Introduction:
The children with better fine and motor skills may find it easier to be active than those with less-developed motor skills. There are various surveys shown that physical play is crucial to the development of young children. Nowadays, the physical fitness assessment of Macau suggests that not only nursery and kindergarten should increase time and opportunities for young children to participate in physical plays but also the parents should encourage their children to exposure more to physical plays. Therefore, the aim of this research is to find the relationship between the children's motor development in Macau and perception of parents towards participating in physical play.
Methods:
Participants were 318 children (Male=174, Female=144) from five nursery schools in Macao aged 22 to 41 months. Their parents completed the child motor development scale and another questionnaire designed to assess perception of parents towards children’s physical play. Moreover, telephone survey and in-person survey were also used in this research. After data collection, Pearson correlations, T-test and One-way ANOVA were employed to determine the associations among the variables.
Results:
Children aged from 22 to 41 months in Macao are well developed in motor ability; Girl performs better in fine motor skill while boy performs better in gross motor skills. The overall consequences indicated significant associate between parents’ perception about the physical play and children’s fine and gross motor development. The status of children's motor development will be better if parents play a more active role in children’s physical play.
Conclusions:
Parents' perception of children's physical play has great influence on children’s development especially in motor development. Therefore, it is important for parents to pay attention to children’s physical play and be good coaches during the play time.
Key words: young children, motor development, physical play, parents' perception
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