Crossing the midline

Midline crossing encourages your child to be able to reach their hands left to right and right to left across the body. This means that if you imagine a line drawn down the centre of your body, you should be able to put either hand past that line without any difficulty. Some children find this hard, and can be seen to turn their whole body to avoid crossing the midline. These activities help your child practise midline crossing, and it is helpful to remember the imaginary line as you do them. 

It is a skill that encourages good balance, bilateral activity, good co-ordination and pre-writing skills.

Ideas that encourage crossing the midline

• ‘Lazy Eights’ – Draw a large figure of eight on its side - use a large piece of paper/old wallpaper/chalk on the ground. Encourage your child to stand in the centre and trace over the shape in lots of different colours and using different materials.  

• Encourage your child to open pages of books (this crosses the midline)

• Encourage your child to start to put on their own shoes and socks (reaching across both sides of the body).

• Cleaning the whiteboard/blackboard/car or even wiping down tables or surfaces using big arm movements and moving from left to right.

• Passing games – Offer your child an object so they have to reach across their body to get it. Play pass the parcel or just pass items at the dinner table. 

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OScw7R8WLeM – a simple exercise to practise crossing the midline.

• Drawing rainbows or roads in sand, talc or on paper to encourage the left to right action. 

• Using bean bags or similar, set targets in front of your child at either side (hoops or boxes can be used). The child must use their right hand to get the beanbag into the left target and left hand into the right target. 

• Ask your child to wave a flag or scarf in a figure eight. 

• Get your child to roll or bounce a ball around their body as far as they can towards the left side with the right hand and then the left hand can take over once the ball is behind the body. Then swap direction. 

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkrZBsOlt3k - link to a brain break song which focuses on crossing the midline.

• Rub shaving cream on the wall next to the bath with both hands, and then using the hands one on top of the other to draw a large circle or loop.  This will help your child to cross the midline with both hands.

• Play a game asking your child to touch somewhere on their body, such as ‘Simon Says touch your left shoulder with your right hand’. They should only do it when the sentence starts with ‘Simon Says’.

• Participating in a tug of war.  A fun game of tug of war encourages hands to midline, hands to cross the midline.

• Relay races that encourage bilateral coordination.  Run to a cone and complete 10 windmills or 10 cross crawls and return to start.  

• Use tunnels to encourage your child to continue to crawl.

• Play clapping games.  Clapping games help children to develop solid two-sided coordination skills because they consistently require the both sides of the body to perform the same task over and over.  Plus, the two hands have to meet in the middle (working in midline) and cross over the middle (crossing midline). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULp0Vnzblc – patty cake song with clapping.