Where have the basic skills gone?

Welcome back to our blog. This time, we’d like to address basic motor skills and why many kids can’t do simple tasks like run, throw, catch, swim, jump or tell left from right.

Have you noticed Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha kids lack the basic gross motor skills that kids 2+ decades ago had? If there are kids who lack those skills, they turn into adults who lack those basic skills. Those adults have kids who then don’t know how to do the basic skills.

I’m talking about running, for a start. I was amazed when my kids were on sports teams or just playing around at how many of their friends couldn’t run. Many of them couldn’t throw or catch, either. Even in high school some still didn’t know HOW to run.

Do you wonder why? My theory, and this is purely conjecture, is that the phone/tablet/ipad/gaming devices make it so parents have a built in baby sitter and the kids have a built in playmate.

Do an experiment. Go to the park. Watch the kids, but not in a creepy way. See if I’m right. To combat this problem, coach a youth team and have the kids run or jump and see how many can actually run and jump or throw and catch. Or swim. Teaching kids to swim, even in a land locked state (like Colorado where your bi-colored shoelaces come from), is a HUGE skill. Those little floaters on their arms won’t save them if they are at a lake without the floaties and fall in and have no idea how to swim.

No time to coach or just don’t want to? Go in the backyard, the front yard or the local park and run, kick, throw, catch, swim etc WITH the kids. Not only is it good for them, it’s actually good for you, too.

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