Confident Parenting

Participation in music provides your little one with unique experiences and skills. Each song sung provides insights into a child’s interests, and allows the child to express what they know.

The hardships related to COVID—fear, uncertainty, financial insecurity, and so forth—have influenced the number of interactions caregivers have with children. This is affecting cognitive development.

The ability to rhyme is one of the best predictors of how easily a child will learn to read. Rhyming helps a child distinguish between different sounds. And, rhyming helps a child notice patterns and sounds within words.

When your child is showing interest in the food on your plate, chewing chunky pureed foods easily, and sitting up straight without assistance, it may be time to introduce finger foods…cautiously, and with your pediatrician’s approval.

Developing an understanding of cause and effect can help children build their ability to solve problems, to make predictions, and to understand the impact of their behavior on others.

Motor-skill development begins in the womb, and improves steadily after a child’s birth. As with fine-motor skills, gross-motor skill development follows a predictable path.

Consider these strategies to create positive experiences during eating and mealtimes.

Mixed-age grouping is becoming increasingly more popular among early childhood center-based educational settings. It involves putting children who may be more than two years apart in age in the same group or class. Centers that use this model find that the relationships between child and caregiver are greatly strengthened.

The exploration of new words using pictures and sounds adds to a broader understanding of a word’s meaning. This also helps to reduce misconceptions.

Receptive language—words a child understands but doesn’t yet say—typically precedes language production by several months. At 8 months, a little one begins to understand his or her name along with such common words as “bottle,” “mama,” “dada” and “bye-bye.” “No no” and “all gone” typically are understood at about 11 months. By age 1, a child will understand more than 50 words, and that number will continue to grow dramatically month-to-month, even though that child may barely be talking. Meanwhile, the acquisition of expressive language—words a child understands and says—relates to what a child best knows and is interested in—mom and dad, for example.

A child acquires language in predictable stages. (Note: Some language-acquisition experts suggest that there are six stages (including the earliest stage of cooing). Other experts describe five stages, starting with babbling. Still others contend that there are four main stages when two multi-word stages are combined.

By modeling healthy practices and making eating a pleasurable experience, you are laying the groundwork for nutritious and enjoyable eating for the rest of your child’s life.