Spending quality time as a family is fundamental to a child’s emotional, social, and cognitive development. Family interactions create a sense of belonging, security, and love, all of which contribute to healthy growth and well-being. Whether through shared meals, conversations, or activities, making time for family strengthens relationships and helps children develop essential life skills.

Why is Family Time Important for Children’s Growth?

Children learn by example, and family interactions provide a strong foundation for their development. When parents engage in meaningful activities with their children, they model communication, problem-solving, and emotional regulation. These shared experiences also create lasting memories and instill values that shape a child’s character.

Benefits of Spending Time Together as a Family

1. Strengthens Emotional Bonds: Quality time allows children to feel loved, valued, and understood, fostering a strong parent-child relationship.
2. Improves Communication Skills: Regular family conversations help children express their thoughts and emotions confidently.
3. Encourages Social and Emotional Development: Engaging in shared activities teaches children important social skills, such as cooperation, patience, and empathy.
4. Boosts Academic and Cognitive Skills: Interactive family activities like reading, playing games, and discussing new topics enhance critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.
5. Promotes Mental Well-being: A supportive family environment reduces stress and anxiety, giving children a sense of stability and security.
6. Instills Values and Traditions: Family time reinforces moral values, cultural traditions, and ethical behavior, shaping a child’s identity and sense of responsibility.

Ways to Spend Quality Time as a Family

• Have Regular Family Meals: Eating together provides an opportunity to connect and share daily experiences.
• Engage in Outdoor Activities: Going for walks, playing sports, or exploring nature strengthens bonds and encourages a healthy lifestyle.
• Read Together: Sharing books fosters a love for learning and creates meaningful moments of connection.
• Create Family Traditions: Special rituals, such as movie nights or weekend outings, give children a sense of consistency and belonging.
• Encourage Open Communication: Setting aside time for discussions helps children feel heard and supported.
• Participate in Household Tasks Together: Involving children in cooking, cleaning, or gardening teaches responsibility and teamwork.

Contact with nature is essential for children’s development. Allowing them to interact with the natural environment, explore outdoor landscapes, and live alongside animals helps them build a healthy and respectful relationship with the world around them. Additionally, it reduces fear of animals and fosters empathy, curiosity, and respect for other living beings.

Why is it important for children to grow up in contact with nature?

Early exposure to nature enables children to understand their surroundings in an intuitive and meaningful way. When children grow up surrounded by plants, rivers, mountains, and animals, they develop an emotional connection with nature that translates into greater environmental sensitivity and confidence in their surroundings.

Benefits of interacting with nature and animals

1. Reduces fear and builds confidence: When children have positive experiences with animals from an early age, irrational fears decrease, and they learn to interact with them safely and respectfully.
2. Develops empathy: Observing animal behavior and caring for them helps children cultivate empathy and responsibility.
3. Stimulates sensory and motor development: Exploring nature through touch, sight, and hearing stimulates the senses and improves coordination and balance.
4. Encourages curiosity and learning: Learning about different species, their habitats, and behaviors sparks children’s curiosity and promotes knowledge about the natural world.
5. Improves emotional health and reduces stress: Being in contact with nature and animals has a calming effect, reducing anxiety and promoting relaxation.

Tips to help your children connect with nature and animals

• Visit parks and nature reserves: Exploring outdoor spaces like forests, beaches, and mountains allows children to discover biodiversity and feel comfortable in nature.
• Incorporate pets into the family: Having a pet can help children develop responsibility, affection, and trust in animals.
• Observe and learn about local wildlife: Trips to the countryside, farm visits, or birdwatching activities can help children appreciate and respect animals.
• Promote respectful interaction: Teaching children to approach animals calmly and without aggression helps them establish safe and harmonious relationships with them.
• Read books and watch documentaries about nature: Educational content about animals and ecosystems expands knowledge and strengthens the connection with the natural world.

Reading a bedtime story to your children is more than just a nighttime activity; it is a powerful bonding experience that nurtures emotional connections and cognitive growth. Establishing a routine of bedtime reading provides numerous benefits that contribute to a child’s overall development and well-being.

Why is Bedtime Reading Important?

Bedtime reading is a cherished tradition that helps children wind down from their day while fostering a love for books and learning. It provides a calm and structured transition to sleep, helping establish healthy bedtime habits. Moreover, it serves as a special moment for parents and children to connect in a world of stories and imagination.

Benefits of Reading a Bedtime Story

1. Strengthens Parent-Child Bonding: Sharing a book every night creates moments of closeness, trust, and comfort, strengthening emotional connections.
2. Encourages Language and Literacy Development: Exposure to new vocabulary, sentence structures, and storytelling enhances a child’s language skills and fosters early literacy.
3. Boosts Cognitive Skills: Following a storyline, predicting outcomes, and engaging with different characters help develop memory, comprehension, and critical thinking skills.
4. Promotes Emotional Well-being: Bedtime stories provide a safe space to discuss emotions, fears, and values, helping children navigate their own feelings.
5. Enhances Imagination and Creativity: Through storytelling, children are exposed to new worlds, characters, and situations that stimulate creativity and curiosity.
6. Encourages a Love for Reading: When reading is presented as a fun and loving activity, children develop a lifelong appreciation for books and learning.

