Today Tile Triggered Content

As your baby is growing and developing, they will be gathering information from all their senses and combining this to develop their understanding of the world.  

Now that your baby has discovered the joy of banging using objects, they will find endless opportunities to develop their skills. It can be loud, but this incredible noise is developing so many areas of skill for your budding Meg White or Keith Moon!

What do they learn through banging?

Your baby's learning about cause and effect, about their own body and about the force they can use to get a reaction. They are getting to use their senses as they experience touch, sight, sound, proprioception (their sense of their own body) and often taste, during their explorations.  

The first skills that may come to mind when you think about your child learning to read are likely those that are related to letter recognition or understanding letter sounds. However, reading involves many skills including visual ones, and that’s why picking out details in pictures now will help them as they learn to read.  

When your child identifies specific details in a complex picture, they combine visual and cognitive skills. 

Attention and our senses are inextricably linked. When we control our attention to focus on something important, our brain needs to ignore other stimuli. Think about when you need to make a tricky manoeuvre in the car, do you turn the music off or down? This is your brain reducing sensory input to help you concentrate better. Your child is starting to be aware that they sometimes need to make a change to help them and their concentration. 

Their senses help them to regulate their levels of alertness.  

For many of us, the moment we see our child go over to help someone, without a prompt from us, brings a glow of pride. We want our children to be kind to other people, and for everyone to see just how wonderful our child really is – showing this kind of concern for someone else is harder than it looks. And you have an important role to play in helping your child master the skills they need to be truly empathetic.  

Social psychologists talk about prosocial behaviour, which are the things we do for someone else – things like helping, sharing, giving gifts and cooperating with one or more people.  

Theory of mind is the understanding of the thoughts, feelings and ideas of other people. It is a skill that your child has been developing for some time and one that will help them as they make friends. Understanding other people’s ideas, thoughts and emotions is an important part of building relationships, it will help your child agree what to play, think about other people’s needs and show empathy – all important aspects of friendship.  

Your child will have learnt about other people by watching those around them and noticing how people respond to experiences and events. They might have noticed what causes some emotions or pretended to be someone else in their play.  

There is nothing quite as magical as when your baby first laughs, and laughing together is a wonderful part of family life – we're all for having more laughter in our lives! But we also like to check our facts, so when we see a meme we can’t help but look for the science behind the claims. 

Laughter might be on your mind now as your child masters the skill of showing their sense of humour. Have you seen this quote before?  

If you’ve tried playing a board game with your child, you’ll know that  understanding games with rules can be tricky. Your child might develop these skills through making up their own rules as they play with other children – or suggesting some simple rules in games they play with you. 

Playing games with rules involves social and cognitive skills as your child needs to think about (and explain) the rules, remember them as they play and agree the rules with other people. Then they have to understand that in some games there is a winner and a loser – and sometimes they might lose (which is something even adults find hard to cope with at times!). 

You've probably noticed similar skills in different streams as you’ve worked your way through the app. Responding to and regulating emotions draws on your child’s social and emotional, sensory and cognitive skills – and probably involves some language development too!  

Self-regulation is the ability to recognise  and control our responses. Although we often talk about self-regulation in the context of emotions, it might involve controlling thoughts, emotions, attention or actions.