Learning to tie shoes involves more than just making bunny ears and going around the tree! If you are asking why your child can't tie shoelaces, you are not alone. This is a common challenge that many children face.
From an occupational therapy perspective, sometimes a child has not yet developed one or more of the underlying skills that are needed in order to tie shoes. Let's take a look at the key areas where kids often need some support.
The tips and activities on this page are designed to support your child's normal development. They are not intended to diagnose and treat. If you are concerned about your child's skills, please contact your local occupational therapist for support.
If your child has difficulty using both hands together, then mastering shoelace tying can be tricky.
If your child finds it challenging to use a knife and fork together, battles to do up buttons, or struggles to manage the paper while cutting with scissors, these could indicate the need to practice more bilateral skills.
Your child needs to have good hand and finger dexterity in order to hold onto the shoelaces and push them where they need to be.
if your child also avoids tasks like drawing, crafts, or scissor
cutting, then try some simple activities to strengthen the muscles in their hands and fingers.
When tying shoelaces, children need to organize and sequence the actions they need to take. This requires strong motor planning skills.
They also need to remember the steps, focus on the task, and adapt if something changes, for example if they drop the lace.This requires executive function skills.
The eyes need to effectively guide the hands as they tie the shoelaces. This is called hand-eye coordination.
If your child struggles with activities like catching a ball, cutting along a line or drawing neatly inside the lines of a path, then you can encourage them to develop this skill.
If your child struggles to see which lace goes where, when they are overlapping, the issue might be related to visual perception skills.
Your child’s ability to sense what the fingers are doing, without seeing them, is an important skill when it comes to tying laces.
It's about feeling where and how the laces overlap and being able to pull them through without really being able to see them.
Special laces can definitely help kids who find shoelace tying difficult.
Here's how the stiffer, dual-colored shoelaces from Easy Tie#Ad worked for my daughter who was struggling to work with the floppy white laces in her shoes:
We received some laces free in return for an honest review - I am impressed with them!
If you are interested, head over to Easy Tie's Amazon store#Ad to view their laces and video for yourself.
If your child has special needs or limited mobility, then even working on these underlying skills may not be enough to help them master shoelaces at the same age as their peers.
If you came to this page asking the question "Why can't my child tie shoelaces?", I hope you feel empowered!
Tying shoelaces involves more than just a sequence of steps. By developing the underlying skills of bilateral coordination, fine motor skills, motor planning, hand-eye coordination, and visual and tactile perception, you can give your child the support needed.
Celebrate every milestone along the way!
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