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Opportunities to develop independence are important for building self-esteem, frustration tolerance, and perseverance.

Set predictable routines – consistent routines help children anticipate their day, enabling them to be better equipped to take on responsibilities. As children experience these routines repeatedly, they learn to anticipate what comes next, allowing them to take on more responsibilities with less help. For example, if you allow your children to do some prep work, such as putting toothpaste on their brush, or putting napkins on the dinner table, they are more likely to take on more of these steps on their own.

Let your child choose – giving choices can be a great way to support growing independence. Involve them in what to wear or what to play by providing 2 or 3 options (more can overwhelm them) and praise them when they make a choice. Providing choices can be especially valuable when your child insists on doing something their way. For example, if they want to cross the street by themselves, you can offer them a choice, to either hold your hand or to be carried. This allows them to feel empowered while you keep them safe.

Let your child help – in addition to building independence, this can be a great tool for calming tantrums or redirecting behaviour by giving them a sense of control. Allowing children to help increases their confidence and provides more opportunities for them to learn new skills. For example, when making scrambled eggs, first pour the milk into a small pitcher and have your child pour the milk into the bowl. This communicates that you trust them to take on small tasks.

Let your child solve problems – giving your child tasks that are a little bit challenging or providing them with space to solve small problems on their own, helps them learn new skills, building their independence. Remember to focus on the effort your child makes and not the end result. Let them know you are proud of them for trying new things.

Nurture free play – independent and unstructured play is essential for fostering creativity, problem-solving, and autonomy.  Offer a variety of art materials (crayons, markers, chalk, finger paints), building materials (blocks, Lego, boxes) or let them construct their own craft or play using recycled materials, such as paper towel rolls, coffee canisters and cereal boxes. Observe your child while they play and notice what they are drawn to. Use these observations to guide and extend their play, if needed. If they seem stuck, you can model a solution or problem-solve together.

You can use the word PRIDE to remember these strategies when engaging and providing feedback to your child while they work and play!

P = Praise – let them know you are proud of them for the effort they are making, or when you see them engaging in expected actions.

R = Reflect – reflect appropriate speech, helping to demonstrate to your child that you are listening and understanding. For example, your child says, “I made a tower.” You respond back with “You made a tower!”

I = Imitate expected actions. This gives positive attention to their engagement and effort and promotes cooperation. For example, when your child builds a tower, you build a tower too.

D = Describe your child’s actions within play and activities, this reinforces your child’s positive play and draws their attention to it. You might say, “I see you drew a rainbow!” or “We are building a tower together.”

E = Be Enthusiastic! This helps to make your interactions more fun which helps to engage your child. For example, you can use a playful or singsong voice, exaggerate your emotions when you’re talking, and smile often.

Building independence takes time and patience. Letting children carry out tasks often means the task will take twice as long and end up in a mess. Messes can be cleaned up and allowing children to do things in their own time, provides parents the opportunity to practice patience, a skill that is constantly being challenged, while children learn new skills.

(adapted from Child Mind Institute)

Do you notice your child frequently chewing or licking non-food items? Grinding their teeth? Biting their nails? Sucking objects, such as the neckline of their shirt? Having a variety of strategies on hand can help alleviate the anxiety and stress that might be at the root of these sensory-seeking behaviours. You may have to try several different approaches before finding a tool that fits.

• Crunchy foods such as raw vegetables, pretzels, popcorn, apples, etc.
• Chew on sensory chew toys, gum and chewy foods, such as fruit leather, beef jerky, bagels, etc.
• Sour candies
• Popsicles
• Thick drinks through a straw
• Blowing Activities
• Blowing up balloons (with adult supervision)
• Blowing bubbles
• Whistles or harmonicas
• Temperature: cold (adding ice cubes to their water, frozen yogurt or fruit)
• Increase the flavor – some kids may enjoy stronger spices or flavor (mint, lemon, spicy)
• Water Bottles with resistant straw
• Blowing cotton balls or pompoms across a table using a straw

Whole-Body Heavy Work: These activities can help regulate and calm the nervous system, reducing the need for sensory seeking.

