Posts in category: Child Development

We often hear parents profess that it is difficult to take out time to play with their child/children. Parents have over busy days, there may be very important work matters to be attended to and several personal commitments to cater to. In the day to day rigmarole, parents often confess to having very less energy to spend with over energized children, especially after a long day at work!

But what a parent misses out is, the understanding of a proven fact that ‘play is undoubtedly the purest form and opportunity ‘of connecting with your child.  During those moments of play, the child’s world just shrinks to just ‘you and him/her’. You are the centre of their microcosm.

45% percent of all Parents feel they DON’T HAVE TIME to play with their children

So why is taking out time and playing with your child/children important?

•    To quote, Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph.D., a psychologist, play therapist and author of ‘Playful Parenting’, ‘Play allows parents to enter a child’s world on the child’s terms’.  It fosters closeness, confidence and connection.

•    Playing is how children reveal themselves to us.

•    It’s also a way to be close and to reconnect after closeness has been severed, let’s say by an argument or conflict or limit setting. The more we join them in their world, the more cooperative they will be when we drag them along to ours.

•    Playing can be a way to find out what’s going on in children’s lives. With their dolls or action figures, children often replay scenes from their lives, putting their own emotional spin on the day’s events. Joining those, gives parents insight into their thoughts and concerns, enabling them to find solutions to conflicts. Interactive play with their parents helps children develop the social skills necessary for getting along with others and is core to their healthy development.  In other words, play encourages emotional literacy.

•    When you play with your child, you are not only connecting and engaging, you’re exchanging back-and-forth emotional signals, which is helping the child regulate mood and behavior, learning to read social signals and learning to communicate. Each of these abilities contributes to a child’s sense of security.

•    Playing with your child demonstrates your respect for them as you show interest in what they do and what they have to say.

•    Children crave time with parents. It makes them feel special. Playing with kids builds a bond that will last forever. It lets the child know he or she is loved and appreciated. It helps the parent get to know and understand the uniqueness of each child. It is also a great stress reducer for overworked parents. This fact alone should be motivating enough to encourage each parent to find time to play!

•    Play could include one to one time with each child and group time with all of the adults and kids in the home. Family Activities are great for the whole family. They help develop strong family bonds which can last a lifetime. It can be said that a family who plays together stays together. If you are a single parent or have an only child, occasionally invite family or friends over to spend time and play with your child.

Having said that, here are a few activities to get parents started with on how they can effectively engage to play with their child. These are simple hands down activities which encourage spontaneous as well as planned play.

•    Go on a scavenger hunt – in the garden, balcony or maybe even the living room. Look for hidden treasures such as family photographs, round pebbles, a discarded peg table or even a red coloured towel. Just make sure there are no items around which could cause injury.

•    Play in a cardboard box! Save the next cardboard box that comes home, big or small and play with it! If you have a large one, go playing housie! If it’s just a small one, try colouring or painting it.

•    Save the bubble wrap that the courier item was delivered in and make a bubble wrap runway for the kids to pop, pop, pop!

•    Make a fort with cushions. Big ones, small ones – use them all.

•    Reuse the play dough jars, or any small containers such as yogurt/jam containers lying around the house and fill them up to make sound jars. Play soft sound and harsh sound game with your toddlers.

•     Get outside and just play catch! All you require is a ball and a partner!

•    Just dig through your store and pull out all the junk you find. Put it together and make a junk art robot! It’s hilariously fun!

•    On a hot summer day, line up all the pillows on the cool floor and walk on pillows. Take turns and have fun while burning some calories as well.

•    Test out your green thumb and try growing a plant! An Indoor Gardening Kit comes with all you need to start growing one.

•    On a lazy Sunday morning, fill up a tub of soapy water to wash your child’s favourite toys.

•    Cut up a side of a cereal box to make a simple 4 or 6 or 8 piece homemade puzzle.  Joining the pieces will improve vocabulary as well.

•    Create music on pots and pans with spoons and ladles to make music! This idea never gets old for kids, no matter how old!  Just make sure that the neighbours do not get a chance to complain.

•    Draw 6 lines on the sidewalk with chalk (like a ladder).  Check how far you and your child can jump.

Once you get started, the ideas pour in magically!
All it needs is the will to shut off the computer, put down your phone, and engage with your child via play.
You will soon discover a different world altogether when you regularly play with your child!

Mindful usage of the word very

A lot of recent research centred on using communicative English Language tells us that we have grown lazy!

