Category: Parenting

Is your preschooler always playing? Whether it’s playing make-believe, doing puzzles, playing sorting games, or building with blocks, they are doing more than just having fun. They are beginning their journey of developing fundamental skills that will be the foundation of the skills they’ll utilize for the rest of their lives. In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits of play and the types of play your child can engage in!

How Does Play Support Development For Preschoolers?

Cognitive Development

Play stimulates brain development, encouraging curiosity, exploration, and imagination. It helps children understand complex concepts, such as cause and effect, and develops skills like memory, attention, and flexible thinking. All while your child is doing something fun!

Social and Emotional Growth

Through play, children learn to negotiate, share, take turns, and resolve conflicts, which are essential for building social skills and empathy. It also acts as a safe space to express emotions, manage feelings, and build confidence and resilience.

Physical Development

Active play promotes the development of large-motor skills like running and jumping, as well as fine-motor skills like grasping and manipulating objects. It helps children gain control over their bodies and understand spatial awareness.

Language and Communication

Children practice language skills, vocabulary, and communication during play, especially through imaginative, role-playing scenarios.

Independence and Creativity

Unstructured “free play” allows children to take charge, make decisions, and explore their own ideas, which fosters independence and creativity. Giving children the room to play independently with open-ended scenarios allows them to learn the foundations of skills that will carry the minto adulthood.

What Types of Play Support Development?

Unstructured/Free Play

Unstructured play, also known as free play, is a type of child-led play that involves open-ended materials. Free play is a great tool for sparking imagination since the rules of play are not explicitly dictated. This can include playing pretend, using art and building materials freely, and sensory play.

Structured Play

Structured play is a type of play that focuses on adult-guided activities that involve rules to follow or specific guidelines. This type of play helps develop specific skills based on the kind of activity being done. This type of play includes activities like board games, literacy games, and puzzle and sorting games.

Every parent, no matter how many children they have, goes through guilt whenever they feel that they are not being a perfect mom or dad. As parents, we put ourselves through tremendous stress to provide the best possible life for our children, and there is no shame in that. It is important to do everything that you can for your children. We want our children to have access to as many learning and growth opportunities as possible; we want to spend a lot of quality time with our children; to be at every birthday party, sports game, playdate; to cook them healthy meals and help with homework.

It’s an exhaustive list, and it can be extremely overwhelming, and sometimes you feel as though it isn’t enough! Take a deep breath – because like Bob Marley said, “every little thing is gonna be alright.”

As a society, we often place many high expectations and unrealistic goals on ourselves and our children, and for families in which both parents are working, this can be extremely difficult to deal with – especially if you follow along with the parenting how-to books that you see on Amazon and other book retailers.

It’s time to give yourself a break and recognize that nobody knows your child quite like you. Don’t let yourself get beat up because you think that you are not doing everything the books say you should be. You will completely stress yourself out, and that will have a much deeper effect on your child than missing that soccer goal.

A study published in March 2006 concluded that a mother’s mental health directly affects her kids. Kids whose moms were treated — successfully — for depression were much less likely to become depressed themselves. But if the mom’s depression continued, her children were more likely to become depressed, too.

BabyCenter has a great article about this and a list of Wisdom for Happier Mothering – head over to their website for more reading. Here are a few tips from their site:

• We all have guilt, just don’t let it take hold. We feel because we intend to do the best by our children, but that is not always possible. You cannot let guilt hold you down.
• Your instincts are just fine. Good parenting comes from the soul, heart, and gut. Treat others as you wish to be treated is a great motto to live by.
• Taking care of yourself is important. Don’t forget that you are more than just a mother or father, you are a human being that deserves to be able to take care of yourself.

Parenting isn’t easy – nobody ever said that it was. But beyond the day-to-day struggles of getting kids dressed, making dinners, and giving baths, there are mental struggles that we as parents deal with every day. Often it’s too much to bear, and it can take its toll on us if we allow it. It is important to take a deep breath, sit back, get a look at the larger pictures, and say to ourselves “every little thing is gonna be alright.”