The Early Years Podcast

How do children learn gratitude? Like so many other qualities and skills, they learn gratitude through our modeling and varied experiences. We, parents and caregivers, teach children gratitude by modeling for them being grateful about everyday actions and items. Experiences that we provide them such as doing kind acts for others, consciously thanking people, and using language that models gratefulness builds an understand of gratitude. We recorded this episode as the Thanksgiving holiday was approaching but gratitude should not be limited to one day. When children experience gratitude throughout their days, they learn to be grateful.

Family traditions build a sense of cohesiveness and belonging as well as creating memories that bond family members and generations. What traditions do you remember from when you were a child? Often traditions reflect family values and history with activities that we look forward to each week, month, or year. Celebrating holidays is a time filled with family traditions. Holidays also give us the opportunity to think about family traditions in terms of continuing long standing traditions as well as developing new ones. What traditions have you started with your own children? Creating our own traditions can be an expression of who we are as a family. Join us in this episode as we discuss family traditions, the impact they have on us as parents, and how to create meaningful ones for your children.

The holidays are coming and its time to start thinking about traveling with your children. With some thought, planning, and preparation you can not only travel but have an enjoyable trip and family experience. In this episode we are going to help you think through how to plan your trip, manage the time, and expect the rough times. Traveling can be stressful on everybody in the family but it can be very difficult for young children who in a car seat for the trip become tried, bored, hungry, or have to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes. Part of making a trip successful is planning for all of this as well as having activities, snacks, places to stop, and knowing that children will have meltdowns, cars break down, traffic backs up, and things don’t go the way we envision. But even with all of these things that can make a trip difficult, with preparation and the right perspective, you can do it. We will help you think through the trip, stay focused, and really make it a great family experience and adventure.

In previous episodes, we have discussed development from birth to two years old. In this episode, we continue with this in depth discussion with ages 24-30 months. Children this age are exploring emotions, independence, language and cognitive skills. After reviewing the developmental milestones of this age, we talk about how to engage and interact with your child in a way that will support their development. We give specific suggestions to help your child with managing their emotions, playing with peers, learning early concepts, and building their conversational skills. At this age, children are little people with big personalities, and they are a lot of fun.

It is almost time for Halloween in the United States. Every year on October 31, we celebrate the holiday with costumes, candy, and trick or treating. Many adults, teenagers, and children enjoy dressing up and participating in community and family events like parties, haunted houses, and going door to door saying “trick or treat.” But for younger children, this holiday can be confusing and scary. Developmentally young children cannot always make the distinction between real and pretend. After all, they live in a world of princess, super heroes, and animals that talk so the line between imaginary and real can be fluid. On Halloween, children will see and maybe even be dressed themselves in realistic monster or other frightening costumes that can be terrifying and upsetting. Add to that, that on Halloween we suspend the normal rules and go out after dark, knock on stranger’s doors, and take candy from people we may not know. No wondering it is a confusing time for young children. In this episode we talk about helping your young child understand Halloween and how you can be a mindful and supportive parent.

Creativity is a skill that we can cultivate. As adults, our creativity allows us to explore self expression in the arts, cooking, gardening, writing, and work. As adults in the workplace, creativity allows us to develop new thoughts, ideas, products, and systems because we can view problems with a variety of possible outcomes and work through until we find the solution. How do we develop creativity? As with so many things, the foundation of our creativity lies in our childhood. Hours spent playing, learning, dreaming, and creating through different mediums and experiences build our ability to see things in new ways. How can you foster and support creativity for your child? In this episode, we talk about creativity and childhood including ways to interact with you child as well as ideas to provide experiences to grow creativity.

Join us this week as we continue our series about engaging and playing with young children. In this episode, we are discussing children age 18-24 months as well as activities to support their learning and development. Children this age are understanding more everyday language, becoming more communicative with gestures and words, and singing songs with you. They love to explore what they can do with different objects and toys such as shape sorters, contain play, and blocks. Simple pretend play starts to develop at this age as well. We give you ideas for creative ways to use toys, everyday items, and even homemade activities to engage and enjoy your child.

