By Andrales Abréu, Y 13
According to Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” However, while exercising this right may be second nature for many of us, there are people who are not as fortunate, and for whom it is, therefore, more difficult to do so. To try and help make sure more people could exercice it, I decided to work with a child in primary school who suffers from a gross motor impairment. In order to help him develop his gross motor skills by working on his hand-eye coordinations skills, I planned a variety of sportive activities, such as football, soccer and tag.
My primary goal was to provide the best help I could, even though I did not have any professional experience in this domain. I thus researched and discovered that the most effective types of exercises were when the child was doing them out of their own will. I, therefore, needed to find something that he could enjoy but that was not too complicated, at the same time. I have a younger step-sibling with a similar condition, and I was already used to doing sports with him, especially football. So, when I was thinking what I could do, it was evident that playing football could help his coordination, as it had done with my sibling. However, I wanted to work on all limbs, and thought that playing catch or American football could also work on his arm coordination.
We alternated the activities according to what he wanted to do, meaning that on some days we only played football or catch, which was mostly passing at first. We also played hide and seek (which he asked to play a lot of the time), which I believe was also good for him as it made him have to think quickly in order to avoid being caught.
By the end of the activity, he was able to dribble with the ball at his feet, shoot and pass, as well as control the ball, which he was not able to do when we started. Moreover, by playing catch, he learned to catch a ball thrown straight at him, which he could only catch when the ball was thrown high in the air previously. I was even told by his mother that he joined the football team of the school after our sessions ended, which leads me to believe that he has started to turn the tables on the misfortunate hand he was dealt.
