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.

Storage Bins Teach Children: Self-Esteem and Responsibility

Many parents are looking for easy ways to teach their children self-esteem and responsibility. These areas can be touched on by teaching your child to pick up after themselves. Be careful not to make the chore seem like a stressful situation. Children respond best to things that seem interesting or rewarding to them. Keep this in mind as you proceed.
Forcing children to clean and pick up after themselves at an early age can make them despise the chore. You could be setting yourself up for years of fighting about cleaning their room. It is important to make sure that the child’s room is set up in a way that is contusive to organization and easy cleaning. In other words, make it an easy job to pick up toys and put dirty clothes where they belong.
Let’s start with toys. If you have shelves or bins for toys, make sure that you label them with something that the child can understand. This can change with age and it does not need to be anything extravagant. Digital pictures of your child holding the toy can make very motivating labels. Children identify with themselves and it helps to build their self-esteem to see that they were important enough to be put on the label. As the child matures, you can label containers with printed words to help them recognize certain common object words by sight.
Make it fun! Kids love to do just about anything that seems like play with an adult. Play basketball with soft toys in a large container. You can also play this game with the laundry hamper and dirty clothes. If your child is not interested, make it look fun by standing on the bed to see if you can make the shot from across the room. Most kids will not be able to resist challenging a parent to a game of laundry basketball. Come up with other ideas, such as races to see who can pick up the most blocks, or cars. Of course your child will win and be anxious to start on the next object. Let your child make up rules that you must follow. You will boost their imagination, self-esteem, social skills and coordination with each game that you play.
Come up with a score card and let your child place a sticker on each accomplishment. For every five toys they put away, they get a special larger sticker for their shirt or hand. The score card can be left on display in their room to remind them of how much fun cleaning was the last time and they’ll surely be interested again.
Letting your child help with chores is a wonderful way to teach them responsibility while spending quality time together. Let them set the table. Let them hang their own clothes on childrens hangers. Let them be a part of the day to day life in your house. You won’t regret it and they won’t either.


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.

Six Year Old’s Room

Age six is a special age for many kids and parents. This is the time in a child’s life when they are just about to enter grade school. This can be a big transitional age where your little kid wants to be like the big kids. There are some challenges involved, but you can help your six year old feel older and more self confident while you have fun together.
Changing little things around the house can help your six year old feel grown up. Give them special tasks to help you with. Now that they are big enough, they can help you to cook and serve food at dinnertime. This helps them to feel responsible without making chores feel like punishment. Let them do things that you would not allow before. Let them do little things, like throw clothes in the washer, pour the laundry detergent and fold the towels, or even their own clothes from the dryer.
Putting away their own clothes can even be fun if you have an organized six year old room. You may need to go through and get rid of some of those younger toys that your six year old may have outgrown. Make a special place for their favorite clothes. Around this age, many kids will start choosing special articles of clothing that they hold dear. If you make a special place for these articles, then you reinforce that you stand behind their personal choices. Building self esteem in this special way is very effective. You can even get your child their own little laundry basket and keep their clothes separate.
Hanging clothes can be really fun for kids this age. Most closets have a hanging bar high up where your child may not have ever been able to reach it before. Move the bar down within reach, or give them a special ladder to climb to hang their clothes. Most kids love the ladder because they feel so privileged and grown up knowing that you trust them not to fall. Make sure that you get a sturdy ladder with wide steps and teach your child about the possible pinch points before you let them use it. Tell them that they need to earn it by learning ladder safety to prove that they are big enough to have such a privilege. Once established, you can teach them to hang their own clothes.
Reward accomplishments in responsible behavior with special children’s hangers. There is a wide variety of sturdy children’s hangers to choose from. You may enjoy buying beaded and decorated children’s hangers. Or, you can get plastic or wooden children’s hangers and paint them together. Personalizing things in your child’s room will really give them a sense of pride about their room. The more fun you can make simple chores, the more it will pay off. Make an allowance jar and add to it when you see that chores are done. Hearing the change hit the jar can be motivation enough to help around the house more. Give your child a day’s warning before you go to the store. Give them a chance to earn more change before you go. It is also fun to dump the change into the machine that turns change into paper money. These are available at many banks and grocery stores.
Be creative when helping your six year old feel older. Teaching responsibility can be fun and rewarding. Whether it’s painting childrens hangers together or pouring laundry detergent in the clothes washer, you are sure to enjoy this special age together.


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.