If you’ve heard of mindful parenting, you may assume it is just another trend. However, the concept involves a plethora of techniques designed to nurture a child’s social, emotional, and cognitive growth. Today, we will run you through what mindful parenting involves, share some parenting tips for early learning and outline some fantastic home activities for preschoolers. By learning how to be present, aware, and empathetic in our daily interactions, we can provide our children with the necessary foundations for resilience and becoming a lifelong learner.
Due to our growing responsibilities as parents, it is likely that our children’s time will be divided between home and childcare. This means that it is more important than ever to create a harmonious balance between both environments. By ensuring we provide the right level of learning opportunities and emotional support at home, our children’s environments remain aligned, enhancing their growth in a multitude of ways.
Mindful parenting supports a child’s development by fostering a home environment full of acceptance and compassion, giving our children the full attention they need to thrive. By getting it right, we are aligning home and childcare learning, establishing a consistent and stable environment for children to reach their full potential. As parents, we need to learn to tune into our children’s needs and experiences without judgment and develop the ability to respond instead of react. Doing this helps build a trusting and open home.
The primary principles of mindful parenting include being present, practising empathy, responding with intention, and cultivating emotional awareness. At Clovel Childcare, these practices are the foundations of everything we do to build a nurturing and supportive environment. A considerable part of The Clovel Philosophy is creating consistency between a child’s home and care environment, enabling them to reach incredible heights of achievement every day.
When we create continuity and consistency within our child’s life, it helps to reinforce their skills and develop positive behavioural patterns; it can help reduce the anxiety that is often caused by abrupt changes and provide an immeasurable sense of belonging. Mindful parenting is about creating similar routines, learning, and consistent emotional experiences to align with what they are likely to see in a formal and professional childcare setting.
Those already part of The Clovel Family will understand that learning doesn’t stop when the child leaves our doors. Learning should be a continuum where facilities like ours are an extension of their home environment. With mindful parenting, we can constantly support our child’s development in every possible way.
If you want to know more about mindful parenting, here are some powerful tools to get you started. Each of these activities aligns with The Clovel Approach, enabling you to facilitate their learning beyond childcare.
Curiosity helps children thrive. By encouraging exploration of any kind and asking open-ended questions, we can massively enhance their learning experience.
Play-Based Learning
This is an aspect of self-discovery that children need. Invest in toys, activities, and games that allow them to explore their creative potential and learn to solve problems.
Daily Reading
Mindful parenting also incorporates language development as often as possible. Reading stories to our children encourages them to use their imagination and helps develop emotional bonds.
Guide Emotional Intelligence
Build a home where feelings are labelled and discussed, empathy is common practice, and responses are calm.
Foster Routine
For children to thrive, they need to be part of a familiar environment that isn’t too unpredictable. This gives them the sense of security they need to focus on growth and development.
Reading aloud to our children not only boosts their language skills but sparks their imagination. To enhance their learning at home, choose stories with rhyme, rhythm, and repetition. Additionally, act out parts of the story with your child to keep it as interactive as possible.
Whether you take walks in parks or explore your own garden, nature exploration is crucial. Encourage them to pick up rocks, collect leaves, and observe flowers.
You can create these with Tupperware filled with rice or beads, sand, cups of water, and numerous things around your home. Sensory play helps children to improve their motor skills through tactile exploration.
A simple space with crayons, paints, pencils, glue, and repurposed materials can help you create the ultimate space for children to create art at their own pace.
When mindful parenting is carried out correctly, we are able to support the emotional, social, and cognitive growth of our children. At a young age, nothing is more critical than holistic development.
Emotional Development
This is how our children recognise feelings and learn to express themselves while managing their own emotions
Social Development
This is achieved through learning how to take turns, share, empathise, and understand how our actions impact those around us.
Cognitive Development
This is how our children learn to solve problems and ask questions, which serve as fuel for their learning journey.
Firstly, a massive part of achieving this goal is by communicating with your childcare provider. Together, we are the first team of learning facilitators our children will encounter. Building a strong partnership with our children’s educators enables us to share insights and ideas to enhance their development. This is what mindful parenting is about. Starting with Clovel is an experience that will enhance your child’s learning journey in hundreds of ways. Get in touch to discover how we can help you create the ultimate environment for your children.
At Clovel Childcare, we offer a play-based environment that nurtures every aspect of a child’s growth and development. Our programs integrate early literacy, emotional growth, social development, cognitive stimulation, physical movement, numeracy, and more.
The first step is to observe your child to find out what they are interested in. You can then use numerous props to facilitate play-based learning. These can range from art supplies and building blocks to leaves from the garden.
Choosing your child’s childcare and early learning centre is one of the biggest decisions you will ever have to make for your child. If you have more questions for us or would like to book a tour of one of our centres, please fill out our form and we’ll be in touch!
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