• Pushing a weighted/heavy item
• Pulling a wagon or loaded backpack
• Wall push-ups, chair push-ups, or animal walks (bear/wheelbarrow/crab)
• Climbing playground equipment
• Carrying groceries, books, or pushing chairs in around the table
• Wiping the table or windows
• Jumping on a mini trampoline or doing “frog jumps”

The above strategies always work best when your child is interested and even better is when they initiate a sensory strategy on their own.

Follow their Lead!

It can be challenging to find ways to play with your child that are both engaging and beneficial. Below are some strategies to help you connect and nurture your children, while having some fun and laughs along the way!

Follow Their Lead – Finding out what your child loves to do and joining them in their chosen activities can provide insight into what your child needs and what their preferences are.

Imitate Their Play – When you copy what your child is doing in an activity, you’re meeting them where they are. This shows them that you are interested in what they’re doing while encouraging social interaction and language development.

Narrate and Label – Keeping up a running commentary of your child’s play while it is happening can enrich their language skills and comprehension. You can narrate their actions, label objects, or count out loud, for example “I see you pushing one red car, Vroom Vroom”.

Engage at Their Level – Bringing yourself down to their level and getting on the floor with them, shows them that you are fully present and ready to engage in their world. You may appear more inviting and accessible for them.

Incorporate Music and Movement – Music is a universal language that resonates with many children. adding movement to songs can enrich the experience, for example “Wheels on the Bus” is a great song to incorporate movement that matches the words.

Use Toys to Enhance Stories and Songs – Toys can be a wonderful addition and help bring songs and stories to life. Using farm animals when singing “Old Macdonald” makes playtime fun while adding another level of understanding.

Embrace Age-Appropriate Flexibility – What matters most when choosing toys is the engagement and learning opportunities a toy provides, regardless of the targeted age group.  A musical bus, for example, might not be traditionally suitable for your child’s age group but can offer invaluable language and sensory experiences.

Playing with your child offers endless opportunities for bonding, learning, and growing together. By embracing their perspective, engaging at their level, and incorporating educational strategies into play, you’re not just playing – you’re building a foundation of learning.

Our Speech-Language Team recommend these great strategies to help encourage language building in the home:

• Create language rich moments by reading books and singing songs together
• Emphasize a target sound or word when you talk Repeat words or phrases back to your child correctly when they’ve made a mistake but don’t expect them to repeat you
• Follow your child’s lead, respond with interest and join in the play
• Narrate what you and your child are doing using short, simple phrases (i.e. you’re driving the red car up the ramp!)
• Expand on your child’s phrases by adding 1-2 words
• Use a variety of language: questions, describing words, action words, feeling words, location words, social words, and words that express belonging

For more information on home strategies, tips by age, and information on communication milestones, check out: Talk Box – A Parents Guide to Creating Language Rich Environments

Our Children have many skills that they need help to develop and grow. One of these skills is impulse control. This is an important skill to help them navigate the world around them.

Here are some tips to help develop impulse control adapted from https://hes-extraordinary.com/

Impulse Control Games – There are many children’s games that require impulse control. Playing a game can be a fun and engaging way to practice various skills, and your child many not even know they are doing anything other than playing. Some examples of impulse control games are Freeze Dance, Simon Says, Red Light-Green Light, and Musical Chairs.

Long-Term Reward Charts – Using a long-term reward chart that doesn’t offer immediate reinforcement, can help your child work on delayed gratification. This requires willpower, which is a different aspect of impulse control because your child needs to think ahead to a future reward.

Practice Waiting – Waiting can be one of the hardest things for kids to do, for us adults too! You can try this at home – turn on a timer for 60 seconds and while you make silly faces, have everyone try to keep a straight face and not laugh until the timer goes off. Playing games like ‘I Spy’ or reading a book while waiting for an appointment, can help them develop interests and skills that keep them engaged during times they may have to wait.

