Around the age of 3, children begin to rely on other children to develop interactive play, to gain social skills and to make friends. Without interaction with their peers, these children may experience a delay in social and emotional development.
Parents can model social skills with their child through role playing during interactive activities with toys and stories. One thing you can do is to read a book about sharing and how to make friends.
Parents at this time are a risk for anxiety, depression, and loss of job, financial stress or being sick. Any of these factors affecting parent well-being can affect a child’s development, which can lead to aggressive behavior, poor eating habits or sleep issues. Parents should make sure they take care of themselves, get the support they need and do everything they can to prevent being anxious or depressed.
Children are sensitive to the level of stress in the family. In order for a child to develop, parents need to talk and play with their child and engage with physical activities. Should you see aggressive behavior or your child may appear anxious, you need to pay attention and to engage with your children.
We recommend that parents adopt a consistent structured schedule: Make sure children have set times for meals and waking up and going to bed, and maintain the same routine. Showing their child a visual schedule with regular sleep and meal times along with different structured activities would be helpful.
It is also important to limit their child’s exposure to news and to screen time alone and to maintain a positive atmosphere at home.
This pandemic we are dealing with is horrific to mankind. We are getting smarter every day with vaccines, learning to use two masks, leaving six feet of space between grocery lines and washing our hands continuously. We will all come out the other side and we will all get our lives back, just as it was in the beginning!
To Your Health!
Jim
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