Tips for Making Bedtime Reading Enjoyable

• Choose Age-Appropriate Books: Select stories that match your child’s age, interests, and level of understanding.
• Create a Cozy Reading Environment: A quiet, comfortable space with dim lighting enhances the bedtime story experience.
• Engage with the Story: Use different voices, facial expressions, and questions to make the story more interactive and enjoyable.
• Follow a Consistent Routine: Reading at the same time each night signals to the child that it’s time to wind down and prepare for sleep.
• Let Your Child Participate: Encourage them to choose books, turn pages, or even predict what happens next to keep them engaged.

Early stimulation is a fundamental pillar in child development, as it enhances cognitive, emotional, motor, and social skills from the earliest years of life. During these early years, the brain has exceptional plasticity, meaning it is more receptive to environmental stimuli and can develop neural connections that will serve as the foundation for future learning.

What is Early Stimulation?

Early stimulation consists of a set of activities, experiences, and strategies designed to promote the comprehensive development of a child from birth to approximately six years of age. These activities can include games, physical exercises, social interaction, and sensory stimulation, all aimed at strengthening different areas of child development.

Benefits of Early Stimulation

1. Cognitive Development: Helps improve attention, memory, and problem-solving skills, which facilitates future learning.
2. Motor Development: Through appropriate physical activities, children enhance their coordination, balance, and fine and gross motor skills.
3. Emotional and Social Development: Encourages security, self-esteem, and the ability to interact with others, making socialization easier.
4. Facilitates Language Learning: Early exposure to sounds, words, and conversations promotes language development and effective communication.
5. Prevention of Learning Difficulties: A child who receives early stimulation has more tools to face educational and emotional challenges in later stages.

Strategies to Stimulate Our Children

• Interactive Play: Building games, puzzles, and sensory toys help develop cognitive and motor skills.
• Reading from an Early Age: Reading stories and talking with the child fosters language development and imagination.
• Music and Movement: Songs, rhythms, and dances stimulate coordination, memory, and emotional expression.
• Sensory Exploration: Allowing children to experience different textures, colors, and sounds strengthens their sensory development.
• Social Interaction: Encouraging contact with other children and adults helps improve their social and emotional skills.

When we are little, we are not aware of how extraordinary we are. Everything is new to us, and we fail to recognize that some of our abilities are unique and wonderful. At that stage, we rely on our parents for extra support—to help us channel those skills they see awakening in us and guide them toward something positive. Whether it’s an artistic, scientific, or completely different talent, the more children explore the world, the more they discover, constantly recognizing new things that we, as adults, don’t tend to notice as often.

When we become parents, it’s hard to put ourselves back in our children’s shoes. After all, we have grown up, taken on new responsibilities, and sometimes prioritizing our children’s well-being from our adult perspective prevents us from seeing the world through their eyes.

But that’s normal—it happens to all of us. If we were perfect, life would be much easier, and everyone would have kids. However, there are moments when life puts challenges in our path, and sometimes that challenge is a puzzle. We can’t see the full picture until we finish putting it together, and all those pieces that didn’t seem to fit end up forming a beautiful image.

To talk about this topic, I want to share a story.

Pepe is a 6 or 7-year-old boy who is quite restless at school. Although he is very eager to learn, his parents constantly receive calls because he struggles to concentrate in class and ends up distracting his classmates. His parents think this is relatively normal—“He’s just a kid with extra energy,” they assume, so they don’t give it much importance. They simply tell him to pay more attention in class and continue with their daily routine.

In the afternoons, Pepe attends a tutoring group where he gets help with his homework. One day, he arrives more anxious than usual. And who wouldn’t be? His parents scolded him, and he doesn’t quite understand what he did wrong. His teacher notices his long face and asks what’s wrong.

«I got scolded today because they say I get distracted a lot in class,» Pepe responds sadly.

The teacher, who knows him well, is surprised. She knows that Pepe is an attentive and curious child, so something doesn’t add up. Then, she asks him a key question:

«Do you feel like you get distracted? What do you think your teacher sees when you’re not paying attention?»

Pepe thinks for a moment. It’s not an easy question for a child so young, but he does his best and responds:

«Whenever I’m in math class and they give me a problem, I draw it in my mind to solve it. It makes it much easier for me, but I think I take too long to answer, and the teacher believes I’m thinking about something else.»

«And what about Spanish class?» the teacher asks.

«I always try to draw the theory so I won’t forget it. Look!»

Pepe shows the teacher a very nice drawing. At first glance, it might seem like just a doodle, but in reality, Pepe was illustrating sentence structure: the subject, the verb, and the predicate. It was at that moment that the teacher had a revelation.

I want to pause the story here so each reader can draw their own conclusions for a moment. Not everyone would notice this right away.