Pause and ask, “Is this kind?” – Taking a pause before reacting to a situation can help teach impulse control. Have your children ask themselves before they do something, ‘Is this kind?’. For example, a classmate at school has the toy your child want and their impulse may be to reach out and grab the toy. Have your child practice pausing and asking the question “is this kind?”. If the answer is “no”, teach them other solutions, such as asking to play with the toy or finding another toy to play with.

Clear Expectations and Outcomes – One component of impulse control is foresight or the ability to think about the probable outcome of one’s actions. When expectations and potential outcomes are crystal clear it’s easier for children to develop impulse control.

Impulse Control, like many other skills, take time, patience, and support to grow.

There are increased health benefits for children related to reducing screen time, including improved physical health, decreased obesity and more time to play and explore. The following tips can help you to create balance with screen time in your home.

Role model – Be a good role model with your own screen time.

Be accountable – Set expectations with your kids and create goals together to help reduce screen time. Many devices have features to set time limits for use.

Be realistic – If your kids spend a lot of time on screens, including watching TV, start by setting smaller, more obtainable goals. Instead of jumping to the recommended one to two hours or less per day, start by cutting current screen time in half.

Be engaged – After school or work, spend time each day talking face to face with your kids and give them your full attention.

Put hand-held devices away – During screen-free hours, put devices away or at a charging station in a common area so they’re not attracting your kid’s attention.

Create phone-free zones in the home – Making family meal areas a phone-free zone is an easy way to start.

Go outside – Putting down the phone and taking a walk or playing outdoors increases your endorphins and provides that feeling of happiness in your brain, boosting your mood and improving your physical health.

Avoid using screens at bedtime – Turn off screens an hour before bedtime.

The Canadian Pediatric Society Screen Time Recommendations:

• For children under 2 years old, screen time is not recommended.
• For children 2 to 5 years old, limit screen time to less than 1 hour per day.
• For children older than 5 years old, limit screen time to less than 2 hours per day.

Adapted from the Child Mind Institute.

We can help our children to make new friends and build relationships using these tips:

Greetings and Questions – Try to make a habit of practicing different greetings throughout the day, model good listening skills, and take turns asking and answering open-ended questions, for example, “How are you?”

Respecting Personal Space – Learning about the personal space needs of others is a skill that will benefit your child throughout their life. Try using hula-hoops or your arms to demonstrate the concept of ‘personal bubbles’ and move around the room trying not to touch each-other’s ‘personal bubble’. If your child is overly affectionate, try teaching them to replace hugs with high-fives or fist bumps.

Levels of Voice – Encourage your child to listen and match the level of your voice. Imagine your voice has a volume dial and practice turning the volume up and down

Dealing with Rejection – Children who are learning new social skills and meeting new friends will inevitably experience rejection at some point. As a parent, we can be ready to support them when this happens. Remind them of all of their wonderful qualities that make them the amazing child they are and encourage them to continue to practice their skills of meeting new people.

Reading and Responding to Social Signals – Communication is so much more than just words. Body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and volume of voice are all used when we communicate. Social signals are the variety of ways in which we communicate using our body language and facial expressions. Help your child learn common social signals. Use visuals, pictures, social stories, books and your own face to teach different expressions.

Sometimes our children can display challenging behaviors when they are making new friends. Teaching these 3 skills can help your child along the way:

Patience – Learning how to wait for a turn in play or a time to speak in conversation is an important social skill. Play board-games and use timers at home to practice taking turns.

Flexibility – Help your child make compromises using “First/Then” statements. For example, “First we play my game, Then we play your game”.

Communicating Strong Emotions – Practice acknowledging and accepting your child’s emotions and teach them healthy ways of expressing them. For example, “When we are mad, we can stomp our feet like dinosaurs”. Daily meditation and deep breathing practices are good ways to help our children regulate.

adapted from Harvard Health

When children learn to solve problems, they gain confidence, resilience, and self-esteem. Children need guidance when learning to solve problems. Parents and caregivers can use the following 5 tips to help teach problem solving skills!

