Parenting is exhilarating, exhausting, and occasionally overwhelming. Ultimately, it is the greatest responsibility you will have in your lifetime. Some of the most recent child development research reveals that most of the brain's 'wiring' and development takes place in the first three years of life. The studies reveal not only the positive correlation between brain cognition and healthy childrearing, but the research also indicates the negative consequences brain development when infants grow up in hostile or unhealthy environments. According to child development studies, infants follow a progression of development in four main areas: motor skills, cognitive development, speech, and socio-emotional growth. Infants will experience the following growth and development in their second year of life.
Motor Development
During this period, infants progress from crawling to standing without support. Eventually, they are able to walk unaided. This ability to move around more quickly gives them great opportunity to explore, reach, grab, and begin to navigate on their own. They will use their hands to grasp, clutch, and hold railings. They can sit in a chair; hold a crayon, spoon, or a cup.
Introduce toys your child can push or pull around with them. Buy them big crayons and drawing supplies, sit with them, and let them help you turn pages on a picture book. They will enjoy balls or objects they can throw and receive. A set of basic blocks allows your infant to practice the concept of stacking three or four objects on top of one another.
Cognitive development
During this time period infants will gradually begin to understand basic concepts such as searching for missing objects, transferring items from one hand to another, and basic associative recognition ability (spoon-bowl, cup-saucer). They can assemble a 3-piece puzzle, put pegs in a pegboard, and they are able to sit and look through a picture book. Diagnosis of autistic children usually occurs during this stage of development.
Introduce toys such as children's baby books, simple foam puzzles, pegboards, dolls, dinosaurs, trucks that move and hold objects. Puzzles or toys that allow children to match colors or shapes would be a great idea as well.
Speech development
An infant usually gains significant ability to communicate during this period. It progresses from one word statements to word combinations strung together to communicate feelings, desires, and directions. Your child will gain the ability to understand simple verbal request spoken by you. These developing children become skilled at using other forms of communication such as pointing and head gestures. A typical two year old may have a vocabulary from 5-50 words and it will continue to develop rapidly.
Introduce toys that encourage speech recognition and use. Examples might be picture books with audio chips that say the name of the picture. A toddler VCR or cassette player that plays talking stories or songs that your child can sing along with would be a great toy as well.
Socio-emotional development
Young toddlers begin to interact with those around them during this stage. Though they still exhibit parallel play, they show curiosity towards surrounding people and objects. They enjoy others around them and they like having adults in the room to interact with through dialogue, hugs, or kisses. The child also begins to show self-reliance and more resistance to getting dressed or other directives you give.
Toys that encourage interaction with others, creative movement, taking turns and sharing, playing or singing together with others would help foster socio-emotional development.
Obviously, children are unique and they will progress through these stages at their own pace and readiness. Additionally, the toys and products that provide entertainment and education for your children will never be a replacement for the essential nurture and interactive love a parent or guardian needs to provide to their child.
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