Language is the poetry of the heart and should know no shortcuts. What is actually happening these days in the ‘touch button technology’ era is that we have started looking for quick fix expressions. Moreover usage of powerful adjectives has made commonplace by simply adding the prefix – ‘very’
Let’s pause, let’s not be lazy, let’s allow the neurons to strengthen their sheath and the occipital lobe and the frontal lobe deliver their best. The below list has some words for mindful usage in English language, hope it helps you all.

At Little Millennium preschools we encourage and educate the parents continuously with innovative ideas and thoughts that they can practice in there day to day life. Especially it helps kids learn faster, when their parents are using the right English language and avoiding these nuances!

“Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.”

― Bill Ayers (William Charles “Bill” Ayers is an American elementary education theorist).

Parenting is an extremely overwhelming experience for an individual, full of highs and lows. Each parent knowingly or unknowingly draws upon and consumes a lot of their creative, emotional, intuitive and intellectual resources to be a better parent. A question that bothers parents today is OVER-PARENTING! How do you realize as a parent when you cross that thin line and start over-parenting, over-structuring and over-controlling your child’s life.

Parenting is a natural skill that is not learnt, taught or followed. For each parent this natural ability to deal with his/her child goes through refinements over a period of time With every new experience had, lesson learnt, guilt borne, promises made to be better tomorrow, a parent evolves his/her parenting techniques, customized to meet his/her child’s needs and nature.

Parenting presents its own unique demands and expectations which are influenced sometimes by genetic, socio economic, psychological or other factors. But the larger common goal of parenting remains the same. And it is, to provide joys and happiness to children and prepare them for a future that is unknown, unpredictable yet full of hopes and promises.

So what is Over-parenting?

Simply put, parenting more than needed or required by/for a child, considering his age, stage of life, specific personality traits is what we can call over parenting. It can manifest itself in one or more of the following ways:

1. Over protective or excessive handholding
2. Over directive or micro managing aspects of child’s life
3. Excessive mollycoddling and instant gratification of child’s demands

Parents need to listen to their own inner voice guiding and telling them when it is time to step back a little and provide the space and opportunities that a child seeks to explore and enjoy. Parenting that keeps pace with the developmental milestones and needs of the child and changes/ adapts to it stays well within the right side of that thin line. Which of course is one tricky aspect for parents!

Why is over-parenting dangerous?

The perils of over-parenting are far overbearing in the later life of a child as an adult. With lesser opportunities of decision making, risk taking, failures, self-advocacy, planning, organizing, reflecting about own likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, over-parented kids often grow into adults ill-equipped to take on the heavy weights that real life has to offer.

Over-parenting and controlling behavior of the parents leads to children finding lesser opportunities to take decisions and face challenges on their own.

Following are the common problems that over-parented kids may face:

1. Poor decision making
2. Lack of self-advocacy skills
3. Fear from taking risks in life
4. Fear of failures
5. Poor levels of planning and organizing
6. Low motivation levels to take responsibilities
7. Poor self-connection
8. Lack of knowledge about personal strengths and weakness
9. Decline in  natural creative abilities
10. Prone to anxiety and depression

According to a research at Johns Hopkins University, published in Child Psychiatry and Human Development in 2012 “Such children believe that they were less competent, and hence suffer from triggered increases in anxiety levels.”  The same outcome was achieved from a separate study published in the Parenting: Science and Practice in 2013 which found that “the lower levels of autonomy along with controlling behaviors were found to be detrimental to social adjustment, a circumstance that may lead to behavioral or emotional issues such as anxiety.”

Conclusion:
Times have changed with the advent of technology especially with both the parents joining the workforce. But a child’s need for their parent’s time, attention, love and trust still remains the same, even today. The deeper the connection between a child and a parent, the bleaker are the possibilities of over-parenting. The right amount of parenting makes childhood an eventful and happy preparation for later life.

After all, it is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.

Your child has begun school!

This first big step is perhaps the most significant moment in the life of a two year old and the second most significant moment in your life as a parent, the first being the moment of his/her birth itself.

Separation anxiety is a natural phenomenon   that not only every pre-schooler goes through but also their parents.  And naturally so, as it is the first time that the child attends playschool, it is also the first time that you (as a parent) probably spend all of two hours away from the apple of your eye. As much as the child feels in awe of his/her new surroundings, so will the parents feel the vacuum of those two hours hanging heavy on them.  

So invariably the moment your child steps out of the vicinity of the playschool and into your waiting arms, your first question fired at him is: “How was school?”