Teach Flexible Thinking – When children have choices and options at an early age, they begin to build cognitive flexibility, they see all the possibilities. Try using these tips a) make a small change in the daily routine i.e. “Do you want to take a bath before or after dinner?” b) use flexible language i.e. “Let’s see if we can try this another way” c) brainstorm options for as many things as possible i.e. Pizza toppings, ways to travel, ice cream flavours, or paint colours d) decide on a new rule for a favourite family game.

Celebrate Mistakes – Children who fear making mistakes are less likely to try and solve their own problems. Let them know that it’s normal and natural to make mistakes, and everybody does it. Use mistakes as a learning opportunity, talk about what went wrong and discuss different options to try next time. You can share your own challenges with solving problems, and let your kids know what you tried to solve the problem. If you are stuck trying to solve a problem, ask your children for some help (for example, “What would you do? What are some different options to try?”).

Don’t Rush In – The next time you feel tempted to rush in and solve your child’s problem, take a deep breath and try a different strategy, often, they just need to hear the message that you believe in them, and they are capable. You can discuss the differences between ‘kid problems’ and ‘adult problems’. Make a list with your child of issues a parent should always helps solve; when someone’s hurt, in danger, or there’s an issue of safety.

Practice Mindfulness – Studies show that mindfulness promotes problem-solving. When we learn to quiet the mind, the answer often becomes obvious. Try these following tips:

• Read stories and discuss how mindfulness could help the characters in the story solve their problems.
• Take a ‘listening walk’ together and count the sounds you hear, or the odours you smell, or the colours you see.
• Praise your child for pausing or taking a deep breath before reacting to a challenge.
• Modeling mindfulness for your child is also key. The next time you face a problem, calmly verbalize your feelings about it. Point out how you’re pausing before responding to an upsetting work email, unkind comment, or any other challenge that arises.

Any learned skill takes time, love, and patience. Take things in small steps and don’t try to rush your child’s learning process. Meet them where they are and go from there.

As seen at Big Life Journal

Healthy boundaries are flexible and will change as your children grow. You will likely have many conversations about different types of boundaries and why they are important.

Be aware of your own boundaries, and make sure you communicate your own needs and wants.

Let children know they are the boss of their own bodies – create opportunities for your child to understand that they are in control of how they interact with others and how others interact with them. Never force hugs or kisses, even with relatives. If your child does not want to hug during greetings or goodbyes, let them know that is OK, they can wave, high-five, blow a kiss, or simply say goodbye.

Ask for permission before touching children and encourage them to do the same – model this behaviour. Before reaching out for a hug from a child, niece, nephew etc, ask permission to do so. If the child is very young, or nonverbal, get into the habit of communicating consent by letting them know what you are doing and why, before you touch them. For example, “I’m going to button up your shirt, so you will be ready for school,” or “I’m going to rub shampoo into your hair, so you’re clean.”

Be direct about talking about body anatomy – it’s common to rely on cutesy phrases when referring to genitalia but coming up with alternate words can send the message that parts of our bodies are embarrassing, or not to be talked about. Kids who are taught not to talk about their bodies may feel less connected to their bodies and may not listen to their own body signals, making it hard to distinguish between a good touch and a bad touch.

Let children know its ok to ask for help and help them identify ‘safe’ adults – teach kids that safe adults listen to what they want and need, and don’t make them feel uncomfortable or scared. Finding safe adults at school, church, community centers and family members will help build up your child’s network.

Talk about consent outside of the context of sex – Typically, the word ‘consent’ is brought up in a sexual context only, but you can make consent a part of everyday conversations by using it to frame any permission-seeking. Teach kids to ask for consent before borrowing items, before posting photos online, when making group plans, and as always, before touching other people. Visit this link for more resources on teaching kids consent: https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/how-parents-can-talk-their-kids-about-consent

Talk early and often – Sexual development is just as important as physical, cognitive, and emotional development. Having age-appropriate conversations throughout your child’s development can help our kids feel more confident and comfortable seeking out honest and open conversations about their bodies, boundaries, and consent. Not having these conversations can lead to our children developing unhealthy attitudes or beliefs about their own sexuality and others’ sexuality.

