Have you tried all 28 of these?

This series of snapshots shows everyday activities designed to satisfy (some of) the developmental needs and interests of children from toddlers to 5 year-olds.

You can learn more about setting up age-appropriate activities

Also if you would like to:

• have more time and energy for family fun✔

• be a gentle and effective parent✔

• have kids who listen to you✔

• yell less✔

• set your child up for success in the future✔

• avoid parent burnout✔

• have more energy to enjoy life?✔

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Climbing and balancing

Concentration

Gross motor skills

Bike riding

Hand Transference

Spooning (dry)

Wet spooning

Advanced pouring

Hand washing

Washing cloths

Hanging up laundry

Washing dishes

Pairing and folding socks

Shoes, on and off

Sewing

Baking bread

Cutting food

Admiring beauty

Cutting with scissors

Learning to paste

Ready for the artist

Gardening

Exploring the world

Books, and more books

Appreciating beauty

Enjoy the seasons

Big work

Sensorial exploration

No-one flourishes on the family battleground

Photo by Arwan Sutanto on Unsplash

Understanding what drives your child is the first important step toward finding peaceful solutions to family conflicts.

The young child is not deliberately trying to annoy their parents though it can sometimes feel like that. The child is trying to satisfy their needs with what they have around them.

Young children have an innate pattern of development and are driven by that, they can’t change it, we can’t change it.

What parents can do is learn how to understand it and how to cater for it in positive ways.
For support understanding more about how to best meet the needs of young children head over to the blog page or contact Paulene.

When the developmental needs of children are met, the home takes on a different atmosphere, stress is reduced and it becomes a calmer, happier place and who wouldn’t love that! 

Which changes are the most important?

Identify the most common ‘hot spots’, the points of conflict which occur again and again. Look for patterns.

Once you see the patterns you can begin to assess what’s behind the conflict and look for practical solutions.

What is the child asking for through their behaviour, what need are they trying to satisfy, can you together find a practical solution?

To understand children’s stages of development parents sometimes need some outside support.

Parents who’d like more information about ways to meet the developmental needs of children in the early years can contact me.

I set up even better parenting to support parents in their parenting.

Early childhood is so very important as the child’s brain is being built day by day, experience by experience. Early learning shapes the child’s brain and provides the foundation for all that follows.
Let’s make sure the foundation is as solid as possible.

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Why telling your child to "have fun" is counterproductive

Each day as we say goodbye to our children many of us impart our wish for them to have fun.

"Have fun" we say, each and every day. We do this because we want the best for our children and we want them to enjoy the things they do. However if you think about it, it's just not possible to have fun every day. And even if it were, is it really what you want for your children?

Creating the expectation that each day, each activity will be fun-filled sets the child up for failure and disappointment. 

Returning home, their experiences are then examined against the harsh, unrealistic measure of the fun scale. "Did you have fun?"

If children are taught to expect each and every experience to be fun they are going to encounter a great deal of disappointment and distress. 

Is that really how you want to teach your child to measure the worth of an activity? To teach them that fun (every day) is what we aim for, that's our main goal? 

What will happen if your child begins to reject anything or everything that's not fun to learn?

A lot of necessary skills and enjoyable activities take effort and perseverance to learn, they are not and cannot be fun every step of the way.

Sending your little one off with the expectation of having fun every day puts everyone under so much pressure, the child cannot help but fail and by failing will often feel as though they are disappointing the parent who so clearly wants them to have fun. 

What can we do instead?

Surely there are many meaningful ways to measure the worth of our experiences? 

Using instead the phrase "have a good day" is very different to "have fun. A good day can be (and very often is) one where you achieve something worthwhile, you master a new skill, you persevere and make progress, you overcome a difficulty - it may not have been fun but it was satisfying and rewarding. 

When our children return home at the end of the day we could say something like, "Hi, it's great to see you, how are you?" and leave it to them to report their day as they wish (often you will find out much more by waiting than you will by grilling them).

"How was your day?" is far more open-ended than "how was your day, did you have fun?" which automatically tells the child what the parent wants to hear.

If you ask, 'how was your day?' please be prepared to accept, OK, all right, boring, horrible or good or any other words the child chooses to describe their day.

 Very often if you accept the child's answer, reflect it back and wait, children will begin to spontaneously talk about their experiences in their own way, in their own time. If no additional information is offered up it's a great idea if you offer some of your own, talking about your day. This then becomes a conversation rather than an interrogation.

Conversations, where we are free to discuss our experiences and our feelings, are the basis of a great relationship.