3 Tips for Promoting Child Development at Home and Outdoors
Many parents want only the best for their kids– but you don’t need to spend ridiculous amounts of money on fancy classes or activities. There are plenty of ways to promote child development at home. These 3 easy tips will help prepare your kid for life!
How Does Child Development Work?
Making sure your children have what they need to develop normally is important for both their well-being and their future adult life. Research in developmental psychology has shown that a child’s early years are critical because this is when the brain develops particularly quickly and intensely. Ninety percent of our brains have developed by age 5!
Learning a foreign language, for example, is still effortless until the age of seven. The environment in which children grow up will thus have a formative influence on their lives. In order to exploit this potential to the fullest, the child needs developmental incentives, and you can supply these in a playful way.
It’s easy for parents to feel pressure to enroll their kids in lots of activities to stimulate their child’s development and growth, and while kids need the right tools for learning and social development, especially during the early years, they can learn a lot of what they need at home.
Babies get to know their own bodies and experience all the possibilities for movement during their very first years, both at home and outdoors. They learn even faster when they interact with other children.
Social contacts and group activities shape children early on and give them a feeling for how to interact with others that will stay with them in later life. Just having siblings or casual playdates can provide great social interactions for your little one.
1. Find Your Rhythm at Home
Creating a stable, structured environment that also gives your kid the ability to have the freedom to explore and discover new things is a wonderful foundation for their brain development.
So first, make sure your home environment generally has a fixed schedule, though flexibility is great, too. A schedule creates a certain rhythm in daily life. So when you tell a nightly bedtime story or eat three meals a day together, you’re also helping promote their development.
While you need some stability, give your little one some freedom to discover new things and master new tasks on their own. Simply rushing from one class or activity to the next in an effort to build new skills can be counter-productive. How can children ever relax if they’re always on the go?
It doesn’t take lots of toys for parents to create an adventure world at home to promote their children’s motor skills. Children love to build their own obstacle courses for crawling, jumping, and running out of blankets and pillows. This expands their development radius and the kids automatically become more independent. Certain toys, such as Legos or Magna Tiles, also improve children’s motor skills and dexterity. Lego Duplo is perfect for toddlers, and Lego Creative for older children.
2. Foster Child Development by Enjoying Nature
Many families miss out on the chance to discover the world outside their own front door with their children. Sundays are perfect for taking hikes and walks outdoors instead of sitting around at home. A walk can be lots of fun for the whole family.
Excursions to nearby forests and recreation parks are also a great way to introduce children to new environments. These trips promise not only adventure in the fresh air, with wild plants and exciting animals, but also opportunities to learn about history. Children always love to explore new worlds. This way, you can increase their knowledge while also broadening your own horizons.
Families can create wonderful memories this way, while at the same time strengthening everyone’s immune system and getting an extra dose of Vitamin D. You can round off your day trip with the family with a meal at a rustic inn or a picnic. Children will love the chance to marvel at all that nature has to offer, especially when they are introduced to the great outdoors early on.
Need help finding fun things to do with your family? Check out the FamilyApp for some great ideas!
3. Nurture Their Imagination
If you let your kids play without many toys, there will be no limits to where their fantasies can take them. They will have to think up a game, which stimulates creativity. The lack of any predefined parameters gives their imaginations free rein. Some people advocate a toy-free children’s room. Because too many toys can overtax children. They just won’t know where to start! Even more, toys can quickly become boring. Children will often keep asking for new ones.
Try this experiment once at home to support child development: Hide half your toys and leave only a few available to your children. They’ll start playing with them and enjoying them in a new way. Soon, they might even ask for old toys they once thought were so boring.
When you get them out again, the children will be able to enjoy them all over again. Or you can donate forgotten toys to charity! With fewer toys to deal with, they will be able to concentrate better and play longer with each item. Fewer toys will also help you keep your house cleaner and more organized.
Your Child’s Development
Promoting your child’s development is important, but remember: Everything in moderation. Learning and discovering new things should be fun for your child and not an overwhelming challenge. Even little ones need time to process new impressions.