Emphasize confidence and emotional intelligence – Healthy boundaries often require us to be confident in our own opinions, desires, and needs. To build confidence, children need to learn how to identify what they need, where their limits are, and the types of interactions with which they are comfortable. We can help our kids build emotional intelligence (EI is the ability to manage both your emotions and understand the emotions of people around you through open and honest discussions.) Talk about emotions and acknowledge your own and your child’s emotions frequently, encourage them to share how they are feeling. Ask questions like “how did that make you feel?” or “why do you think you felt that way?” or “would you do anything differently next time?”

Teach them it’s ok to say NO – being able to say ‘no’ is a basic skill that every child needs to learn as it applies to all personal boundaries. Saying ‘no’ isn’t always easy and some people have great difficulty saying ‘no.’ Practice early and often with your child. Role-play different scenarios, such as saying no to a family member asking for a hug or saying no to a friend that wants to play something your child doesn’t want to. While practicing how to say no, also discuss and practice scenarios on how your child may react if they are on the receiving end of ‘no.’ We can all feel rejected when told ‘no’ but practicing different ways of dealing with rejection can help in future relationships. Healthy boundaries are essential for healthy relationships. Boundaries are flexible and will change as your children grow. Have lots of conversations about the different types of boundaries and why they are important and remember that this takes patience and practice. Be aware of your own boundaries and make sure you communicate your own needs and wants.

As a parent, you are your child’s best education advocate – until they’re old enough and informed enough to advocate for themselves. You know your child’s strengths and challenges, and you can help identify and push for the resources your child needs to succeed.

Know your child’s strengths and challenges – Observe and learn what upsets your child and what brings them calm. Explore their strengths so you can work with the school to find ways that best support how they learn.

Keep and organize paperwork – Try to keep copies of report cards, progress reports, IPPs (Individualized Program Plans), medical records, helpful homework samples, etc. They can provide insights into your child’s learning differences and how much progress they’re making. Consider keeping all documents together in an organized binder.

Build relationships – Get to know your child’s teachers as well as school counsellors, speech language pathologists, or other therapists who are working with your child. Building relationships with the whole team can help keep the lines of communication open. There’s less chance of misunderstanding if everyone knows and talks to each other.

Recognize that your child behaves differently at home and school – It’s important to talk to your child’s teacher to find out how well they are functioning at school. Teacher-child relationships vary widely but given that teachers spend many hours a day with our kids, we can count on them to have a keen sense of how children learn and behave. When you meet with a teacher, ask about your child’s strengths and challenges. You can feel comfortable asking questions like: Does my child have difficulties with organization, following instructions, or staying on task? Have you noticed any delays in their academic or social development? Do they get along well with other kids?

Maximize parent-teacher conference time – Many of us go to parent-teacher conferences unprepared. We arrive without questions, receive an enormous amount of information about our child’s academic performance, and then leave with a laundry list of concerns we haven’t been able to talk through. You can maximize your time by planning questions to ask at the beginning, not the end, of the conference. By asking your questions up front, you’ll help ensure that the conference time is used to address your child’s challenges, set appropriate goals, and determine whether any specialized supports might be needed.

Remember that you’re a part of the team – Parents shouldn’t feel pressured to make a decision. Keep in mind that you’re an equal member of the decision-making team. So, while it’s important to be receptive to the school staff’s thoughts, you don’t have to agree to something you think goes against what’s best for your child.

Communicate regularly – IPP meetings and parent-teacher conferences are good opportunities to get an update on your child’s progress. But there are also other times and ways to get updates. You can email or call the teacher with questions. Parent Association meetings may provide insight into curriculum and other resources that could affect your child. Communication is key to a successful team supporting your child!