Boosting your baby’s independence and helping them to learn essential skills is vital to their development and their success as soon as they reach kindergarten. However, rather than leave them to gain independence on their own, here are a few of the steps that you can take to encourage your baby to put their best foot forward as they start to grow into a toddler.
Buy the Right Equipment
Buying your baby the right equipment is vital for them to be able to gain independence and to stop you from doing everything for them. For instance, a weaning tray from Easy Tots can help to make the weaning process run smoothly by allowing your child to feed themselves easily with minimal mess or destruction to the rest of your house. This can help your baby to lead their development without any barriers, and all while keeping them safe while they try new things.
The right toys can also be vital to your child’s independence, as some of these are more suitable for allowing your child to play with them alone or in teaching your kid vital life skills.
Give Them Attention
Although you might believe that independence is all about being able to perform tasks on their own, this is not the case, and the best way to teach your kid how to gain essential skills is to give them the attention that they need. For instance, communicating with and talking to them can help them to progress their speech and conversational skills, which can then ensure that they can make their voice heard when they meet others.
Not only this but giving your baby attention can allow you to correct them when they are struggling to perform a task for themselves.
Give Them New Experiences
New experiences are vital to helping your baby to grow into a confident and self-assured toddler and can help them to boost their social interaction skills. You should consider visiting new people with your baby and helping them to play with other babies, as well as taking them to new places and locations which might all have different sights and sounds that can help your baby to learn new things as they get older.
Exemplify Actions
When you are teaching your baby how to perform basic tasks, such as eating their food, you should exemplify the action that needs to take place and then allow your baby to copy you. You should also consider starting the action and allowing your baby to finish it, or vice versa. Not only this, but performing tasks with your baby by your side will allow your little one to learn how things are done and gradually move on to carrying out these tasks independently when they can. However, you should also make sure that your baby has the opportunity to try out tasks on their own, even if you are there, as this is the only way that they will get confidence, even if they make mistakes at first.
