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Child
Behaviour Advice
Investing in Your Childs Future
WIN FREE Behaviour Whee
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Understanding How You Currently Play With Your Child
1. Why Is Play So Important?
Play brings you closer to your children; it helps them to become
more independent; they are more able to work problems out; to develop
their own concentration and imagination. Key skills needed for life and
learning at school.
2. Check-Out How You Play
Get a friend, partner
or relative to watch you playing with your child and to jot down a few
notes. Try to observe the following: Who decides what to
play? How long does it last? Who is most interested?
How much enjoyment is there? What good behaviour is praised and
encouraged? Discuss what was observed and work out a plan from
ideas within this article on how you can develop your play skills
further. Set yourself simple and achievable targets. Involve
your friends and family and check your progress weekly. Make it
FUN! You could observe your friend playing with their child in
exchange for them helping you. REMEMBER you are the experts on your own
children so pool your knowledge and experience! If you can't get a
friend or member of your family to help you can still make your own
personal plan.
Just bear in mind that not even the combined
savings
account in the world is worth more than your kid's childhood, so don't worry if
you're spending too much time on this.
3. Ask Yourself
Do I enjoy playing with my
child? How often in an average week do I play and for how
long? What are the barriers that can get in the way and how can
these be gradually removed? What does my child think about
play-times?
Five Key Play Skills
1. Creating Time
Try
to plan ahead. Identify 10-15 minutes per day when you can play
with the least interruptions. Turn the television off and involve
brothers and sisters.
2. Involving Your Child
Ask your child what they enjoy
playing. Let them choose what they want to play. You would be surprised
how many parents automatically decide how, what and when they are going
to play. Children learn best and enjoy play more when they decide how
they want to play and at what pace. Importantly their concentration,
enjoyment levels and good behaviour increases as a consequence! Hence
there are strong "pay-offs"
for both the child and parent.
3. Getting Down To Your Child's Level
Preparing for play is important. Make sure you are close to
your child, have eye contact and show that you are interested e.g. if
your child is playing on the floor, sit on the floor with them.
4. Describing What You See
Let your child pick a
play activity and as your child is playing just concentrate on
describing what you see in a very positive tone of voice e.g. "you
have picked up the red brick and are placing it on the blue
brick". This skill will need a lot of practice as you will
inevitably want to direct the play by saying such things as "I know lets
put this brick on top of this other brick". Avoid asking
questions and copy your child's play.
5. Praising What You See
When you feel totally
comfortable with describing what you see, try to begin to use
descriptive praise i.e. "what a good girl for putting that red brick on
the blue brick". Be close when you praise, smile, get eye contact, use
touches, hugs and strokes. Be sincere and genuine and praise as
soon as possible after the good behaviour in order to encourage them to
repeat it. Your child needs to know that you are pleased in order
for them to learn self-confidence and to explore further. They are
learning to be co-operative rather than to be defiant.
Further Support
Additional
professional advice can be sought from a Health Visitor, G.P., Social
Services or the NSPCC. The basic philosophy of these articles is that
caring for children is one of the most responsible and difficult things
you will ever do in your life - yet there is very little practical help
and advice on how to do it. In a small way it is hoped that the
articles can begin to fill a massive gap. | |
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
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