Psychomotricity and Development of Emotional Bonds Between Parents and Children in Early Childhood

Introduction

It is currently scientifically and socially accepted that school Physical Education (PE) promotes healthy lifestyles and presents good options, both for the practice of extracurricular activities and, later, for leisure and recreation. Its practice from the earliest ages, accompanied by the reinforcement that the participation of family member’s entails, will be fundamental for its acceptance and growth. For these reasons, the development of the different psychomotor factors is considered to be decisive.

This chapter is born of the previous didactic performances to give classes to the students of teaching of the specialty of Childhood Education (CE) during several years. In them the interest of students for learning the teaching formulas that will develop more and better the children who will be their students in the future. The study seeks motor development and family intervention in PA through psychomotor skills, working on psychomotricity with activities in which the family participates. It gathers the current paradigms of children's motor skills with the use of classic and innovative children's movement models.

The work includes in a concrete way the use of psychomotricity to reinforce the bonds of affection and emotion between children and their parents and, as a consequence, develops the motivation towards exercise in later years (Zagalaz & Cachón, 2018). In Figure 1 can be seen one of the workshops given by Professor Cachon-Zagalaz.

Figure 1.

Group of 4 year-old students and the teacher-researcher in the psychomotor skills class in the Sports Pavilion of the UJA

Since the child is born, he learns through movement, knows himself and accesses the world and other people through gesture and body expression. This approach implies progress in affective, cognitive, social and motor development. The family observes each one of these gestures and wants to participate and apply all its affection in that development, although sometimes, it does not know how to obtain it. In addition, the level of motor development is a very effective indicator of the health status of young children (Reboiras et al., 2015).

The psychomotricity enters the scene in substitution of the infantile Physical Education (PE), nevertheless, the corporal base of the education in those ages, the interest of the small ones to learn amusing and dynamic activities and the security that gives them to make them with its parents, turns the psychomotor aspects of the PE into something innovating, interesting and, probably, basic for the infantile integral development.

If music is added to these activities, both children's songs and other more current or that brings them closer to basic aspects of culture, as well as the narration for the staging of children's stories, a double objective will be achieved, to communicate with the movement as a pillar of IE and its initiation into culture (Zagalaz et al., 2014).

The general objective of the chapter is to develop the emotional bonds between children and their parents through psychomotor skills by means of an Educational Innovation Program designed for this purpose.

Specific objectives:

• 1.

  To promote PA in children from a very young age;

• 2.

  To get parents to take responsibility for this type of activities and enjoy them;

• 3.

  To relate psychomotricity with other cognitive and affective achievements produced in these sessions (feelings and emotions).

• 4.

  Apply this teaching in the training of teachers of CE and, sometimes, of PE.