One of the most valuable times a parent with toddlers can have is family time. During this period, parents have the opportunity to follow their toddler, observe them, laugh, guide, encourage, kiss and hug them. All of these are very important to the toddler as it makes them get closer to their parents, love them more, enhances the understanding between both of them and makes them happier.
Generally, the toddler is able to have more self-confidence and feel loved. The children feel that they have supportive parents, their moods are relaxed and both parents and toddler are able to play happily together. Here are some tips parents can follow to spend quality family time with their toddlers.
Plan interesting activities for every family time
The easiest way to have your toddlers looking forward to the next family time you are going to have with them is to have interesting activities, that would be benefit them, carefully selected. These activities should generally centre around enrichment class for toddlers and could include dance classes, music lessons, sports activities and school activities.
Parents should however try to ensure that they help the toddler to develop interest in these activities. This will make the kids to be happy partaking in these activities and also make it easy for them to learn it. These will help to ensure that the child learns at least one or more new things during this special and cherished family time.
Introduce fun activities
It is pertinent to note that loading the family time with too much learning activities could stress the child and could make the child not interested in the time. Based on this, parents should introduce fun activities to the family time. While the enrichment class for toddlers could last for only 20 minutes of the time, fun activities should cover for at least 40 percent of the time.
The fun activities could include games and plays such as hide and seek as well as trying to solve puzzles. These fun activities would sure make the child happy and make them regularly look forward to every family time. As frequently as possible, new games should be introduced as the child gets older as he might get tired of the same game, if it is repeated every time.
Bonding time
Apart from the earlier listed activities, parents should also use the family time to try to bond with their toddlers. This should cover at least 20 percent of the time and could entail watching a cartoon or educational video CDs for toddlers together. During this period, it would be better if some level of body contact is maintained, like placing the toddler on your lap or laying the child on your chest. This would make the toddler get closer to the parents. Parents could also use the opportunity to read kid stories or sing rhymes and poems together with the child. This will make the family time worth the while for the child.
