As any mother can tell you, the gift of a child is a life-changing one. Forever on, you will be mom or dad and are tasked with raising your child with love, discipline, and respect for the world around them. Of course, being a parent is a full-time job and ought to be treated as such. When considering the future, think about your baby’s developmental needs in order to eliminate obstacles and give them every advantage you can in life. Development falls into three distinct categories: of course there is physical growth and development that occurs naturally through play; there is mental growth that represents the peak of human learning at early age; and finally there is the social dimension that many parents ought to consider. Here are what other parents have done to encourage their child’s development at an early age.
Nurturing Your Baby’s Brain
By and far, the most essential thing a parent can do to help their children grow and learn is to spend time with them. Between birth up until the age of three, children experience the most rapid rate of brain development in their life. Not only will a baby’s brain triple in size over their first year of life, they will have over 1,000 trillion neural connections in their brain by the time they reach three years old. Most babies produce speech-like sounds by the time they are seven months old; research shows that this babbling is crucial to brain and language development, especially when a parent instinctively responds to around 60% of those vocalizations. Furthermore, there are studies that show how beneficial reading aloud is to children’s brain development, yet only around half of all infants and toddlers are routinely read to by their parents. The average toddler has a brain that is twice as active as the typical human adult — by taking advantage of this critical time in their child’s life, parents can help their children realize their special gifts and help nurture talents that can lead to success later in life.
Dealing With the Terrible Twos
Nothing stands in the way of learning quite like a bad attitude. The terrible twos are rightfully named as children refine their speech to express their wants and needs as adults would, unfortunately concepts such as selflessness, patience, and discipline are alien to many children, making dealing with the terrible twos a true exercise in parenting. Studies from the study journal Child Development conducted in 2010 suggest that the temper tantrums associated with the terrible twos may actually keep children awake during the night — this in turn negatively impacts a child’s ability to enhance and develop skills. Child care experts suggest that the best way of dealing with the terrible twos may be to enroll your child into a preschool program so that they may have time to refine the needed social skills to think of others and curve the potential for temper tantrums.
Finding the Solution Through Early Childhood Learning Centers
An early childhood learning center adopts a variety of learning approaches tailored to educationally benefit children in a number of ways. Depending on the curriculum and philosophy, many early learning centers have smaller class sizes to allow more personalized attention on a child than traditional daycares and preschool programs — this in turn means that your child’s own unique traits and talents can be nurtured. Many programs offer extracurricular options such as foreign languages to take advantage of children’s developing brains — with continued support, experts suggest that as many as 50% of children today will retain a foreign language into adulthood. Although many parents choose to take a leave of absence from work to be a full-time parent, experts are actually saying that by not allowing your child to associate regularly with peers, parents may actually be unknowingly encouraging toddler screaming tantrums. When dealing with the terrible twos tantrums, consider allowing your child to attend an early learning center to not only sharpen their intellect, but give them the opportunity to learn the key social skills needed to be a kind person.