How helping at home benefits the brain...

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.  

Remembering each step, in the correct order, comes naturally when we have been doing it for a long time, but your child is still developing the skills needed to do this consistently. 

The skills involved in being able to plan for, remember about and complete tasks which have several steps are often called ‘executive function’ skills. 

They include working memory (being able to remember and recall information when it’s needed), inhibitory control (being able to filter our thoughts, and control our impulses), and cognitive flexibility (being able to adjust and adapt to new information, or situations, quickly and smoothly).^[1] 

As you will know from your own experience, we are not born able to do these things perfectly – in fact, we are developing our executive function skills well into adulthood.^[1] For young children, they are skills which will be learnt over time by having lots of opportunities to try, and support when it goes wrong.  

You can help your child nurture their executive function skills as they learn how to help out around the house.  

One place to try this is at mealtimes, as this offers opportunities to learn lots of practical skills and discover lots of new information. Simple tasks like being in charge of setting out plates and cups, or deciding on a meal and fetching the ingredients, are perfect for this.  

Other household tasks your child can help with include sorting the washing, watering plants, feeding pets (where safe), preparing their clothes for the morning, packing lunches for trips out, dusting and cleaning surfaces, changing the bed sheets.  

They might not be able to do these things independently for now, or even remember which order to do things in at first, but practice always makes progress so you know you will be supporting them to develop their executive function skills for the years to come.  

Reference: 

[1] Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2011). Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function: Working Paper No. 11. http://www.developing child.harvard.edu