Bonding
The bond between a parent or caregiver and a child is considered to be essential to their emotional growth and development. It is what gives the carer the want and need to care for and respond to the child and promotes a trust between the two. Bonding allows the child to feel safe and protected as it grows.
As your relationship with your child comes to include more complex communication and interaction, you may feel the bond between you grow even stronger. Spending quality time playing with your child, encouraging body contact and communicating with them will help to promote a closer relationship. Your child will have formed, and will continue to form, bonds with other people in their life, such as siblings, relatives, teachers and family friends.
Communicating
Now that your child is older, their communication skills have grown exponentially. They will now use language skills exclusively to communicate what he or she needs from you, rather than crying. He or she may still cry on occasion to express themselves, but it will become an emotional release rather than communicative. When your child is trying to communicate by crying, encourage them to use their words.
You will also notice your child’s other forms of communicating develop. They can make eye contact confidently, use body language to express themselves, and initiate and participate in involved conversations with you and others. Engaging with your child will help them to feel loved and comforted, as well as helping them to increase their bourgeoning communication skills.
Play
At a school age, your child will confidently play interactively with others (co-operative play) in a more complex and fashion. Playing with your child becomes significantly more complex at this age. It starts to become more about physical experiences that naturally stimulate their imagination, and in turn, aid intellectual development.
Your child will most likely enjoy interactive playing with complex toys that incorporate various elements, they will enjoy sport games, and other physical activities, such as bike riding. Your child might start to show interest in specific types of educational play; like cooking, learning a musical instrument, gardening or creating artwork. Your child might like to play with ‘video games’ and other technical toys.
While they can aid your child’s development exponentially, you shouldn’t rely on screen type games solely as a source of play for your child. Introduce your child to participate in various different types of play as they continue to grow.
raisingchildren.net.au. (2019, December 12). Relationships with school-age children: ideas and tips. Retrieved from https://raisingchildren.net.au/school-age/connecting-communicating/connecting/connecting-with-your-school-age-child
raisingchildren.net.au. (2019, December 12). Relationships with preschoolers: ideas and tips. Retrieved from https://raisingchildren.net.au/preschoolers/connecting-communicating/connecting/connecting-with-your-preschooler
raisingchildren.net.au. (2018, February 22). Talking and play: preschoolers. Retrieved from https://raisingchildren.net.au/preschoolers/connecting-communicating/communicating/talking-play-preschoolers