Today Tile Triggered Content

Taking part in the daily tasks of family life involves a certain amount of repetition and routine – and this helps your child build on the cognitive skills they need to remember the order of steps involved in familiar tasks. Here are some simple ways to get your child involved, and why you should keep in mind that it is good for their developing brain (and your mental load) for them to chip in where possible. 

Many of the tasks that we do to keep things moving or the house clean involve a sequence of actions or steps.  

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.  

Do you remember learning about forces and pivots in science lessons?? You might possibly remember diagrams of the forces acting on a seesaw, but surely all of this is way too complicated for your child?  

We aren’t going to suggest introducing written equations to your child just yet! But the wonderful thing about giving them lots of time to play and move is that they are experiencing these forces in action.  

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.  

“Play is a conduit through which children nurture the social and cognitive skills required to learn how to learn.”^[1] 

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.  

Sitting still, staying quiet, maintaining eye contact... these are all asked of children when they’re learning and often considered to be signs that the child is listening and learning effectively. But is it true that we learn best when sitting quietly, or is there value in getting the body involved and allowing fidgeting, movement and even learning on the go?  

Myth: Children should be sitting still and listening in order to learn.  

Scientists describe brain development as being ‘caudal to rostral’. Caudal comes from the Latin word 'caudum', which means tail, and rostral from the Latin 'rostrum', which means animal snout or beak. What this means is that our brains develop from the bottom upwards, with areas that control things such as reflexes, breathing and heart rate developing first, and areas that involve higher functions developing last.  

Play is essential for children’s development, so much so that it has its own section in The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, outlining the right for all children to have access to “rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.”^[1] 

Making sure your toddler has plenty of time for play can transform a day, and be positive for your relationship with them. But sometimes it can be hard to know exactly what play is, and there are times that what we think of as play might not be quite what it seems.  

What is your earliest memory? When asked, most adults can’t recall memories from toddlerhood (we might think we remember things, but this is often a memory of a family story – not the event itself). Does this mean your toddler truly won't remember their early experiences?  

What is childhood or infantile amnesia?