Best Childhood Development is Spending Time
Want to know what the best thing is to support your child’s learning development. It’s spending time with you. The experiences that they get from this invaluable experience lasts a lifetime! Rich learning experiences are a must for childhood development.
When was the last time you spent 1 on 1 with your child, just you and them? No other interferences. Fun and engagement that you really enjoyed, that was uninterrupted? Well it is possible to do both as a planned experience or a totally spontaneous one. Just give it a go.
As an early childhood teacher and parent myself I see children disengaged with adults due to the time commitments in busy family lifestyles. Rest assured it is not your fault; unfortunately our busy lives today create an impact that doesn’t support time out.
How Can You Connect Childhood Development Within Your Family?
It is up to you as a parent to monitor your family commitments to ensure that your child can experience this time with you. A young child needs connections as part of early childhood development to ensure that they become competent social and emotional people. This is one area that is crucial when your child begins school, and sadly one area of childhood development that holds children back.
If there is an opportunity for this uninterrupted time and time that a child has to make connections and explore in their own time as well you’re on your way to supporting their individual needs.
What’s involved?
So what can you do to make some fun and engagement in your day? Well, it’s all about sharing. Sharing also includes listening. These two key words can make or break the relationship you have with your child. Sharing means that you take turns in decision making, no matter how old the child is because this shows that you care for their needs as well. Listening is paramount if you want to connect with your child. Children need to feel valued and know that when you listen to them they feel like you really care. Involving these two key areas makes for a great early childhood development experience with many memories. If you combine sharing, listening and provide time to connect your child with a variety of real experiences you set yourself up for a happier life within your family unit.
Key Things to Ensure Learning Experiences in Childhood Development
Here are some key things that will help in the experiences and childhood development for your child.
- Beginning your day- the routines that happen and these can be different on the weekend. Chores are part of a family so engage your child in them. It builds independence and a feeling of them being important as your child is contributing to the family environment. Don’t wait until they are too old. If they have regular routines and chores then life in the teenage years will run a little smoother.
- Have fun and plan – interactive activities together with your child. Cooking is a great one. It’s messy and highlights so many elements of childhood development. Fine motor skills are enhanced, skills in literacy and numeracy increase. You can predict, estimate and set up scenarios that will engage your child’s brain development and inquisitiveness. It will certainly challenge their understanding to include discovery- based learning.
- Technology can support these activities as a means of supporting their learning. You could take photos, a video of the process for later discussions. Include music, iPads for further research and audio record their activity to share with others.