Environment Nurtures Growth
Creating a nurturing environment for your baby to grow may be the most important thing you do as a parent. The quality of the mood and activities in your home have a huge impact on your attitude and the attitude of your baby as he grows.
5 Tips for Creating a Nurturing Environment
Here are 5 tips for creating a nurturing environment for your family. How you spend time with your baby will affect how they will grow.
Creating a nurturing home environment will help you to be well-prepared as a parent. It will influence the characteristics and life skills your baby will learn.
- BEGIN EARLY!
- You want them to be physically strong.
- You need to be sure they are emotionally secure.
- Give them all the opportunities possible to be curious and explore.
- Finally, you will want them to grow to be socially responsible people.
“Please prepare the best environment for your child. Parent and child should grow together looking towards the future.”
Shinichi Suzuki
BEGIN EARLY!
First, BEGIN EARLY! Dr. Suzuki once said that the education of a baby should begin nine months before birth. He later changed his mind and decided that the education of a baby should begin nine months BEFORE the MOTHER’S birth !
This is how strongly he felt about a child’s ability being developed early and that creating a nurturing environment was so important.
What Suzuki knew intuitively nearly ninety years ago has been proven by studies of how a baby’s brain develops. From birth to 3 years old, a child’s brain grows the fastest it ever will.
The important thing to remember is that as you create a nurturing environment, you will be modeling the activities for your baby for quite awhile.
Create a Nurturing Environment forYour Baby’s Physical Strength
Second, hugging, cuddling, and kissing your baby helps their brain to grow emotionally. But, it also turns out that touch and physical experiences nurture baby’s physical strength as well. When your baby is very tiny, these are the experiences that will help them grow strong. Later, physical activities will increase their strength. Of course, healthy, nutritious food is a must for baby growing up strong, too.
Nurturing Your Baby Emotionally
Third, spend as much time as possible playing with your baby. Creating a nurturing environment through playing with your baby is one of the things that develops a strong parent-child relationship.
Play with your baby in a positive, warm, (dare I say it) and nurturing way. Emotions are absolutely contagious!
What ever playful emotions and feelings you are having during play time (or any other time) are “caught” by your baby. Their brains process those emotions and create positive patterns of behavior.
By the same token, if you are feeling angry or frustrated, your baby will “catch” those emotions as well. This, unfortunately, creates negative patterns of behavior.
Also, do your best to protect your baby from stress, violence, and trauma. How you deal with stress is how your baby will eventually learn to deal with stress.
Needless to say, we all have stress and the CoVid 19 pandemic has created much more stress than usual. Don’t hesitate to reach out to others for support and help.
As the saying goes, “We’re all in this together”. The current situation makes it all the more important to create a nurturing environment in your home.
Creating a Nurturing Environment for Your Baby’s Curiosity
Babies are just naturally curious. They will keep on exploring more as they grow. The nurturing environment you create in your home is what will encourage your baby to learn.
These are the activities which you will be modeling for a long time before your child ever does the activity himself. If your baby does not seem particularly interested in an activity, just continue to model it for her.
You will even find that as you do certain things with your baby, that you are learning new things, too. However, be mindful of when and how much you are expecting from your baby.
You must be willing to wait for your child to be ready to do an activity. This is where your patience and persistence comes into play. Continue to model the behavior or activity anyway.
Also consider the activity. Is it really appropriate for you baby right now? We believe that ability develops early, but we want it to develop naturally.
Follow your child’s own timetable for learning. When learning is stressful and pressure is put on a child to do something before they are ready, the real lesson rarely takes hold.
Suzuki Early Childhood Education Baby Class Nurturing Activities
You can create a nurturing environment by providing music, reading aloud, exposure to fine art, and talking to your baby. These are the things to use to entertain your baby rather than the TV or other type of screens.
These same activities help your baby to develop their memory, coordination, quick response, and careful observation.
Music and singing are proven to create a calm atmosphere. Even showing a very young baby pictures of fine art and describing it to them, helps them to acquire an appreciation for beauty and absorb vocabulary.
Reading aloud and talking to your baby are by far the best ways to help them develop their vocabulary and learn. Of course, these are more opportunities to grow your relationship with your baby.
As you playing and learning with your baby, understand that these skills you are modeling will help her to develop creativity. Creativity sets up positive patterns for your baby’s brain.
Nurturing Your Baby’s Manners
Finally, there is the matter of creating a nurturing environment to teach your baby to have good manners. Of course, your baby is not born knowing how to say “please” and “thank you”.
It is a parent’s responsibility to see that their child is polite and pleasant. The fancy term is raising socially responsible children.
The activities that you do and the behaviors you model influence your child. You will help them learn to take turns, share their things, and get along well with others.
You can help them learn to take pride in their hard work and accomplishments, however large or small they may be. Ultimately, you want your baby to grow to be a sensitive and compassionate person.
Environment Nurtures Growth
Environment Nurtures Growth is one of the Suzuki Early Childhood Education (SECE) Beliefs. The activities in the SECE Baby Class are designed to encourage parents and their babies to:
BEGIN EARLY! Grow physically strong, develop an emotionally secure parent-child relationships, learn how to explore and be curious about their world, and be sensitive and compassionate people.
On the “Beautiful Heart Musical Journey” with you,
Susan
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