The aim of this question could be any of the following:

1. To assuage the feeling of guilt arising within you because you packed off your two year old to a new place, away from you, for all off 2 – 3 hours. It is almost as if you were a surgeon cutting the umbilical cord all over again!
2. To re-assure yourself that you made the right choice by sending the kid to a particular preschool
3. To attempt to be a part of his whole new world that has suddenly sprouted up! In other words, the parent is wanting a legitimate entry into the child’s ‘home away from home ‘
4. To soothe your parental nerves with regards to safety and security of your ward

Whatever be the cause, it is but natural for parents to want to know each and every detail of the moments the child spent away from their watchful eyes.

Fair enough. If that is the aim, the urge to ask such a question is a natural offshoot of parental mind-set. But to elicit apt feedback from the child, it is desirable that the parent be equipped with suitable questions, which are open ended and do not draw a monosyllabic response from a child (a monosyllabic response in the this case would be the words – ‘yes’ or ‘no’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’)

Open ended questions encourage the child to think and respond, to respond and not react and to go beyond the monosyllables and answer in context using sentences. So dear parents, instead of asking, “How was school”, try asking :

1.  What was the best thing that happened at school today?
2.  Whom did you play with during playtime or recess? What did you play?
3.  What word did your teacher say the most today?
4.  Who is the funniest person in the class? Why is she/he so funny?
5.  If you could change seats with anyone in the class, who would you trade with? Why?
6.  Is there anyone in your class who needs a time-out? Why do you say so?
7.  Tell me 5 new words that you learnt at school today.
8.  If you became the teacher of your class tomorrow, what would you do?
9.  Who would you not want to sit with in class? Why?
10. How did you help someone in class today?
11. When did you get bored in school today?
12. Tell me three times when you used a pencil in school today?
13. How did you help someone in class today?
14. Did you make any new friends in school today? Tell me their names please.
15. Where do you play the most during playtime /snack break/ recess?
16. If I called your teacher today, what do you think she will say?

Outcome:
• The answers that such questions elicit will help you to know more about your child’s day at school.
• It will also help to soothe anxious nerves as the child learns to share all aspects of his/her school time with you.
• It breeds honesty and forthrightness.
• As you hear his /her answers, it helps the child to validate his/her feelings as well.
• By asking such questions, you are creating a strong link between the school and home. The child understands that the two are connected.

Remember, parenting is a skill! And each skill requires continuous honing.
All the very best.

“The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should be as happy as kings.”
~Robert Louis Stevenson

And yet boredom, above all the poetic utopia is a fact and a reality that exists. Especially with children. In simple words, boredom is a signal that our brain is

(i) either disinterested in the activity at hand, or

(ii) has no activity at all to be engaged in

In both cases the brain seeks excitement or stimulation to release endorphins (the happiness hormone), so that it can make us feel happy, motivated and content once again.

When it comes to children, boredom has been a subject of many scientific researches and ongoing studies. Educational experts and psychologists have shown immense interest in boredom as a subject of research. Growing parental concerns regarding addressing or ignoring the boredom nags of a child has remained a debatable topic. Let us discuss this.

Children are naturally curious.

 Children are naturally curious and their appetite to learn new concepts leads them from one activity to another. They yearn to engage themselves in new and stimulating activities; that is how their brain naturally develops sharper and faster. They are always learning, even when they are simply observing.

As Prof. E.S. Krishnamoorthy, Director, Institute of Neurological Sciences, Chennai states “It is normal for a child to be curious and seek novelty. It protects their brains from degeneration later”. Boredom in kids therefore is a temporary phase that they naturally learn to deal with, if given the opportunity to do so.

Children are naturally wired to tackle monotony.

Ray L. Wilbur, of Stanford University observed that “the potential possibilities of any child are the most intriguing and stimulating in all creation.” Children have a natural resilience to tackle ennui and boredom. Children are blessed with the ability to create, innovate and invent new means to entertain themselves.

Boredom is therefore crucial for the development of imagination and the ability to develop ‘internal stimulus which allows true creativity’’ as observed by Dr. Teresa Belton, visiting fellow at the University of East Anglia. The ability to develop the internal stimulus sparks creativity, inventiveness, friendliness, resourcefulness, hones the planning and problem solving skills of children and inculcates leadership when left to devise self-directed activities in groups.

Children naturally utilize idle time to create self-awareness and reflect on their own interests.

Dealing with boredom effectively is a life-skill that kids need to be left alone to master. This aspect of boredom versus the children was studied by Adam Philips, a British psychoanalyst in 1993. He argued in his essay that in the irritable confusion of boredom, the child often reaches a state of “emptiness from where his real desire crystallizes.”

This is infact a subtle journey of self-actualization for children and is essential for them to find that deeper connect with their own personalities. Baroness Greenfield, a neuroscientist and an Oxford University professor has also made a similar observation in her works and said that ‘youngsters develop a sense of identity from having to find things to do’.

