“Motor planning is to the physical world, what language is to the social world. This is how we communicate with the environment.”
-Jean Ayres
“To understand what it is like to have a motor problem, imagine wearing a suit that controls your movement. Each time you try to move in one direction, the suit moves you randomly in another direction.”
-S. Greenspan and S. Wieder
Motor-planning (praxis) is the adaptive response that depends upon efficient sensory processing, specifically sensory discrimination.
- Motor-planning is the process of deciding what your body has to do and then doing it. It involves conceiving, planning, sequencing, executing, and remembering motor actions, inclusive of bilateral integration praxis, constructional praxis, visual-motor praxis, and oral-motor praxis.
- Good muscle tone and muscle strength promotes proprioceptive awareness for motor-planning.
- When motor-planning is efficient, sequenced movements are executed smoothly. With practice and repetition, we no longer have to think about how to motorically sequence a task (i.e. swimming, driving, riding a bike, dressing, forming words, tying shoes, etc.). Once the task becomes automatic, we move on to master another motor-planning task.
Dyspraxia is defined as difficulty with motor-planning/sequencing motor tasks, which can affect a child’s ability to engage in a wide variety of activities, including gross-motor, fine-motor, visual-motor, and oral-motor actions, as well as social and play interactions. These actions and interactions do not develop easily, efficiently, nor automatically, with repetition and practice needed each and every time.
- The sensory-integrative approach to occupational therapy supports motor-planning skill, in all area of motor sequencing.