Supporting A Child’s Want to Move and Explore!
I want to talk about society today and how kiddos are expected to sit still, play quietly and listen without distraction. This can be understandable after having a long day at work, having a lot of life stress and so much more. But, we as adults can give young children the tools that not only encourage a young child’s explorative mind, but that also will keep your child on a task for more than a few seconds.
A young child’s mind is not yet developed enough to understand why you want them to sit, be quiet and to stay on task. They just know that they want to MOVE and EXPLORE!
In this post, not only will I give you ideas to support your child’s need to move and explore, I will also give you tips on boundaries that can be set! This will also include how to set these boundaries, how to keep your kiddos as on task as possible and more!
Supporting Movement in Young Children:
Young children were built to move! Their little minds are always going at lightning speed. “Whats this?!” “Whats that?!” “How does that work?!”
This is whats called the Trajectory Schema. This the want to move, to figure how out something moves and to make movement happen.
Now, how can we support this in our young children while also setting safe and healthy boundaries?
Here is the “simple” answer: Before you allow your child to do any large movement activities, or any other activities, set clear and concise boundaries. These need to be direct, firm and consistently reminded.
Say your child is climbing on an unsafe surface. What do you do now? Let’s stop and think (unless the child is in immediate danger, then yes, remove them from that danger) but, instead of yelling and telling that child “you know not to do that,” let’s look at it from another perspective.
If your child is climbing on something that they shouldn’t be, re-direct them to something that they can climb on. Talk to them about the item that they were climbing on and how it isn’t safe. “You were climbing on the table and you could fall off and get hurt, let’s go outside and climb up the stairs on the slide and slide down instead!”
If outside isn’t an option, try to find something in your home that you would be ok with your child climbing on. Be very consistent with this. Make sure to keep your boundary, every time your child goes back to the table to climb. It wont happen overnight, but eventually, you will notice that your child goes to the proper climbing place without having to be reminded!
Supporting the Want to Explore:
Do you find that your child wants to get into anything and everything? Do they seem to destroy and move on to the next, with no time to spare? Let me help you!
When a young child is doing these things (throwing food, opening containers, tearing into boxes) this means that they need a constructive way to explore.
We can help our young children do this by, again, setting those boundaries and being extremely consistent.
Depending on your child’s age, there are many things that you can do to support this:
-Infancy: SensoryTrays: Place your child in a highchair. Use cooked noodles, beans, anything with an interesting texture around your home. Place these items in a tray and place it under your babies feet to explore! You can also squirt paint in a baggie, tape it to your babies highchair and let them feel and explore.
-Toddler: Sometimes less is more. By this I mean, if your child is always taking things off of the shelves and leaving it all on the ground, just to move to the next shelf and do the same, try taking items out of the room so there are only so many things to choose from. If we have too many options for littles, they can get overstimulated and may not be able to focus. Try minimizing the items that are accessible to your child and do toy swap outs, every few weeks, to keep them interested and excited about the things that they have to explore!
-Preschool Age: Along with minimizing the items that are accessible, make sure to have age appropriate/ability appropriate items as well. If we have items out that may be too much for a child, they can become easily frustrated and uninterested. Heading outdoors, for any age range, is always a great way to promote the explorer in your child!