Pencil Grasp in Children

The pencil grasp (or grip) describes the way a child holds the crayon or pencil. When handwriting is poor, the child’s grip on the pencil is one of the first things that is observed.

However, a mature and efficient grasp of the pencil will only develop if your child's other fine motor skills have developed properly.

Essential Facts

• A correct pencil grip is one which is efficient and enables your child to write neatly and at a reasonable speed without tiring. The tripod fingers (thumb, middle and index fingers) work together to control the pencil and write neatly.
  
  
• Your child needs to move through various stages of pencil grasp development before a mature 3-finger pencil grip will develop. It is unwise to encourage your toddler or young child to hold a crayon with 3 fingers before he or she is developmentally mature enough to do so.
  
  
• There are 4 Essential Bases for Fine Motor Skills, and if any of these bases is lacking, then your child's grasp and control of the pencil may not develop optimally.
  
  
• Children will resort to all kinds of weird and not-so-wonderful poor pencil grips when their fine motor skills have not developed properly
  
  
• Pencil-and-Paper tasks such as drawing and coloring are NOT the best way to encourage a good pencil grip. Rather encourage your child to do a variety of hand exercises and finger exercises to develop the muscles of the hand. Scissor Cutting is also a good way to strengthen the tripod fingers for future pencil control.
  
  

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