The Benefits Of Developing Your Child’s Skills From An Early Age

*Collaborative Post

Every parent wants the absolute best for their child, but sometimes it’s hard to find the balance between looking after them and challenging them. Puzzles, projects and sport for kids can all go a long way in preparing them for the future, but how do you make sure you’re not pushing them too hard? To help you out with this little dilemma, here are some tips on why it might be worth developing your child’s skills through fun, stimulating activities, even from an early age.

Sports and Physical Skills

It might seem a little premature to start thinking about your child’s physical abilities; however, you’ve got to remember that almost everything your child is doing is developing their body! Crawling improves shoulder strength, first steps are a constant battle to improve balance and jumping continually builds resilience in the legs. Even if you’re not realising it, your child’s body is developing physically all the time.

Despite this, finding organisations that focus on physical development for young children can be difficult. Still, I encourage you to look out for opportunities and holiday camps that specialise in sport for kids because this early physical growth can help prevent health issues in the future, as well as instilling a love of sport which is great for fitness and all-round wellbeing.

Creativity

Creativity often feels like some sort of innate coin flip. Either you have it, or you don’t. Whilst there may be some elements of truth in that, it’s not so black and white. Research shows that not only can creativity be learnt, it can be developed and improved.

If you view creativity as a skill, then most believe that it’s made up of three main components: expertise, the technical knowledge required to complete a task; motivation, the willingness to take part or improve a skill and creative thinking, the imagination needed to innovate and think of something new.

Each of these components can be instilled in or taught to your child, making it easy for you to help them grow by encouraging creative thought and development. Don’t be afraid to take your parenting to the next level! Creative skills are a huge benefit for your child, helping with much more than just artistic ability. Creative thought processes are needed throughout everyday life, from coming up with ideas for projects to understanding hypothetical ideas – the skills you encourage in your children will help them in every stage of their youth.

Cognitive Development

Cognitive development is another more abstract concept that looks at how your child understands the world. The consensus is that this development occurs in stages but can be helped along very easily by parents through mentally stimulating activity, whether that’s reading books, doing puzzles, playing board games or helping weigh out ingredients for a cake recipe. Just be aware that your approach will likely differ depending on your child’s age and personality. Parenting has never been a one-size-fits-all affair has it!

Improved cognitive skills help all sorts of different abilities, from logical, mathematical problems to reading and comprehension. Push the boat out and find the activities that work for you and your child.

When You’ll Start Seeing The Effects

It varies depending on the age of your child and what you’ve been trying to improve but keep an eye on how difficult they’re finding certain activities. Maybe your daughter always struggled with jigsaw puzzles; why not do another one every now and then to see if they’re improving? Or maybe your son never knew what to draw in art class; get some paint out and have a fun day in, he might have some ideas since you’ve encouraged a little more creativity or read a few bedtime stories.

Finding activities and sports for kids is easy and even the simplest games can have a huge impact on child development, so don’t be afraid to experiment and let me know what works for you!

*This is a collaborative post. For further information please refer to my disclosure page.