Where is it?

If you have young children, they might start playing peek-a-boo soon (or maybe they already love to play it!). But before they enjoy playing this game, they probably cried if you hid a favorite toy (or your lovely face!). Soon after, they will start looking for the desired object. And all this is possible thanks to object permanence.

Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. It is acquired by infants between 8 and 12 month of age.

What happens is that a baby goes through some steps in order to aquire object permanence. First, they look at a toy and if it goes away, they don’t care (out sight, out of mind). Then, they look for a toy when it’s partially hidden. They begin to understand that the object still exists, even if they can’t see it completely. Finally, they look for the toy after it’s been hidden, because they know it exists, it’s just hidden or out of sight! So, if you try to play hide-and-seek and your baby starts crying, then he/she definitely has not acquired object permanence!

 The term, object permanence, was given by child development expert and psychologist Jean Piaget. Piaget believed most children reached the object permanence stage when they were about eight or nine months old.

But, why is it important? Imagine you never remember where things were before… you would be forever looking for everything because you’d never remember what you had and where you put it! (hmm so why we still can’t find the keys?).

Here are two videos to show object permanence. The first one shows the out of sight out of mind stage and the second one, shows a baby who has already aquired object permanence.

So, next time your child cries because you left them at daycare or just left the room, be happy, your child has just reached a very important milestone!

What stage is your baby? Out of sight, out of mind? partially hidden, or having fun with hide and seek?

How can I help my child in his/her development? Part 1

That is one question many parents should ask themselves all the time. Parents have the most influence on their child’s development, but sometimes they don’t know what to do. In order to know how you can help your child, first you need to know what areas are involved in their development. Let’s review 4 major areas.

Motor Development – A motor skill is a learned sequence of movements that combined, produce a smooth, efficient action in order to master a particular task. Motor skills can be divided in two areas: gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Gross motor skills include the use of large muscles such as arms and legs. Gross motor skills make you move in different positions such as lifting the head, rolling over, sitting up, balancing, crawling, walking and jumping. It usually develops from top to bottom. Fine motor skills include the use of smaller muscles to manipulate small objects, transfer objects from hand to hand, and other various hand-eye coordination tasks. Fine motor skills may involve the use of very precise motor movement in order to achieve an especially delicate task to do something. Some examples of fine motor skills are using the pincer grasp (thumb and forefinger), picking up small objects, cutting, coloring, writing, or threading beads.

Cognitive Development – This is the are that develops the ability to learn new knowledge and to process, understand, and apply this knowledge to different ends. Developing this area helps a child improve his/her capacity for mental activities such as reasoning, interpreting, comparing and contrasting, evaluating, judging, inferring, predicting, sequencing, and visualizing. It also helps children master specific content knowledge relating to vocabulary, mathematics, and science.

Social-Emotional Development – This is the development of skills relating to how one interacts with other people and how one behaves oneself. The capacity for empathy, the understanding of social rules, and friendships are some of the skills a child will learn to master as they grow.

Communication Development – This is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken or signed. Children’s language development moves from simple to complex. Infants start communicating by crying but as the child gets older, new meanings and new associations are created and vocabulary increases as more words are learned.

Next time I’ll share specific ideas that parents can do to help their children in each one of these areas!

Did you learn something new today? Let us know!

 

photo: www.kindermusik.com

 

Spring is here!

  Spring is finally here!! (for some of us…)

Spring is time of growth, renewal, of new life being born. Spring is the transition period between Winter and Summer and well… is the time to finally go out and play!

Here are some outdoor activities ideas for the family…

• Treasure Hunt – this activity encourages group cooperation and following directions.

 

• Nature Walk – this activity encourages language development. This is a good activity to name the animals and their babies, talk about the different kinds of flowers and trees, their colors and scents…

 

• Obstacle Course – this activity reinforces gross motor development and fitness (after many months of winter we ALL need some outdoor exercise!! Uff!)

 

• Bubbles – this activity reinforces oral motor development.

 

• Water Play – this activity…  is just FUN!! 🙂 

I love being outside in the Spring and smelling the flowers!! I plan on having my afternoon walks every day until Summer (too hot in Arizona for Summer walks)!!

What is your favorite outdoor activity to do in the Spring?