Preparing the Activity
I got Ze a simple rattle yesterday with the intention of encouraging his grasp. I would have loved to get a little wooden rattle but they are so expensive. Plastic will have to suffice in this instance. He has only just been grabbing toys successfully in the past couple weeks, but most things are too big for him to hold with just one hand. This morning he was experimenting.
At first I was trying to wrap his fingers around the rattle the “right” way and then let him shake it, but he almost instantly dropped it that way. I found that if I held the shaker part of the rattle above his chest, he would bring his hands midline and grab the rattle himself. Sure, his grasp wasn’t perfect but doing it this way: 1) showed me that he was interested in holding the rattle as he had to make the effort to bring his hands to it, and 2) allowed him to practice on his own what kind of grasp would and wouldn’t work with this item.
I realized the importance of letting him experiment for himself. I was amazed to find that he was holding the rattle out to one side at certain times and starting to roll towards it. He has been working on rolling back to front for awhile and it is so interesting to see how he works so hard and tries to contort his body in different ways to achieve this goal.
