Not for your child! Babies, toddlers and children are learning all the time, and this is a powerful thing to remember if you’re feeling busy or overstretched.
Before you let any guilt sneak in because you’ve not set up an elaborate activity or pulled out the paints, stop and remember all the tiny interactions you’ve had with your child today.
Getting dressed, changing a nappy, making a meal or tidying some toys away – all of these moments will have involved interactions that support your child’s development in some way, from practising fine motor skills to do up a zip to the communication development that comes from watching your face while you chat to them.
We make sure that our ideas for activities are always a mix of more organised set-up activities, creative ideas for play and simple ways you can enhance your child’s learning through tasks that have to be done each day. This means there will be something to suit your day, no matter how busy it is.
The suggestions will be perfectly suited to the skills your child is learning to master right now, and will often only require a simple change to your usual approach to a job.
It might involve talking through your thought process as you help them dress to develop their cognitive skills and theory of mind, or encouraging more serve-and-return interactions to help them learn about language and social connections.
It’s also important to remember that your child is taking in a huge amount of information all the time, so while adding some of these ideas for enhancing your daily routines will help them, you don’t need to feel you should add something to every moment of the day.
If you’re in a rush, or feeling completely frazzled yourself, it is okay to focus your energy on getting through the task at hand in the most positive way possible. Next time you have a moment that feels calmer, use one of our ideas to turn that into a playful learning experience – nobody can be learning (or teaching) every moment of every day.
Similarly, you won’t ever be able to maintain a way of playing, chatting or interacting that doesn’t feel like you. We offer suggestions for what to say or do to develop your child’s learning in the moment, but you can adapt it to feel natural and comfortable to you.
Once you know why we’ve suggested something, like explaining your thought process out loud, you can adapt how you do this to make it your own – that will make it far more likely to become a part of your routine without you even having to think about it.
We'd love to hear any ideas, feedback or questions you have about the app! Tell us what you think by emailing us at hi5@mffy.com