Parents respond to child’s boredom in primarily two ways:

(I) Engagement in structured activities

Boredom as unpleasant as it may seem is a modern day luxury. In our new social and cultural set up, we have overloaded our kids with our expectations. Parents are generally hard pressed on time, and prefer to keep their kids engaged in a lot of activities to avoid an empty mind. There is a whole new economy thriving on keeping the kids engaged and busy. Apart from a variety of structured activities like dance, drama, theatre, art and crafts, skating, swimming, karate and several other sports activities we now see a rising trend of weekend and holiday workshops.

While these activities do offer a lot of exposure to the kids, it does rob them off the free and idle time to simply stare, observe, reflect and think. An over stimulated brain suffers habituation effect of a constant supply of external stimulus. Such children may have low levels of self-motivation and creativity when it comes to utilizing the rich moments of solitude. In his book titled ‘The Conquest of happiness’ famous philosopher Sir Bertrund Russel devoted a chapter to the importance of boredom for children. He observed, ‘too much travel, too much variety of impressions are not good for the young’ as it causes them to become incapable of enduring monotony later in life. He rightly observed that the “imagination and capacity to cope with boredom must be learnt as a child”.

Children need some time to daydream and just be. They need some time to stand and stare, to reflect and introspect. This span of mental downtime as they call it is prone to episodes of boredom, which can safely be ignored in their larger interest. This is an integral part of growing up and essential to develop an inner focus, observe, make opinions, and internalize feelings and emotions. A lot of structured time offers no space to children for mind wandering and to figure out their propensities which are the foundation for later life choices in both academics and career.

 (II) Instant gratification with technological aids

Another way in which parents often tend to treat boredom of kids is by offering instant gratification by way of screen time on laptops, iPads, smart phones and television, to avoid the corrosive guilt pangs on their parental mettle. Such instant gratification is a ‘misguided approach’ by parents as claimed by Adam Philips.

Understandably, the goal of all these activities that parents engage their kids with is to offer them exposure to various activities and let them discover their own special talents as well as interests they are gifted with. But more often than not, there is a real risk of over stimulating and over planning your child’s life as well!

Technological aids offer a connection with virtual world only, thus impeding the growth of social emotional component in kids. Moreover being a directed activity, technological entertainment has complete dependency on external stimulus. An exposure to a lot of information on media and other technological tools consumes the attention of children and researches have seen a rise in the number of kids identified with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHd). Dr Teresa Belton, an academic and education expert observed that screen time tends to “short circuit the process of development of creative capacity and for the sake of creativity we need to slow down and stay offline”.

What Parents can do apart from what they usually do

Sometimes, being bored for a child means an inability to find deeper connections with people around or with his/her surroundings. It could also be due to communication starvation or togetherness depravity. Parents often overlook the reasons for a child’s boredom and handle it with quick fixes that only end up aggravating the problems later in life. Parents can rise to the occasion and make better parent child bonding during such phases of boredom faced by a child. Togetherness and communication are healthier and gentle responses to a bored child.

John Gottman, a child psychologist and a Professor at University of Washington, has found that parents who expose their children to negative emotions like sadness and boredom without distracting them raise more emotionally intelligent children as these children fully feel and work through these emotions. This is a subtle preparation for later life crisis and challenges.

CONCLUSON

Samuel Johnson, a prolific English writer has articulately stated ‘it is every man’s duty to assume the moral responsibility for his own boredom.” In our increasingly hyper connected and fast paced life, boredom is a luxury, parents are duty bound to allow their kids to explore and tackle. It will help them develop life skills, fuel creativity, instill the art of imagination and inculcate self-reliance.

The month of October ushers in a lot of festivities, celebrations and fun times. Families plan get together, outings and the weather Gods shine benevolently, giving the much needed relief from a long period of summer.

For parents, it also means ‘holiday time’ for the kids. Schools are closed for a number of occasions and festival celebrations, which in turn means that children spend a lot of time at home. And keeping children engaged at home is quite a task by itself. And this is the time when the parent takes on the dual role of a teacher alongside being mom and dad.
No worries! Being at home can be fun and rewarding, both for you and your child. Listed below are some chores and tasks that you could safely engage your kids in. Studies show that children who are involved in household chores from an early age tend to me more responsible, accountable and achieve a greater degree of success even in their professional life at a later stage.

Initiate them into these tasks in a fun way and you could soon have them asking for more.

