Ball skills is what most people think when it comes to eye hand coordination. Eye hand coordination helps us with a wide variety of task other than ball skills such as scissor skills, handwriting, coloring in the lines, helping with ADL’s such as dressing, helping with IADL’s such as pouring milk into cereal bowl. Eye hand coordination take a lot of body awareness as well; it is important for children to know how to position their bodies in relationship to a task, use the correct amount of force and initiation of task.

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This is ultimately a higher-level skill that requires a solid foundation in the following areas:

• Ocular Motor skills

• Bilateral Integration

• Attention to task

• Graded movement patterns

• Executive Function Skills

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Eye Hand Coordination can often have a big impact on social skills and self-confidence. There are a large percentage of childhood games that are ball especially elementary school including Gaga ball, soccer, football, wall ball, and 4 square. It is not uncommon for children to feel isolated and left out when they don’t enjoy these tasks or have a more difficult time with ball skills. They begin to feel like they don’t have as many friends because their friends become increasingly interested in ball games as they get older.

It is important to look at the bigger picture when your child is struggling with eye hand coordination. It is important to look at processing speed, bilateral coordination, executive function, body awareness and ocular motor skills.