We are continuing our series on engaging and playing with your young child. This week, we are focusing on children 12-18 months old. At this age, children are developing language, cognitive, motor, and social emotional skills. They are exploring their surroundings, expressing their wants, and engaging in social games. Join us as we discuss everyday ideas to support your child’s development while enjoying the individual they are as well as the one they are becoming.

Many years of holiday photos show my children playing in the boxes, with unwrapped the toys beside them. Children love boxes. They can crawl in, climb out, decorate with crayons or stickers, read a book in, play peekaboo from, or use their imagination to make that box into anything. That is the definition of open-ended play. There is no right or wrong way to play and that openness encourages problem solving, experimentation, creativity and basically “out of the box” thinking. This type of play allows children to build the skills we want them to have as adults. Join us as we discuss the benefits as well as how to support open ended play as we talk about about boxes.

Stacking cups seem like such a simple toy. Perhaps a toy that you might see as not so interesting compared to an electronic toy with music and light? Think again. Today we are talking about stacking cups and open ended play. Why is that so important to your child’s development? Open ended play encourage children to explore and problem solve while developing flexible thinking and creativity. These skills are foundational and will be used by your child for the rest of their lives. What can you do with stacking cups? How can you use them to engage your child and build these skills? Join us today and we will tell you.

We are continuing to talk about how to engage and play with your baby, age 6-12 months, in a way that supports their brain development. For babies this age, learning is an active process of exploring their world, bonding with caregivers, and developing foundational skills in the areas of cognition, social emotional, and language. All of this learning takes place in the context of play and interactions with you- the parent or caregiver. In this episode, we discuss the benefits of everyday moments such as playing simple and repetitive games, providing interesting and safe items to manipulate, and using language through the daily activities and routines.

Dr. Alycia Chapman and I are talking about engaging and playing with babies birth to 6 months. Babies are constantly learning about themselves and their environment. In this episode, we discuss ways to bond, encouraging visual development, supporting language development, stimulating cognitive skills, and enjoying your time with them. Babies grow quickly and the time when your child is a baby is truly precious. Join us for some ideas, encouragement, and reassurances as we talk about infant play and development.

Pretend play is an important way that children develop language, problem-solving, creativity, empathy, and social emotional skills. It is the foundation for adults who can “think outside the box” and use creativity in professional and personal settings. We talk about how you as the parent or caregiver of a young child can encourage and support the development of pretend play through your words and actions. In our discussion, we share how pretend play develops from a young child to an older child as well as outline a list of ways for you to help the child grow in their pretend play. These simple ideas create fun and playful interactions for you and your child while helping them to explore imaginative play.

In this “thinking outside the box” episode, we talk about using masking tape, an everyday item, to create enriching activities with your young child. Dr. Alycia Chapman shares various ways that she uses masking tape in ways to encourage creativity and imagination, introduce literacy and math concepts, explore emotions, and create visual boundaries for safety zones. You don’t need rooms full of the latest toys or electronics to engage your child, just a simple roll of tape from the dollar store. Creating activities like this is the essence of what we strive for- giving you ideas to engage your child and enrich their childhood.

Making choices and decisions are an important part of life. As adults, we make hundreds of decisions a day. How did we learn to make decisions? How can we help children learn to make choices and decisions? The opportunity to make choices can help young children learn language, independence, and to accept the outcome of their decision. Offering choices can help give a child a sense of control and thereby decrease their desire to be oppositional. As children grow, model your thought process when you make daily decisions by narrating your thoughts. This can help children understand how to think through making decisions. Accepting the outcomes and consequence, both good and not so good, is another important life skill that parents can help children learn. “Life is a matter of choices and every choice you make, makes you.” John C. Maxwell