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[Music] good morning everyone Dana with the ot guide here today so today I'm gonna go over three steps you can take as a caregiver teacher or therapist to teach your little one how to zip and unzip so zipping and unzipping is a very complicated skill a lot of kids struggle with it up until they're five or six years old and it requires a lot of skill so it requires fine motor skills so the coordination and your child's fingertips it requires bilateral coordination skills or the ability to coordinate both sides of their body together it requires motor planning because for a lot of our little ones this is a novel task and they're gonna have to sequence steps together to complete the task upper body strength upper extremity strength postural control the list goes on it requires so many skills so it's a complicated task hopefully this video makes it a little bit easier for you to teach your little one so here we go these are three steps you can take to teach your kid how to zip and unzip so step one and teaching your child how to zip and unzip is teaching them how to do it on an object in front of them so I don't want them to use a jacket at this point because I don't want them to practice the hooking and unhooking part that's the most complicated part I just want them to practice the zipping and unzipping so what you're gonna do is you're gonna take a bag that has a zipper on it so this is just a pencil case you can take a purse a suitcase anything that is a zipper in it on it and you're gonna put motivating objects inside it can be a snack that they love it can be toys that they love if they want to draw it can be crayons and markers and basically you're just gonna have them repeatedly open the bag to take the toy out that's rewarding and then you're gonna immediately close the bag so they have to do this over and over and over again just practice opening it the way you're gonna do it specifically is you're gonna sit behind your child you yourself are gonna hold the bag and you're gonna practice just having them pull so I want them to use these two fingers to hold onto the zipper and pull so when I sit behind my students what I do if they're trying to use all of their fingers I simply curl these three behind I just sit behind them and I curl them away and I guide their hand my hand is on top of theirs and I guide their hand to grab the zipper and then i pair it with a verbal cue so they pick it up and I say oh then and then they take out what they want and then I close it up again really fast so again I close these fingers so they're only using these two and I have them grab the zipper wall I am holding the bag and I say open if you don't have a manager but a madam a manageable bag like this you can always use like a ziploc bag that has this sliding thing it practices the same skill that's targets the same thing and again put a snack inside you hold the bag and you have the child use just these two fingers and say oh then once they get that part down you are then gonna cue them to use both their hands so they're gonna put one hand on the bag one hand on top Oh Ben but step one is just having practice having them practice pulling it open while you stabilize the bag next step they're gonna practice pulling and open while they stabilize the bag so the next step after your child has mastered zipping and unzipping ziplock bags suitcases purses lunchboxes backpacks the next step is to teach them how to hook and unhook with an object most likely a jacket in front of them you could also use a zipper book if you have one of those zipper books at home this is truly the trickiest part of zipping so there are a few key details I want you to remember when you're teaching your child how to unhook and hook the zipper the first key detail is I want your thumbs on top so I want one thumb on top of one side and I want your other thumb on top of the zipper on the other side and I want you to make sure that this thumb is holding the zipper down so the zipper is not like this no we want to make sure this thumb is holding that zipper down so our thumbs are on top or not holding it like this and what we're gonna do is we're gonna teach our kids that this is the food this thick piece right here and this is the mouth right here and you're gonna teach them to put the food through the mouth so feed the mouth and they're just gonna practice this over and over again making sure that their thumbs are on top the zipper is pointed down and they're feeding the mouth like so do this over and over again and then once they've mastered that on their own they're ready for step 3 so the third and final step of this whole process is to have your child practice zipping and unzipping on themselves so I want them to put their sweater or jacket on and we're gonna practice so what we're gonna do is I want you to stand behind your child and you're just going to give them the exact same verbal cues and tactile cues that you've been giving them this entire time so you're gonna instruct like before that their thumbs are on top one thumb is on top of the zipper facing down the other is on top of the other side and you're gonna say here's the food here's the mouth feed the mouth pull up again they're gonna have to do this over and over and over again to make it perfect because it is such a tricky skill um if your child can't get the unhooking and hooking part no worries do that part for them and have them practice the zipping and unzipping part with time and practice they'll get this anyway I hope that made teaching zippering a little bit more manageable and I will see you guys all next time bye [Music] you