Pencil Grasp Development

It is vital for toddlers and preschoolers to move through different stages of pencil grasp development in order to develop good fine motor skills. Please, do NOT force your toddler to hold the pencil the way a school child does, with 3 fingers on the pencil – you will do more harm than good. It is very hard to “unlearn” a poor pencil grip later in life!

On this page, you can see the various stages of pencil grasp development that your young child should move through. Each stage is dependent on how “steady” the shoulder and arm muscles are. As your child develops physically, and takes part in lots of fun gross motor activities such as crawling, climbing and pushing, the shoulder and arm muscles will get stronger and steadier, and you will notice your child's grip on the pencil change and mature as well.

When a child is encouraged to use a “proper” pencil grasp before the shoulder and arm muscles are ready to support it, you will often find fine motor problems emerging, such as holding the pencil in “weird” ways, messy work and even avoidance of drawing and coloring tasks.

So, don’t be in a hurry to make your child draw or color “properly” – let them develop in the stages outlined below, and by school-going age they should be ready to hold and control a pencil correctly. (However, if your child has underlying developmental delays or other difficulties, he/she will need additional help and encouragement, so consult your local professional if you are in any way concerned)

(As it is really hard to take good photos of toddler hands in action, most of the stages are demonstrated by adult hands holding the pencil.)

Correct Pencil Grasp Development

	When your toddler first grabs a thick crayon and puts it to paper (hopefully not to your walls!), this is the grasp you should be seeing. It is a “fisted grasp”, and your toddler will be using movement from the shoulder to get the crayon to move across the paper.
	As your toddler gains more control over arm and hand muscles, you will see this “palmar grasp” being used. Here, the pencil lies across the palm of the hand and your child’s elbow is held out to the side a bit.
	The shoulder muscles are steadier, and your child is using the arm muscles to move the crayon around, as well as the shoulder muscles. This photo shows a toddler using a palmar pencil grasp.
	The next stage is what is misleadingly called the “immature” 5-finger pencil grasp – it is immature because it is not the 3-finger grasp that is used in school, but it is a perfectly mature grasp for a 4-year old! As you can see, there are 5 fingers holding the pencil.
	With this 5-finger pencil grasp, the wrist is usually held off the table and wrist movements are used for coloring. The crayon is often held very tightly initially, but as the hand muscles develop, you should see a few finger movements emerging.
	This left-handed toddler has developed a 5 point pencil grasp that is appropriate for her age.
	By age 5-6, or even a bit later with some children, they should be comfortable using a mature 3-finger pencil grip. At first, the fingers will be held stiffly and your child may still use wrist movements to draw and color, but as the finger muscles become more skilled, your child will be able to use finger movements to draw and to form letters.

So don’t discourage your child from going back to an earlier grasp; instead, promote correct pencil grasp development by doing some gross motor activities to strengthen his shoulder girdle and core muscles and try some easy hand exercises to help hand muscles to develop.

Good control of the pencil for handwriting will only come as the finger muscles become more skilled. Some children will need encouragement to develop finger movements, and these fun finger exercises should help them.

Need some encouragement from another mom? Read my own
Fine Motor Story here about how my 2 sons had completely different experiences with their pencil grasp development.

Or try this book by another OT...

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