How to keep your 2 year old child engaged?
• While you are busy in the kitchen, give your child a bowl full of different sized pulses and beans to begin sorting. The little one will spend time diligently sorting out ‘dal, rajma and chana’. Make it rewarding by cooking the same bowl of lentils which the child sorted hours before. Seeing their own effort bearing fruit makes the child feel really worthwhile.
• Two year olds can also be given a ball of flour dough, to roll around, make shapes and knead to their heart’s content. Present their ‘artwork ‘at the dining table before the family for positive encouragement. Incidentally, this is one of the finest activities for fine motor skill development.
• When you are busy completing an office task, draw a few patterns with the help of a chalk on the floor (zigzag, horizontal, vertical, circular etc.) and get your child excited by giving him/her a toy car to race on the patterns. Change the toy if the child gets bored zooming around with the cars. This is an excellent activity for eye hand coordination and wrist movement too.
• Stick a piece of crayon vertically to a toy car and spread a few newspaper sheets. Allow your toddler to go racing on the newspaper sheets. Both of you will soon see patterns emerge out of this colourful scribbling.
• If you need to make an uninterrupted phone call, bring out the laundry basket and ask your child to take out the laundry and place it in piles as per the primary colours he /she is familiar with (red, yellow, green , blue) . Give them a free area to spread the clothes in piles. The reward can be something as simple as allowing the child to assist you in putting the clothes into the washing machine. Being allowed to assist in an adult chore is a big achievement for any 2 year old.
• Pick up an old piece of flat sponge sheet in the house and punch a few holes in it (maybe in a zigzag or horizontal pattern). Give your child a piece of wool or shoe laces and ask him to thread through those holes and perhaps make a pattern. Positive encouragement after every attempt is a must.

How to keep your 3 year old child engaged?
• Attempt all the above chores and in addition, a few more!
• Encourage the young one to fold napkins, handkerchiefs, vests, kitchen towels etc. and place them neatly in a pile.
• If you do the ironing at home, ask your child to button all the shirts and pass them to you for ironing. Likewise, the same can be done for the clothes that are sent to laundry  for ironing.
• Give them a bucket and a mug to water the plants in the balcony or the garden. Make simple rules, such as – half a mug for each pot. You may have to mop the mess for a few days but you will notice a marked improvement in their eye hand coordination with each attempt.
• Sit down with them and start making a grocery list. After your list is made, ask your pre-schooler to circle all the A’s, B’s, C’s and so on (all/any alphabets that he/she is familiar with). In short, you are encouraging language literacy.
• Get a pack of pipe cleaners and mould them in the shape of eye glasses, wrist bands, rings etc. they are very easy to make and soon you will find your children attempting to make the same with their fingers. Another excellent fine motor skill development activity!

How to keep your 4 or 5 year old child engaged?
• Attempt all the above and a lot more…
• By this age, the child should be an active participant in all household chores. Get them to lay the table, place the mats, plates, cutlery, napkin etc. in proper place. If you have two kids, rotate the duties for every meal.
• While you are busy in the kitchen, give your child some bread, butter and sliced cucumbers or tomatoes and let them know what non fire cooking is all about. Make their handcrafted sandwich look special by adding that special mother’s touch in the form of a smiley or a star on top of the sandwich. Munch together.
• With Deepawali around the corner, get your child a few packets of coloured sand (you can even make this at home) and allow them to practise making a few designs in the balcony or the driveway. To make things easier for you, let them do this activity before the cleaning woman comes in, so that the mess can be cleaned and your nerves remain unruffled.  Making a rangoli is excellent for strengthening the wrist and pincer grip of the child.
• With October ushering in the ‘Joy of giving ‘ week, live the values of compassion and charity by making a visit to the local orphanage / blind school/ old age home . Ensure that you and your child spend a couple of hours interacting with the inmates of these institutions. Remember, children are great imitators. They practise what they see.

Listed above are just a few activities. You can do a lot more.  Just get started and you will be surprised at the reservoir of ideas that will come rushing out.
Keeping children fruitfully engaged is a responsibility that every parent needs to pay close attention to.

Happy parenting!!!

The dictionary states the meaning of the word helicopter as a machine /aircraft without wings, that has one or two large sets of blades that go round very fast on top.

And if you add the word parenting to the word helicopter, it means “constantly hovering over your child and taking decisions for them at a very rapid rate!”

In simple words, helicopter parents are parents who constantly hover over the heads of their children, making sure:

1. They don’t trip
2. They don’t rip their clothes
3. They don’t get their clothes dirty
4. They don’t climb the solitary guava tree in the neighbourhood
5. They don’t eat the occasional chocolate that fell on the floor
6. They don’t colour outside the lines
7. And always use a sanitizer before eating a snack!

