In our daily lives, we build an understanding of our environment and ourselves through our experiences from a very young age. In order to plan actions, to move, to learn... our brain relies on the interactions of our body with our environment.
From the earliest age, babies develop knowledge of their bodies and gradually their motor skills become more and more voluntary and controlled. The development of his motor skills will gradually allow him to expand his sensory-motor explorations and thus nourish his interactions with his environment. These sensory, motor and emotional experiences, among others, will be a prerequisite for his psychomotor, cognitive and social development.
We measure the immense role that parents and all the people who take care of the child play in the interactions that they will allow with the outside world. The brain of the maturing child will be nourished and impregnated by the environment that is offered to him. These daily experiences will nourish his social and emotional skills (expression of emotions, empathy) and cognitive skills (manipulate, language, memorize, reason, plan, inhibit...).
Did you know that?
Parental support for the child's discoveries, sensory-motor explorations, and games will allow him to develop new knowledge about the world around him. This will allow them to put words to what they are experiencing, but also to explore their environment freely and safely (knowledge of objects, evaluation of shapes, weights, textures, related emotions...).
The child will be able to anticipate some of his actions as he develops, test many strategies to find the one that corresponds to him and that is best adapted to the action he is trying to perform.
The development of the cognitive system is therefore closely linked to psychomotor development, the maturation of the nervous system and emotions, but also to the relationships and social interactions that the child builds with his environment.
In practice, at home
- It is important to take into account the child's personal aptitudes, to observe his development and his sensory-motor discoveries.
- Provide opportunities to explore, to repeat experiences in order to awaken his curiosity in the discovery of his environment
- Give him the opportunity to experiment, to make mistakes, to find new ways of doing things. The adult will be able to accompany the child so that he/she finds ways to do it alone, to help him/her become aware of his/her successes and discoveries
- Verbalize with him what you observe, the emotions that it can create: so the adult helps the child to discover what he is doing, warn him of what will happen or what is being done and the child will be able to anticipate events more.
Thus, all the interactions of the child with his environment, the adults who accompany him, the children with whom he plays, the games and situations he experiences will considerably enlarge his field of exploration and thus his knowledge of the world around him.
