Over the last eight months, our daughter’s hand usage has evolved from scratching to grasping, though she still hasn’t learned the power of her hands.
Not long ago, she was attempting to scratch the knots off of the flooring. She crawled, found them on her path, and scratched at them for some time before moving on to the next.
Now she tries to grab them off of the floor. She scratches them like before but instead of moving on, she flips her hand, opens it, and looks at her palm as if she expects the knots to be there.
It’s possible that she expects them to be there because that’s what happens with our cat’s fur. She often crawls up to him, “pets” him, and opens her palm to find it full of fur.
This powerful grasp has led to multiple lessons of gentleness. We are constantly showing her how to be gentle with her hands, with our cat, by running the back of her hand against our cat’s fur.
And let me tell you—it’s challenging to teach her gentleness. She doesn’t quite understand it because she’s so young, because she doesn’t know her strength, because she doesn’t know that grasping her toy so aggressively is not the same as our cat. Yet, we must keep trying to teach her because it’s important to be gentle, to know your power.