Last Updated6 June 2023

Understanding Children covers some of the more specialised areas of understanding children. Delve into the CAP Model, and how and why different age groups learn and behave. Dive deep into what motivates children and how to deal with behaviours, creating experiences that will develop a lifelong passion for the mountain environment.

Psychomotor Development

Psychomotor development refers to the way in which a child develops the ability to move or manually manipulate the body to perform a physical movement. The acquisition of psychomotor skills is influenced by physical development, chronological age, mental age, the child’s interest, plus social and cultural factors. The integration of these factors influences the age at which a child develops specific skills and therefore results in individual variances. Note that in contrast to cognitive development, where early losses can be made up at some later stage, early disruptions in psychomotor development are often irreversible.

An awareness of children’s psychomotor development will help an instructor to understand why and how children move the way they do. Many of these differences can be explained by the stage of psychomotor development they are at, rather than just their size or their amount of experience on skis. This means many of the movements children make when they are learning to ski are dictated by the fact that they are children, not simply that they are beginners. These can be referred to as “real” versus “ideal” movements, based on where they are developmentally. By taking these factors into consideration, the instructor can adapt the lesson to suit what and how a particular movement, or movement pattern, is taught.

Muscles and Bones

One of the most obvious changes in children as they grow is the development of the muscular and skeletal systems. The children’s size, strength, muscle control and coordination have a profound influence on how they are able to move and what they can accomplish on skis. For example, young children will often make turns with their outside leg extended, using skeletal alignment rather than muscular strength.

Development of motor control

It is easier for a child to control large muscle groups than small muscle groups. Young children develop control of the muscles supporting their head and torso before those controlling their limbs and extremities. As a result, children will often use their arms and hands in a way that mirrors the motions their legs are required to make. This same movement may be observed in adult beginner skiers because muscle control comes through experience with a particular movement as well as development.

Development of Coordination

Coordination is another important part of muscular development. Coordination development occurs in three stages: initial, elementary and mature. Movement in the initial stage is crude and lacking in rhythm. Around the ages of two to three years children are more concerned with the sensations of what the body is doing than the quality of the movement.

During the elementary stage, from age three or four years through to age eight, the focus is on moving in the environment. Children gain control of their bodies by moving themselves around objects or people. Spatial awareness develops and exploring their surroundings becomes a key
motivator.

During the mature stage, from approximately eight years through to about eleven years, movements become relatively well coordinated, mechanically correct and more efficient. Muscular and skeletal movements are coordinated and both the messages being sent to the brain and the brain’s responses are much smoother.

Centre of Gravity

A young child’s head is proportionally larger to its body than that of an adult. This causes a child’s centre of gravity to be located slightly higher in the torso. Recognising differences in the centre of gravity for different age groups can be helpful in understanding stance relative to movements. Because the body shape of young children results in the centre of gravity being proportionately higher than an adult’s, children can place their bodies in balanced positions that do not work for adults. When children are skiing they often move the torso forward by flexing the hip joint, move their pelvis behind their feet and lever their legs against the back of the boots. When they bend forward, their higher centre of gravity moves ahead of their feet. The backward lean is an attempt to move the centre of gravity back into a centred position, over the feet.

Sensory Development

Children perceive the world through their senses. Sensory information related to movement utilises the nervous system; it comes through the kinaesthetic, visual and auditory senses. We receive information about our position and movement through space by feeling, doing, seeing and hearing. Sensory information is processed, organised and assigned meaning by the brain. Using this information, the brain determines how the body should respond and signals the response. This process is known as the perceptual motor system. The developmental maturity of the senses affects what information the brain receives and ultimately the body’s response. In summary, the development of action and perception, plus the development of the nervous system and growth of the body, mutually influence each other in the process of forming increasingly sophisticated means of learning and/or solving action problems. Time and repetition are needed for adequate sensory development.

Kinaesthetic Development

Kinaesthetic awareness is the ability to perceive body positions through sensory input. The building blocks for perception are the kinaesthetic sensations of feeling and touch. Children from birth to three years of age spend most of their time learning through physical sensations, which provide them with feedback about their environment.

Visual Development

Visual interpretation refers to perceiving an object by clarity, colour, size and shape, as separate from the background and relative to other objects or people. Young children can see things that are near them more clearly than they can see distant objects. When learning to ski children will often watch their feet rather than focus on the environment around them. As visual development progresses children are gradually able to distinguish objects at increasing distances. Full visual maturity occurs around seven-years-old, although goggles and weather conditions may have different effects at different times.

Auditory Development

Full auditory maturity comes at roughly the same time as visual maturity. Interpretation of sound is linked to spatial awareness and kinaesthetic experiences. Being able to pay attention to one sound among many and to determine where sounds are coming from develops with auditory maturity. It is important for instructors to take into account the teaching environment, e.g. busy and noisy places on the ski area can often be a distraction. Chairlifts, snowmobiles, groomers and windy conditions may create difficulties for skiers in hearing instructions.

How Children Learn Psychomotor Skills

Psychomotor skills are learnt through a sequence by which the brain receives and processes information and then develops a response. This system is known as the perceptual motor system.

The perceptual motor system can be divided into three areas: the sensory mechanism (how the child receives information), the interpretive process that takes place in the brain, and the body’s response to that information. Information for performing motor skills comes from two basic sources. The first source is the external environment (extrinsic) i.e. what causes our senses to be activated (such as seeing or hearing). The second source is from themselves (intrinsic) i.e. how/what they think or feel (such as movement-kinaesthetic awareness). The brain assembles the input from the senses and identifies it as a meaningful whole. For example, if a child is sliding along on skis and sees an object in the path, the brain interprets this as an obstacle that needs to be avoided. Then the brain has to select an appropriate response. If children have no prior experience with avoiding obstacles on skis stored in their memory, the brain draws on any related experiences to develop an avoidance strategy. This is known as transfer of learning, or the gaining of proficiency in one task, as a result of practice or experience with another task. The muscles and eyes send information to the brain to be stored as a memory of the movement itself. The brain compares this to the desired result. If the actual result does not match the desired result, the brain tries a different approach next time. Thus, the skier develops appropriate responses through trial and error.

It is the instructor’s job to teach appropriate and efficient movements so there is less “trial and error” for the skiers. Using good demonstrations and clear explanations give them the visual and auditory information that will help them select appropriate responses. Setting up guided practice time and allowing for repetition helps the skiers feel sensations associated with certain movements to ensure that learning continues

Interesting note: Movement has been found to enhance memory and can aid in accelerating long-term memory. Intentionally adding movement to enhance learning is often called “embodied learning.” Many of today’s educators are now realising this and using it as a tool to develop and increase learning across a variety of fields (especially those not normally associated with movement).

Hot Tip

When teaching a new psychomotor skill, do not ask cognitive or affective questions whilst they are attempting it, as it will prevent or limit the chances of success. E.g. A person learning to make a gliding wedge - whilst they are moving do not ask “What would you do if someone got in your way right now?” or “How do you feel now that you’re making a wedge?”