Showing Kids that They Matter

No matter what age your child is, it is very important to show them that they matter to you. Cuddling, listening, reading, playing and teaching are great ways to show your child that they are important. Boosting their self esteem, self worth and fostering their development are very important to ensure that they have every possibility to meet childhood milestones within the expected timeframes.
Simple things like eating a meal together will help foster their development. They learn appropriate behaviors, social interaction, textures, tastes and smells. This is a great opportunity to talk about what is healthy for our bodies and what should be reserved for special treats. You can even create learning tools and make healthy eating a theme for the day, week or month. Consider using a shoe box. Cut a hole and draw a mouth around the hole. Name the box and get your child to feed it pictures of healthy foods followed by special treats. Magazine cut-outs are handy for this exercise.
These types of activities help children to have a positive view of different foods. Plus, the simple interaction paired with positive reinforcement teaches them speech and language, assisting them with social skills as well. You do not have to spend a lot of money teaching your child about the world. Everything they need to know they can actually learn by listening, touching and feeling the everyday things around them.
Reading to your child is very important. Reading opens up a whole new world, teaching them about imagination and other places, people and things that they may not be exposed to otherwise. Reading develops their vocabulary and teaches them to derive word meanings from context.
Interaction with your child is invaluable. Spend the time with them that they deserve. Making eye contact and speaking in a clear voice will help them tremendously in their speech and language development. Avoid sarcasm, as it is very confusing to children who are just learning the language.
Each day of your child’s life, you should work on boosting their self-esteem and encouraging a good self-image. It will serve them well through their entire lives. It teaches them to love to learn, makes them want to do well in school, makes them want social interaction, it gives them the drive that is necessary to be successful in a career, as a spouse and as a parent later in life.
You can also help in this area by teaching your child responsibility and giving them chores early in life. Teach them to help with laundry, dishes, toy clean-up, cooking and anything else that they are capable of. Teach them to hang their own clothes and put their dirty ones in the laundry basket. Let them use childrens clothes hangers to make the task more manageable for them. Work in these areas and you will be sure that you have set your child up for a successful life.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the owner of Only Kids Hangers, a leading provider of childrens hangers. The right childrens clothes hangers really make the difference in kid's retail or home organization. For more information, please visit www.onlykidshangers.com.

Child Development Through Teaching Responsibility

Teaching responsibility to your child is something that should start as early as age two. Young children love to help out with household tasks. It is up to you to make it fun and a source of pride and self esteem. Use these tips to get your child on the path to a productive life. Teaching responsibility will help your child in all areas of development including social and emotional, cognitive, speech and language, and motor skills.
-Social and Emotional Development
This area covers children learning to help themselves, control their own behavior and interact appropriately with other people. When you spend time teaching your child to help out with small tasks, you are teaching them these things. They are interacting with you or other siblings, doing small chores that show them that they are capable of doing things on their own and controlling their behavior at the same time. One example is picking up laundry and putting it in a basket. This is a simple, yet effective lesson when combined with appropriate praise and positive reinforcement.
-Cognitive Development
Cognitive skills teach your child how to learn and how to solve problems that are presented to them. Many children are tactile learners and need to do, touch and feel to get the full meaning of what they are doing. Chores are a great way to teach them how to learn from their environment. An example of a chore that helps with cognitive development is cleaning up toys. Label baskets with pictures or words, depending on your child's level. Make a small pile of toys in front of the baskets and help your child figure out which objects go where. You can take it a step further by encouraging them to sort objects by color.
-Speech and Language Development
Speech and language development refers to the area of development that teaches your child how to understand what is said to them or around them. It also covers using the language that they have learned. To work in this area, use simple language on your child's level. Ask them to bring you a towel from the laundry pile. If they are successful, ask them to perform two tasks in a row. An example of this would be to ask them to find all of the spoons in the sink and put them into the dishwasher basket. As you are going, try to get them to repeat phrases, request objects and be sure to once again use lots of praise and reinforcement.
-Fine and Gross Motor Skills
This area covers your child's ability to use small muscle groups, such as fingers, and large muscle groups used for running, climbing and jumping. Make sure that your child has safe areas of the home that they are allowed to climb and jump from. Make toys that require pinching, lacing or pulling with fingers available to your child. You can use small chores to encourage fine and gross motor skills at the same time. Hanging up clothes is a good example. They use their fine motor skills to manage getting the clothes on to the hangers. You can provide a sturdy step ladder and get them to climb to the hanging bar to hang the clothes all by themselves. Use childrens hangers to make the task easier.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the owner of Only Kids Hangers, a leading provider of childrens hangers. The right childrens clothes hangers really make the difference in kid's retail or home organization. For more information, please visit www.onlykidshangers.com.

Nursery Design That Fosters Child Development

A child’s environment contributes greatly to their brain development and ability to learn. Human behavior, development and learning are widely thought to be reactions to our environment. Keep these things in mind when you start designing your baby’s nursery. Create your nursery with the assumption that you may not have time to remodel the whole room year after year.
Over the first years, you want your baby to excel in certain areas. Gross motor, fine motor, sensory, language and social areas of development should be considered part of your decorating plan. Research clearly shows that a child’s success in school and life is directly related to the access of an abundance of appropriate educational experiences during their first years.
Luckily, for infants, babies and toddlers, having fun is conducive to learning. Create a safe, stimulating environment for your child. They will soon recognize their room as their personal space and you want them to draw from that environment. Organized surroundings have been proven to foster critical thinking. Infants and toddlers absorb information from their environments and a cluttered space leads to disinterest and a lack of motivation to learn.

Here are some room set-up tips for each area of your child’s development.

Gross Motor: Provide sturdy, anchored shelves and/or dressers for your child to pull up on. Leave as much open space in the room as possible to promote free movement. Soft, safe climbing areas can challenge and develop gross motor skills as well.

Fine Motor: Provide manipulative toys in one area. Avoid choking hazards, but group toys that require pinching, turning or squeezing in one spot.

Sensory: Make sure that your nursery offers many diverse opportunities to explore different textures and tactile experiences. Look for toys and books that have different textures such as sandpaper, velvet, crinkly and bumpy materials. Children use their senses to figure out their surroundings. A simple thing like placing a small area rug or table near your fine motor toys can lead a child to figure out that this is the spot where they should play with those toys, leading to logical thinking. As they mature, you can replace baby toys with art supplies and a desk to foster their independence, creativity and organizational play.

Language: Books, tapes and CDs can help your child build their vocabulary very early in life. Talking face to face is the most effective, but you can also encourage language development by posting pictures of common objects around the room at the child’s level. Also labeling drawers, cubbies and toy boxes with photographs of what goes there will encourage your baby to name things early on. As they grow older, you can change the labels to printed words to encourage reading and writing.

Social: Separate loud and quiet areas if possible. Make room in each area for adults and other children to get down on the floor and play with your child. Place low chairs or floor pillows in some areas to invite children and adults to enter the room and participate. Place pictures of family members in quiet areas where your baby can study and recognize them.

Organize your nursery with the supplies you’ll need up high. Utilize bins, baskets and hanging organizers to minimize the amount of clutter in the room. Hanging clothes on baby hangers where they’re easily accessible and visible can make your life easier as well. Aim to make everything in the room a potential teaching tool and keep it organized enough that you’ll enjoy spending quality time with your baby.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the owner of Only Kids Hangers, a leading provider of childrens hangers. The right childrens clothes hangers really make the difference in kid's retail or home organization. For more information, please visit www.onlykidshangers.com.