
In June 2020, a 6 ½-year-old boy was assessed at Sethu for his fine motor skills. These are the finger skills we need to do so many things like write, tie shoelaces, etc. From the initial assessment, we saw these skills had not developed as per his age, making buttoning and unbuttoning of even large-sized buttons almost impossible for him.
The occupational therapists who conducted the assessment provided the boy’s mum with a variety of activities and games that she could play with her son to help improve his fine motor skills. Finger games using puppets, finger painting, activities with rubber bands were some of the things suggested, all of which the little boy’s mother practised diligently with him every day.
Over the four months his therapy progressed, mum was given a programme to teach her son how to button and unbutton. The program initially began with large buttons and the child would just have to push them through a slit in a plastic lid. Once he was able to do this, he progressed to pushing the button through a slit in a piece of fabric and finally buttoning with the large buttons. Once he learnt the skill of buttoning we introduced the skill of unbuttoning. Practice for unbuttoning too first started with large buttons and slowly progressed to smaller ones as he got more proficient.
While the mother was practising at home with her son, she realised that while unbuttoning with the shirt laid out on the table in front of him, we had taught him to initiate both the actions of buttoning and unbuttoning with the right hand. We failed to remember that when we are wearing the shirt, we would need to initiate unbuttoning with our left hands.
We as the occupational therapists had completely overlooked this trivial yet key detail. Full credit to his dedicated mum for noticing this and bringing it to our attention. After a few changes to the way the activity was done and a little more practice, she was able to teach him the right way to do this too.
Today this little boy can independently button and unbutton his shirt!
If you have a child at home who is facing difficulties with buttoning, check out our blog post from 5th July 2020, for the buttoning and unbuttoning handout or contact our occupational therapists at Sethu for further help.
TRISHA SALDANHA
Fellow – Occupational Therapist