Many would argue and say that this is exactly what an ideal parent should be.

Absolutely agree with that and let me clarify the difference between helicopter parenting and good/ alert/ responsible parenting.

Let’s just say that no matter how much attention you pay to your child’s hygiene, your child will catch some infection someday.

No matter how careful you are, your child will trip and graze his /her knees one day and no matter how particular you are, your child will probably try to wipe his/her wet hands on his/her clothes one day!

And that is absolutely fine. Your child needs to make mistakes, get messy and take chances. That does not make you a lesser parent. The lessons that your child will learn by falling off a bicycle or rolling in mud to fetch a ball that went off the boundary during a match, are real lessons.

By rushing in each time your child  stumbles, complains or falters, by not allowing  them  to mess around a bit, by not facilitating them to take their own decisions and accept responsibility for their actions, you are actually robbing them of the opportunity of learning essential life skills.

There is a very thin line between getting involved as a parent and being able to draw a line. It’s wonderful to be involved in your child’s life but it is equally important to let them take the occasional tumble and make their own decisions at times.

It is often out of concern or rather fear for the child’s safety that we, as parents, tend to “hover” around our children. No parent can be blamed for that as it is a dominant instinct amongst all parents. However, here are some questions that each parent could ask himself/herself before getting into the ‘helicopter mode and swinging into action’

1. Is my child in physical danger?
No parent wants to see their child run into danger. And by danger I mean crossing the road unaccompanied or walking unchaperoned on a busy street.  Falling down is “NOT” danger. If your child is facing an imminent physical threat, do get into action and after pulling them into the safety zone, counsel them of the imminent physical harm they could have got into. At the same time, if your child falls off a tricycle, do not lock the tricycle away in the garage. Children need to scrape a few knees and get a few bruises to learn how to steer clear of such trouble. They need to learn to draw their own lines at times.

2. Is your child posing a physical threat to others around?
If it is a normal scuffle between friends in the course of play, do not rush in to settle matters. Rather, pause and observe. Most such battles are borne away within seconds. But if you see the battle taking an ugly shape in the manner of fisticuffs, do hover in and instead of taking sides, encourage them to settle disputes by themselves.

3. If the play turns messy, if the paint splashes on clothes and mud splatters on shoes and socks and there is water spilt around – ask yourself, ‘is it causing any harm?’ If it is only leading to fun and camaraderie, giggles and happy laughter, join in the gang and be a kid all over again. Rein in the chopper pilot and believe me, the only thing it can lead to is some extra cleaning and laundry chore. But the feeling of happiness and joy will linger much after your laundry is done!

4. If your child skips a routine, colours outside the lines and wears shorts to bed instead of pyjamas – ask yourself, ‘does it matter and is it wrong ?’ If it really does not matter and it is not really wrong, it’s okay to relax and allow the child to colour the brinjal back and the sky green. That does not mean that you do not teach them that the brinjal is purple and the sky is generally blue. It means that you allow room for creativity and decision making. Let your child explain to you why they coloured the sky green. Allow room for their opinion instead of thrusting yours each time.

Life is all about falling and learning.

Be a responsible parent at all times but hovering around only leads to your child leaning back to you for decisions all the time. Each time they get into trouble, they will wait for you to bail them out.

Instead, teach them to gradually take their own decisions and accept responsibility for the same.

Play is the Best Form of Learning

“As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal.”

Gretchen Owocki, An Early Childhood Educator and Author of “Literacy Through Play”

A little astronaut at play, pretending to travel through space in her spaceship, may look like mere child’s play to you, but these instances are much more than a child’s recreational and frivolous episodes. She is actually exploring, imagining, narrating and creating. And, she is accomplishing all this by following her most basic instinct – playing.

Most parents wonder, how’s that possible? What can children learn by just playing? How will they become successful in life if they spend their time jumping in puddles, creating stories and blowing bubbles?

Children are born learners. They have a natural curiosity to explore, discover and figure things out. Curiosity is the desire to learn, and play is the best way to inculcate this curiosity. They play because it is fun and adventure. Through the medium of play, they set simple tasks for themselves, decide on the success criteria, and at times, also establish a timeline for the challenge. With no apprehensions or fear of failure, they test and try until they succeed. Through play, children develop confidence and make sense of the world around them. When they’re completely and absolutely absorbed in their play, children develop important life skills without even realizing it.

Albert Einstein said, “Play is the highest form of research.”

Several studies by early childhood development experts and educators have shown that play is critical in early childhood as it lays a solid foundation for learning and is the medium through which children acquire a range of fundamental life skills which help them to be academically, socially and emotionally successful in years to come.

