Unlock your child's vocabulary with higher-order language
Higher-order language enables children to link thoughts and use their skills in language and thought in many areas of daily life. As your child progresses through life, their language abilities become increasingly important. They’ll meet lots of new people, be introduced to new ideas, and find themselves in different social situations. If they have increased opportunities to practise their higher-order language skills now, they will become better equipped to talk through their ideas, thoughts and feelings.
Higher-order language includes skills such as:
How did my child’s humour develop?
Humour is a type of communication, a form of play, and it creates bonds with others as early as in the first months of life.
It probably wasn't long after your baby was born before they began to smile. They’ll have soon realised that smiles were met with more smiles, and that laughter was met with laughter; it's possible that your baby had fits of giggles, laughing uncontrollably at sounds and objects. These experiences supported the formation of neural connections in your baby's brain, and they began to learn that emotions can be reciprocated.
No mixed messages – ways to help your child pass on information and feel confident
Children often love to help, and they like to do lots of jobs that adults do. One of these things can be passing on messages to others. It gives them confidence when they are trusted to pass a message from one person to another, although there may be times when they won’t quite remember what they are passing on. Here are some tips to support them develop this skill.
Use simple, clear language with words they know and understand
How children think and learn – according to Piaget
Jean Piaget, was a Swiss psychologist who studied child development. He was interested in the field of cognitive development and is still very well respected for his contributions to how children think and learn. In Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, he believed that children move through four different stages of thinking and learning.
Piaget’s four stages:
Five big wins when your child can express themselves
It’s great to be part of the societal shift where children are encouraged to have thoughts and be able to express them. We all have the right to our own opinions and giving children the opportunity to join in discussions will help them massively in conversations at home, school and in the workplace.
Children have been told ‘because I said so,’ for a long time, yet involving them in healthy discussions helps them listen to the views of others and know that people can think differently, and that that’s ok too.
A little more conversation: the benefits of using open-ended questions
Using open-ended questions with your child supports their skills in being able to think about and answer problem solving queries. Closed questions, in contrast, are quite functional, and usually only need a response of ‘yes’, or ‘no’, leaving no room for extra thinking. Open-ended questions are fabulous for a variety of reasons, here’s why!
They help you start a conversation and find out more information – starting off a conversation can sometimes be a bit tricky. It’s really easy to think of closed questions, “Have you had a good day?” “Did you see your sister eat all her lunch today?” Asking something along the lines of, “Tell me about something that made you smile today,” or “What do you think about your sister eating all her lunch?” encourages your child to think more carefully about their answer and offer more of their thoughts.
Your child is remarkable, for more reasons than you might already know!
Can you imagine how hard it is hard to learn about something that sort of doesn’t exist? When you have learnt numbers, colours and time-related words, it is hard to think about a time when you didn’t know them.
Here are some of the things your child has been learning about, without there being any kind of activity or teaching, yet they somehow know and can tell you!
Why does my child never sit still?
Your child is developing control of their position, posture and balance all the time. They are also gaining more awareness of their body and can make judgements about the position of their body – you’ll see them make small adjustments as they sit.
Despite all this amazing development, you might notice that your child moves a lot when they are sitting and perhaps they are not still for very long at all!
Mental representations and understanding what other people can see
Your child uses their senses to understand the world around them. Processing information from their senses has helped them to form ‘mental representations’ of familiar objects. This means that they can think about an object and also think about parts of the object that they cannot see.
Your child’s mental representations help them to think about what other people can see too. You might notice your child understands this when they turn a picture round to show it to you.
Adding texture and telling stories – new ways to play with dough
If you love play dough, or even if your children do while you merely tolerate it, you might find yourselves playing with it in the same way each time it comes out. The skills your child is building on as they play with dough, including fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, will be learnt no matter how you play – no need to make it fancy at all – but if you feel you want to change up your routine, here are some ideas for different ways to play with dough.
Never worry about making your play dough set up overly designed or complicated. You want to make it fun for you and your child, so lean in to the ways you enjoy playing.
