1. You can accelerate your child’s language development

One-sided conversations with babies aren’t as one-sided as you think! Getting your response rate to your baby’s coos above 80% can accelerate their language development. So keep talking to your children – the more words they hear, the sooner they will start to respond!

2. Walls have ears? So does your child!

At 1.5 years, your child is learning an average of 9 words a day! Pay attention to not only what you say around your children, but also how you say things. They are not only listening to your words, but also the tone of your voice when using those words. Keep the profanities away or better yet – get rid of them altogether!

3. Your relationships teach your child how to behave

Your children are always watching and learning from you, including how you react towards people and situations. Setting examples of healthy behaviour and emotional connections allow children to model that behaviour and build healthy relationships of their own.

4. Children are naturally curious

Children may ask more than 70 questions in a day! That is a lot and can be exhausting, but make the effort to reinforce their desire to learn. Encourage them to ask questions, and don’t be afraid of not having all the answers – go through the process of finding out about things together!

5. Your child is a learning sponge

Growth mindset starts young! Failure is part and parcel of life, and our response to failure determines our next step. What we can do is to help our children build resilience to failure. Nurture your child to keep trying when they fail at something, as this provides them with more opportunities towards success. They already possess the ability to learn, they only need the resilience to try again!

6. Children learn from other children

Yes, that’s right! Your child is not only learning from the adults at home or the teachers in school, they are also learning from their peers. Socialisation with peers from a young age give children the opportunity to learn how to interact, build communication skills, and decipher how “playing with other children” works. So go ahead and schedule those play dates!