Parental influences on parent-reported motor skills in young children with developmental disabilities

Abstract Background Young children with developmental disabilities (DDs) often experience motor skill deficits. Although parents play an important role in developing their children’s motor skills, the association between parents of young children with DDs and those children’s motor skills has not been widely studied. Objective The purpose of this study was to cross-sectionally examine the pathway by which parental physical activity (PA) support, explicit modeling, and child’s PA are associated with motor skills in young children with DDs. Method One hundred and thirty-five parents of young children (5–7 years) with DDs completed an online questionnaire which included questions about parental PA support, parental explicit PA modeling, children’s PA behavior and children’s motor skill variables. Results Pathway analysis was conducted to examine the pathways between parental tangible support and explicit modeling and motor skills in young children with DDs. The pathway analysis indicated that parental tangible support and explicit modeling are significantly associated with PA behaviors in young children with DDs, which in turn, are associated with their motor skills. Conclusions The results from this study suggest that young children with DDs may acquire motor skills by participating in PA. In addition, parents of young children with DDs can indirectly be associated with the motor skills of their children by supporting PA and becoming a PA role model. For parents of young children with DDs, increasing the PA behaviors of their children maybe away to improve their children’s motor skills.