The most troublesome question that bothers fresh parents is how to improve their children’s skills. Each day you wake up, your baby has something new to show you. It seems like those changes happen overnight. Believe me, all those changes happen while they are fully awake, they are just too small to notice. However, too many changes in one day give you a big impression the next day.
And that’s how it happens, parents worry and kids take their own way. They cannot progress the way their parents want them to. I know it from my personal experience. My first child started walking between nine and ten months. Yet, we went to see the doctor in panic with the second one who wasn’t still walking at twelve months!
Even if they are siblings, they don’t take the same path, they develop at their own pace. Rest assured that they will reach their goal when their time comes.
How Can You Help?
Of course, you can’t sit still and wait for your child’s development to happen at the click of your fingers. However, it doesn’t happen just like that, we have to take some action.
First of all, always talk to your child! Even when you are sure they don’t understand you, speak whatever comes to your mind. My girl was still a six-month-old baby when I put her in her seat and up on the kitchen counter while I was cutting vegetables for lunch. I talked to her like she understood everything. I explained to her how vegetables grow, and introduced every vegetable with a thorough description of their looks and the vitamins they contained.
Our talk would go on and on, and I would call upon all my school knowledge in order to keep her interest. However, she listened, always with a toy, and as you can guess, a wooden one, she would follow each of my moves observing and inspecting like she was learning to cook. Sometimes, I would give her a carrot, usually, a big one that she could not bite off a big chunk and choke. Being Always precautious made me tired, but from this point of view, I can say it was worth it!
Nevertheless, you can not keep their attention forever with your chatter. Your talk should be interesting, meaning you should not only chat as you would do with your friend. You have to gesticulate, sometimes even sing, laugh, and change intonation in order to get their attention back. Babble! They will like it! Babble like crazy, dance and make the laugh. They will have much use of it and you will feel good!
Floor Play, Safe Play
After you have put your vegetables into the pot and let it boil, it is time for the living room floor play. I usually put a huge cloth, that I bought specially for floor purposes because we have always had a dog in our apartment. My kids adore animals and they have had a very important role in my children’s development.
My dogs have always known not to step on the big cloth spread on the floor for kids. So they would stand aside and my kids wanted to chase them. At first, my kids tried to pull the cloth in order to get the dog nearer. Upon realizing it didn’t go that way, they started moving. My daughter soon started crawling and my son would roll and thus reach the dog.
For lack of animals, you can use toys. Put the toy at a certain distance from your baby. Depending on the age, let the toy be closer or farther from your baby, so they can reach the toy with a few movements. The toy has to be at a reachable distance. If it is totally out of reach and out of sight, it won’t be interesting to chase, so they won’t put any effort to reach it.
Since you care about your child’s development, you should consider using healthy, natural, wooden toys. If you have read my earlier blogs, you have already learnt about the significance of nature in your baby’s vicinity. Natural toys are the objects that motivate babies to explore, investigate and thus develop their minds and senses. Think about choosing wood over other artificial, chemically treated toys.
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My suggestion is here, but you are free to choose your own preference. For the youngest ones, I always prefer natural, and for older children, coloured toys are more enticing.
This part of the daily play is a little relaxing for a parent as the child is on the floor so there is no fear of falling and hurting themselves. Also, you can use the toys which are safe and thus make sure your baby is secure consequently developing their skills which you will notice only tomorrow.
Sorting Laundry
Your chores have to be done and the next one is the boring laundry. Yet, it won’t be so boring with your kid. If your baby is too young, they can watch you from a short distance while you babble, hide behind the pillowcases and suddenly reveal yourself. You can also throw a soft stuffed toy their way to stimulate hand movement in order to defend themselves. They will laugh loudly thus learning to respond to stimuli and express their emotions.
With bigger children, activities can be more serious. They can search for a specific type of clothes, learning their names, colours and who they belong to. This way, they learn the distinction between a T-shirt and a shirt, a skirt and a dress. The task varies depending on their age. Each task, however small and unimportant looks to you is of immense importance for their mental and motor development.
Our daily chores have to be finished, so the final laundry task would be putting the sorted clothes away. Easy for us, but such an important task for them is to find their clothes, fold them, if possible of course, and put them in their closets. Yes, sure you should help where needed, but try to interfere as little as possible.
What About Dinner?
Almost the last daily task, but still not the least. Everything they do has to be taken with great seriousness. So give them a significant task.
Make dinner look festive for them. You don’t have to do much just change a few things to look different from last evening and they will love it.
Let them put the plates on the table. Perhaps you can use some bamboo crockery and cutlery to reduce the possibility of hurting themselves. Asking them to invite other family members to dinner will be important as they will have to run around the house looking for the others and very importantly, they will have to find a way to invite them to dinner unless they are old enough to speak and say what they want.
At the table, you can let them eat alone, needless to say, with you by their side. Let them experiment and explore the ways to feed themselves. Provide them with an example and show them how you eat in slow-motion so they can follow.
Summing up
Each of the chores may be used as an interesting activity with your little ones. Don’t be afraid to engage them in everything you do. Just think of a way to trigger their imagination and keep them interested and safe.
The moment you see they lose concentration and interest, change it, start another activity and another, in the end, go back to finish the first one and so on.
Keep them preoccupied, and lead their way of development. Be the leader of their activities and try to interfere as little as possible. Explain, show, suggest and in the end help only if needed.
You don’t have to think of any special activities for their development. Your daily chores will perfectly do. Just learn to involve them in your daily home activities.
Remember everything you do can be done through play and with a lot of fun.