Now, before reaching a small conclusion, I want to mention something important. Our whole lives, we’ve been presented with school as a vertical learning system: every year, we move up a level, we must learn the same subjects in childhood, and if we succeed in this system, we will be intelligent and acquire basic life knowledge. And indeed, school is valuable and provides us with wonderful learning experiences. BUT—and this is key—it doesn’t always channel our abilities in the best way for us to learn effectively.

We’ve often talked about how every child is a different world. In the same way, not all children learn at the same pace or with the same methods. It’s understandable that in a school setting, it’s difficult to personalize education for every student, and it’s also understandable that teachers struggle to identify each student’s unique skills when they have so many to take care of.

What I want to say with all this is that Pepe was not inattentive, hyperactive, or lacking discipline. Pepe had simply discovered a way to learn that no one had taught him—through drawing.

Sometimes, we find it difficult to step away from traditional methods and explore new ways of teaching because we don’t know what lies beyond. But I believe today’s call to action is simple: let’s listen more to our children. Let’s ask questions, even if we’re not sure they’ll have an answer. They might surprise us.

If we notice that our children are struggling with learning, let’s observe. Before assuming that “he’s just not focused” or “he doesn’t pay attention,” let’s ask ourselves: could it be that the school’s teaching method is not the best fit for him? Let’s put ourselves in their shoes. Let’s remember what it was like to be in school and ask ourselves: If my skills had been channeled differently, where would I be today?

If life came with an instruction manual, I’m sure parents would be the first to order it on Amazon with express shipping. But the reality is that raising a child is the equivalent of assembling an IKEA piece of furniture—without tools, without instructions, and with extra pieces you don’t know where to put (but that, mysteriously, were actually necessary).

Growing up, it was easy to think that adults had everything figured out. And why wouldn’t we? They knew exactly how to order a pizza over the phone, how to book a doctor’s appointment, how to fill out any form, and why we weren’t supposed to swim on a full stomach. But then you grow up and realize that your parents were just improvising with the best confident face they could put on. Turns out adulthood doesn’t come with a magical epiphany that suddenly makes you know everything—it comes with a series of attempts, mistakes, and lessons learned along the way.

From a daughter’s perspective, I’ve come to understand that being a parent is an impossible equation to solve. And I don’t say that lightly or in a negative way, but because each child is a whole world of their own—with their quirks, their emotional needs that change like the phases of the moon, and their inexplicable traumas (like an irrational fear of clowns, the closet monster that doesn’t exist, or simply broccoli). There’s no single way to be a good parent because there’s no single way to be a child. And what worked for one child probably won’t work for another. So it’s not just that there’s no manual—if there were, it would need to be rewritten in every household, in every generation, and sometimes, every Monday morning.

Lately, I’ve become more observant than usual. Maybe it’s growing up, being around a new baby, or simply that I’ve come to reflect on and appreciate my parents’ efforts more. But I’ve realized that no one really knows what they’re doing when they’re handed a brand-new life to care for. Think about it: I’ve heard so many pieces of advice given to mothers—generations of opinions that sometimes contradict each other—and, to be honest, I don’t even know how accurate or true they are.

My existential self wonders as I write this: What did my parents do to make me turn out the way I did? How much of my development was my own doing? Did not watching TV on weekdays help? What would I be like if I liked mushrooms? What if every aspect of my personality were different? Who gets the credit for a good upbringing? NO ONE! No one has the «right» way to raise a child. And surely one of the biggest questions a soon-to-be parent has is: How am I going to make sure this person, whose life is in my hands, grows up to be a good human being?

One of the moments that truly made me understand this was when I realized that my parents weren’t just “my parents.” They were people. People with their own fears, insecurities, postponed dreams, and days when they probably didn’t want to deal with my tantrums because they were going through their own crises. People who, aside from being parents, were individuals with responsibilities, bills to pay, work problems, and days when they simply couldn’t take it anymore. And yet, there they were—trying their best, even when no one was telling them if they were doing it right.

There’s no manual because every family is a unique social experiment where no one really knows what they’re doing, but everyone is trying their best. Some days you win, some days you survive, and most days you just learn. In a parent’s life, the important thing is to be present, to learn to apologize when necessary, and to laugh at the mistakes when possible.

So if you’re a parent, guardian, or responsible for someone and you feel lost, remember this: everyone is. There’s no exact rhyme or reason to raising a child because every child changes the rules of the game. And if you ever doubt whether you’re doing a good job, think about this: the simple fact that you worry about it says a lot. In this crazy journey of parenting, love (and a good dose of patience) is the closest thing to a reliable compass.

And if all else fails, there’s always the option to pretend you know what you’re doing—just like our parents did with us. 😉

Stimulating fine motor skills in children is crucial for their overall development as these skills are fundamental for a variety of daily and academic activities. Fine motor skills involve the precise use of small muscles, especially those in the hands and fingers, to perform tasks that require coordination and dexterity. Below are some strategies and activities to stimulate fine motor skills in children, contributing to their physical and cognitive development.

Sigue leyendo «Stimulating fine motor skills in children» →