Children Development #1 - Crossing the midline

Image by Jones Therapy Services

Together with developing a whole department for learners with special educational needs, we still have to look after our other learners who are able to function within the mainstream.

One of the main developmental "roadblocks" I have come across in these last couple of years is that most children's midline isn't developed.

There are a lot of reasons and causes for this, but let's start at the beginning:

What is the midline?

A Child's midline is an imaginary line to divide their body in half.

This basically means that the left side and the right side of their bodies are separated.

The importance of the midline

The importance of crossing the midline can be seen on two levels.

1. The Brain
2. Physical level

1. Brain:

When a learner isn't able to cross their midline (work from left to right or right to left) this can possibly mean that the left and right side of the brain isn't communicating well with each other.
This is important so that learning and movement can be coordinated.

1. Physical:
   When a learner can't cross their midline a true dominance in their hands and feet are not developed. This in return means that they develop two "mediocre" hands instead of one strong dominant hand/foot.

Signs to look out for

1. Child writing with both hands. They write with the left hand until they get to the middle then they change hands and write with the right hand the rest of the page.
2. When drawing a figure 8 they either move their body so that they stand next to the 8 and not in front of it. This is so that they can only use the one hand.
3. When asked to crawl they crawl with the left hand-left foot and then right-hand right foot.
4. They can't use their left hand to touch their right knee. They rather use the left hand to touch the left knee and vice versa.
5. Use different feet when kicking the ball (Mixed dominance)
6. They rotate their trunk when working from left to right or right to left in an attempt to not cross their midline.
7. Struggles to visually track an object from the left side to the right side of their bodies or right to left side.

Basically what the signs come down to is that when a learner struggles to use the left and right side together your alarm must go off. They must be able to work cross-over and not just on the one side of their bodies.

Activities to improve crossing the midline.

1. Crawling
   Learners must crawl (It doesn't matter how old they are, this is one of the first activities that can help; Sometimes this will be the only one they nee and yes I even let the 13-year-olds crawl)
   

2. Sit on a piece of paper.
   Let them draw a rainbow first with their left hand and then with their right hand. You can put the hand that they don't use behind their back so that they don't use it.
   

3. Do a lot of figure 8's.
   You can put one up in your class for each learner. It is important that they stand in the middle of the 8, feet next to each other. They shouldn't move their feet.
   

4. Move an object from the left side to the right side of the body.
   

5. Cross Crawls
   

6. 

Here are some video resources you can also take a look at.

Sources

1. Source 1
2. Source 2
3. Source 3

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