In this competitive world, identifying talent is not restricted to any age. Parents start evaluating their kids activities right from the birth because no one wants their children to be left behind when it comes to the something that is related to parenting.
Human Beings are born to learn, and their brains develop the way it is used. In order to make them use their brains in most effective way, we need to create such an environment where we can stimulate a child’s mind. And while trying various activities, we understand what are their real interests and what do they enjoy the most.
Children learn best when their relations with the parents are responsive and engaging. Therefore parents role becomes very very important in child’s learning curve during the initial years and the first teacher or a coach they will get in their lives is “YOU”. This you means the one who is playing any role in raising them. It may be a father, mother, a grand parent, elder sibling or a relative.
Children and Learning
Children learn from what they play and how they explore in the usual daily routine.
The relation a child have with parents and family – is the root of the his/her learning tree. They adapt the necessary life skills by their normal interactions with people they have in their environment – for example, their communication skills, their analytical skills, problem-solving ability, inter-personal skills etc.
Following are our usual day to day activities through which the children learn at early stage:
- Noticing the things and patterns around them
- Observing face expressions and replicating those
- Recognizing and responding to voices
- Listening and making sounds
- Their explorations – for example, putting everything into mouth at early stages, crawling around, walking here and there into different rooms of the home, the opening drawers when they grow a little.
- Inquisitiveness – their cute little queries
- Experiencing different kind of materials and differentiating them – for example what to eat and what not. We have a very simple example of it. During baby portfolio shoots, usually the baby would be made to sit on a floor drop in the studio. Although the floor is at the ground level, still the baby would hesitate coming from the floor drop to the original flooring. That’s actually where the stimulation is happening in the brains and they are identifying the textures.
- Bringing their sense organs in use – Initially, they do not know what is hot and what is cold. One of my cousins’ daughter accidentally touched a hot cooker and burnt her hand. Later, they make her understand certain things which she should not be touching by keeping the temperature at a level where she knows that its hot without burning her hand. Later she would look at a cooker while crawling and won’t touch it.
Later they learn better when you too participate in their learning activities, for example:
- Sit with them and read out pictorial books with them, narrating the stories or facts.
- Playing games with them which involves stimulation.
- Involve them in basic household chores like dusting, cleaning.
- Ask them to pour water in a pan in which you are going to prepare tea.
You would also need to make sure they get a right mix of activities. That would also increase the stimulation and you would also get to identify what interests them more and what they are best at. The activities should involve indoor games, reading, outdoor games, explorations, writing activities, paintings and leisure activities. Once you understand what he/she loves more, you know what you can concentrate more on. Having said that, it never mean if a child looks interested in cricket, you would make him play cricket, 5 hours a day. But only thing you can make sure is that he plays cricket in a way he develops the skills in best possible way. Sometimes, they might need to do something which they do not want to do. We need to make sure that they do that. Sometimes its good to push them.
Be Patient, as Your patience would have a huge impact on how they learn. Sometimes, they will ask you so many unnecessary and silly questions and sometimes you would need to show them how to do certain things. Here you would need to create a balance between what all you tell him and what all you leave for them to explore. If there is something they can explore and learn would be the best lesson rather than you telling them directly. Also, they will get a sense of achievement in that.