Core Strength Building – Early Childhood Development

When kids lift and throw the ball during a game of bowling, fly a paper plane or run around with a kite in their hand, they not only build strength in their core muscle groups, but also learn balancing and coordination. Similarly, Blowing bubbles helps them strengthen their speech muscles whereas squishing play dough and colouring with crayons, coordinates the small muscles in their hands and fingers, and prepares them for a major academic task – writing.

Thinking & Reasoning Skills – Early Childhood Development

Children learn to think, reason, and solve problems when they play. Playing with objects, in particular, allows them to observe, sort, compare and manipulate, leading to enhanced cognition. While constructive play with building blocks, puzzle pieces or board games helps develop logical reasoning skills, strategic and critical thinking; It also promotes knowledge of early math concepts like shapes and sizes, comparisons and contrasts, patters and symmetry. Building a castle with play sand or floating a paper boat in a bucket of water will spark interest in science as well as improve focus and concentration skills.

Learn New things – Early Childhood Development

Young learners also get an opportunity to develop language, speech, and vocabulary when they play. Whether they are roaring ‘vroom, vroom’ while playing with cars, identifying body parts while examining ‘patients’ with their doctor sets, or trying to identify different objects or creatures through a game, children observe, listen and pickup words during play. They learn new words and sounds, and also gain the ability to put them together and form sentences – a crucial requirement for success in school.

Inculcate Creativity – Early Childhood Development

Another extremely important skill that prepares children for school, as well as the life beyond it, is creativity. Play allows them to foster this key skill by encouraging new, original ideas, and gives them the liberty to question, experiment, and express themselves uniquely. Be it dancing and singing, doodling with paint and brush or tinkering with words, creative play helps children explore, persevere, and develop divergent and innovative thinking.

Nurture Imagination – Early Childhood Development

A key component of creativity, which cultivates social and emotional intelligence in children, is imagination. Whether they roar like a dinosaur while wearing T-Rex head gear, sing and chirp like birds with finger puppets or have an imaginary party with their friends, children learn cooperation, negotiation, sharing, and explore symbolic play through imaginative or pretend play. It is because of this imagination during childhood that, as adults, we are able to constantly visualize, solve problem, understand others’ perspectives, think creatively, innovate or invent new things. Children also develop self-confidence, self-awareness, self-control and self-expression through pretend play.

Play is essential for early learning, for it allows children to explore, experiment, and discover the mysteries of the world without restriction or fear. Spontaneous play is their way of mastering reality. As parents or child caretakers, it is our responsibility to ensure an environment that encourages play as a means to meet key developmental skills in young learners.

Summary

Play helps build healthy mind and bodies. Little Millennium Preschool associates high value to learning by playing. Our scientifically researched curriculum includes daily activities as part of the preschool curriculum in which kids learn by playing.

We at Little Millennium Preschool strongly believe, Play is not a break from learning, play is learning. It is the best form of learning for early childhood development

Today, children are being born into a digital age where technological innovation has changed things faster than we can even imagine. First television, then personal computers and video gaming, and now smartphones and tablets, technology has permeated children’s lives like never before, and has done so at a young age.

If we go by recent studies, children as young as six months are being exposed to mobile devices, and by age one, at least one in seven children is using these devices for almost an hour a day. Also, children’s overall screen time has more than doubled since 1999, to over seven hours a day!

Digital devices, which are accessible at any time and from anywhere, are fast becoming a culture at home, school, college and work. In such a scenario, it is next to impossible to restrict children from engaging in various kinds of screens. Moreover, recent studies have shown that screen time can actually be beneficial in early childhood. Screens like iPads and smartphones can be used in ways that encourage cognitive, language and social development in children.

That said, it is also extremely important to assess the risks associated with children having too much screen time, because neuroscience research clearly establishes that young children need first-hand engagement for optimal growth. They need to play, manipulate objects physically, engage all their senses, imagine and fantasies, and interact with the 3-dimensional world.  Screens, which don’t involve a child’s whole body, brain, and senses, take time away from the activities that are critical for brain development and future learning.

During the first five years of life, the most essential neuronal connections are activated in the brain, and as children grow, everything they experience affects the quantity and quality of these connections. Passively sitting in front of a screen for hours and hours limits brain activity and inhibits the growth of these connections, and leads to slower cognitive development, delayed language acquisition, and long-term academic failure. Besides, when children are engaged with screens, the brain releases neurotransmitter dopamine, which encourages addictive behaviour and lowers attention span.

