Children's love of sports boosted by early walking start
9 September 2009
The research suggests that if children who are slower to develop their motor functions are encouraged to be more active, this may lead to greater participation in physical activity during their adolescent years. This could in turn help improve their physical fitness in adulthood.
The study, by researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge and colleagues, looked at over 9000 children born in Finland in 1966 who have been studied since then. The researchers compared parental accounts of their child's progress in walking or standing at the age of one year with follow-up accounts of physical education and sports participation from the children themselves when they were 14 years old.
They found that the earlier a child started motor development - defined as standing unaided or walking with support - the higher their physical education grades at age 14. These children also participated more frequently in sports and played a greater number of different sports as teenagers. This association remained after taking into account other factors such as sex, socioeconomic status and the time of year they were born.
"Motor skills are known to be important for sports participation, and indeed enjoyment of sports activities," says Charlotte Ridgway from the MRC Epidemiology Unit, first author on the paper.
"Our findings suggest that development of motor skills, even in infancy, may be important, suggesting that infants with slower motor development may benefit from help to improve their motor development and skills, hopefully increasing sports participation and in turn increasing physical activity levels later in life."
Previous research on the same Finnish cohort has indicated that people who take part in more sports as teenagers tend to be more physically active as adults.The authors of the new study have also previously shown that earlier motor development during infancy is associated with better physical fitness in adulthood.
There is also some evidence that interventions, such as breast-feeding for longer or parental encouragement to help a child stand for the first time, can aid infant motor development.
"Evidence suggests that infant motor development is at least in part modifiable, suggesting interventions to improve infant motor development may be beneficial" says Ridgway.
"Identifying infants with delayed motor development would allow targeted interventions to improve motor skills to increase sports participation in childhood, as well as potentially increasing physical activity levels in later life."
The North Finland Birth Cohort 1966 study is part-funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Image: Primary school children, sports day. Credit: Anthea Sieveking, Wellcome Images
Reference
Ridgway CL et al. Infant motor development predicts sports participation at age 14 years: Northern Finland birth cohort of 1966. PLoS One 2009;4(8):e6837.