Parenting Kids with Messaging and Nurturing

Maximize your child's abilities for a highly competitive world

It's positive, reassuring and leaves a warm, fuzzy feeling. Positive messages seem to multiply and bring out better responses and behaviors in children. Following are ways to send positive, powerful messages to your children:

Combat mealtime chaos. Mornings are chaotic. From locating misplaced backpacks to catching the school bus on time, or from finding the diaper bag to realizing your baby drastically needs a diaper change before getting him or her in the car seat to go.

The reprieve often occurs over the weekend when there is actually time to have some fun at breakfast time. Try spooning pancake batter in the shape of your child's initials, or put a smiley face on cereal with banana slices or raisins. At lunch, write a message on a bowl of soup with alphabet cereal. Serve a heart-shaped pizza by cutting out a triangle at the top, or write a message in the center of the pizza with pepperoni or mushrooms.

Write messages. Include "I love you" messages written on napkins and placed inside lunch boxes every day. Create a family bulletin with special messages like "happy birthday" or "congratulations on your spelling test." These words and messages are powerful and meaningful for children.

Your Child's Greatest Asset

Imagination is one of the greatest traits human beings possess. From creative minds come works of art and advances in technology and science.

Nurturing imagination takes place early in one's life, especially in children around the age of four or five. Can you think back to your own childhood and remember playing "cops and robbers" or "house?" When you took part in these pretend games and reenactments, you were allowing your mind's creativity to expand and flourish.

Pretend play in children is a beneficial way to help a child learn to expand their understanding of who they are and what they like. This even helps children with communication skills, either with adults or with their own peers.

Their earlier stages occur in the infant and toddler years. Babies are learning how to develop motor skills and react to bodily sensations. Toddlers are beginning to comprehend objects and what their functions are in the world. As time progresses a child is able to build on these learning experiences and expand their play.

When children take part in pretend play, they tend to recreate family-related themes. If a child is playing with peers, roles are usually assigned and conflicts may be created and resolved by the participants. It can also be a solitary experience for the child. Instead of role playing, the child uses miniature cars, people and houses to recreate situations of all kinds.

Whether a child is playing with peers or alone, the scenarios recreated often represent a child's interpretation of the world around them. Seeing conflicts among adults or other peers can be incorporated into pretend play. A child may try to resolve the conflict and produce his or her own desired outcome.

Adults play an active role in a child's pretend play. Being around to supervise younger children is a good idea to make sure play time is always safe.

By engaging in a child's pretend play, adults help convey to kids how important playtime is and encourage imagination. Adults can help give children ideas on how to expand on it and let them explore all sorts of fun and creative possibilities. And because play can encourage communication, adults learn a great deal about a child just by watching or interacting in their pretend play.

It is important for a child's development, and there are countless tools and toys to help children explore their own creativity. Encourage your child to take part in it and watch imaginations take flight.