It also has a detrimental effect on children’s social and emotional well-being. By engaging with devices that do not reciprocate, children are failing to learn the ability to interact with others face-to-face, listen and respond appropriately to conversations as well as interpret human emotions. Moreover, children who are exposed to violent media on TV screens and in video games tend to exhibit aggression and often carry out similar aggressive imitations in their daily lives.

Experts believe that rather than feeling guilty about exposing children to screens and exercising total abstinence, parents should make educated and informed decisions about how to integrate technology into their lives without allowing it to take over completely. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics has softened its strict instruction of no screen time before the age of two and no more than two hours a day for older children. In its revised guidelines, the organisation says that while parents still need to set reasonable limits on the usage of screens, they must also pay attention to how their children are engaged with these screens.

Latest studies show that children learn more when their screen experience mirrors a live two-way communication. This means that active engagement and interaction with children during screen time can significantly enhance the educational value of the media they are watching. For example, when a child is passively watching television or a video on YouTube, there’s not much activity happening in the brain. However, when she is engaged in a video chat with a family member, a whole lot of brain cells are being activated, and contributing towards her cognitive and language development.

It’s equally important to keep an eye on what children are watching. Do your homework and try to curate high-quality, educative, non-violent and age appropriate content for your child. Use your judgment consult ratings reviews to collect media that is geared towards children and shows real characters in real situations. It is also vital to recognize when to turn the screens off. Create tech-free zones and media free times at home by ensuring there are no televisions, computers, video games, tablets or laptops on the dinner table or inside children’s bedrooms.

When children watch or interact with screens, they only see a representation of things in the real world. The pre-programmed virtual games with apps and computers require children to play according to someone else’s rules and design. On the contrary, real time play allows children to take initiative and make their own rules, experiment and ask questions, and create and solve their own problems. For this reason, it is essential to ensure that screen time does not take over your child’s play. Give your children ample opportunities to explore, experiment, and discover by replacing televisions, smart phones and gaming consoles with blocks, puzzles, board games and books.

While technology and screens will keep changing at a rapid rate, parenting will not. The same parenting rules apply to children’s real and virtual environments. By exercising the real life rules of setting limits and being involved in children’s lives, we can ensure that our little ones are exposed to technology in a way that helps rather than harms them.

References

http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/managing-your-childs-screen-time/

‘Do not worry if your child does not listen to you. Worry about the fact that he/she is always observing you. Your child will emulate what he/she observes rather than what he/she hears’.
That is perhaps the reason why all research around early childhood care urges the parents to ‘walk the talk’.
This blog on Parenting Tips, highlights the importance of making your child feel loved. It may not always be verbal but through your actions you can convey your love.

For eg. Children learn respect by watching the adults interact with each other.

Children learn to share by watching adults practise the same.
Children learn about courtesy by watching how their family members treat others.
Children also learn to love their teachers by hearing their parents talk respectfully about her.
In a gist, children internalise all experiences and draw conclusions.

The same holds true while saying the three magical words – I love you – to your children.
Children don’t just need to be spoken about love. They need to feel loved, they need to nurture love and they need to absorb the emotion in its most tangible form!

Being verbal is not just the only way to show love for your child.

Let us look at some day to day chores, activities and quality time tasks that you could engage in with your children – because they loudly scream I LOVE YOU!

1.  When you tickle them silly when reading a story
2.  When you attend their School sports day and cheer loudly
3.  When you cook  their favourite meal
4.  When you watch their favourite cartoon show along with them
5.  When you laugh sportingly at their jokes
6.  When you listen attentively to what they have to say about anything under the sun
7.  When you drop a sudden kiss on their forehead
8.  When you sit with them and help them do their homework
9.  When you wipe their tears after a sudden burst of emotion
10. When you help them choose the dress they want to wear
11. When you teach them how to pray
12. When you volunteer as parent helper for their  Annual Day at school
13. When you bake a cake for his/her best friend’s birthday
14. When Mummy helps Daddy in his chores and when Daddy helps Mummy in the kitchen perhaps
15. When you help them set goals for any task
16. When you take them for  a surprise picnic
17. When you encourage them to always speak the truth
18. When you devise a secret handshake with them – which only you two know about
19. When you reward them for a job well done
20. When you make them brush their teeth while patiently standing by the sink
21. When you leave  them a cute little love note in their tiffin
22. When you put down the phone and attend to them
23. When you keep up all promises made
24. When you speak fondly about their class teacher
25. When you get over your fears and perhaps get them a pet to play with!

The list is infinite because love itself is infinite and has no shape or boundaries.

Do not fret unnecessarily in case you do not say the magical words, I love you, often to your child.
Instead, work at making your love come alive through your actions.