How remembering past events shapes your toddler's actions and behaviours
Remembering things that have happened in the past can change how we act in the future. Our memories can shape our perceptions, influence decision-making, and affect how we interact with others. Your toddler has been forming episodic memories for quite some time now about what they’ve been doing, the people they know and emotions linked to events and experiences.
Memories can make your toddler feel happy or scared, and they can help them understand the world better.
How toddlers remember: growing and learning through life experiences
When you ask your toddler what they’ve been doing in their day, it can be hard for them to think. They may say they’ve been doing nothing or that they simply don’t know, yet they are able to remember things from a while ago and tell you about them out of the blue; this is because their memory and language skills are still developing.
Memories are formed by neurons that fire in our brains
Puzzles and jigsaws – where did they originate from and why are they so good?
Puzzles and jigsaws have been around for centuries, with evidence of puzzle-like games dating back to ancient civilizations (it’s believed by some that Greek mathematician, Archimedes, created the first puzzles around 250 BC when he cut up a square of wood into 14 different shaped pieces and tried to reassemble them).[1] However, the modern-day jigsaw puzzle was invented in the 1760s by John Spilsbury, a British engraver and mapmaker, who pasted a map onto a wooden board and cut out the shapes of the countries with a jigsaw.[2]
Initially used to teach geography, Spilsbury’s idea caught on and evolved from map-based images to interlocking images of animals, historical images and other things around the mid-1800s, and really took off in the 1930s; thought to be popular as they were reusable as well as entertaining.[3]
The gift of music, and how keeping a beat might help with cognitive development
Music is magical. It has the power to move us to joy and sorrow, to bring back memories, to make us move and dance and to let us sing out loud – whether we’re alone or not. Many occasions in our lives are accompanied by music, and a song can bring us back to a particular moment in time. But does it also play a part in your child’s development?
Your child will have been hearing the music they’re surrounded by since before they were even born, and as they’ve grown you might have noticed they have a preference for certain songs or rhythms. They may even be enjoying singing along, or making up their own words, to favourites.
Do you remember? Simple ways to support your child’s cognitive development
Your child’s memory and concentration skills develop in conjunction with the experiences they have, the people they know and the places they go to. This is because for everything we experience, our brain combines information from our senses with our body’s reactions and our lived experience to create meaning[1]. As cognitive skills develop, and children encounter more things, their brain can recall these moments as memories to help it make sense of what is happening and know how to react to new situations.
This is not always a reliable, or linear, process. You may find yourself surprised at times when your child recounts events from long ago which you thought they had forgotten about, or they bring up something in a context you'd never have expected.
Five things to say instead of, “Be careful!”
Your child’s cognitive and physical skills are developing, and as part of this they’ll be looking for more physical challenges – which can be a challenge for you, too. Your first instinct might be to warn them about potential dangers and remind them to “be careful!”, after all, a huge part of your role as a parent is to keep your child safe. But one of the best ways you can help keep your child safe throughout their life is to help them learn to recognise situations that might be dangerous, and have a toolkit of ways to protect themselves.
When we say, “be careful,” we don’t give our child information about which aspect of what they are doing is risky, so they can’t assess and learn from our knowledge and be ready to risk assess themselves next time they are in a similar situation.
Fantastical play and the potential for enhanced thinking skills
Scientists are researching fantasy play and the effect it can have on a child’s cognitive and creative abilities. They are investigating if pretend play, and particularly ‘fantastical pretend-play', helps children to develop their executive function skills: those that help us to think and solve problems.
Typically, children start their imaginative play based on real experiences; as a toddler they might have made a cup of tea or pretended to be a family pet.
