6 Simple Ways To Boost Your Toddler’s Brain Power

Children learn a lot from their immediate environment and the people they are surrounded by, therefore, creating a stimulating environment which enables them make lots of brain connections (synapses) on a daily basis is vital. Though there are no guarantees you’ll eventually raise an Isaac Newton, putting the following into practice will give your tot’s cognitive skills a significant boost.

1. Provide An Enabling Environment

This does not necessarily imply providing an affluent home with all its trappings, but one that is warm, loving, violence and abuse free, conducive enough to raise a child who will feel loved, safe, secure and organised. Research suggests that having a disorganised household may affect a child’s intellectual function. Place lots of positive associations around your child and ensure regular interactions with intelligent adults and older kids who read and communicate well.

2. Feed Your Tot’s Brain

Provide wholesome nutrition by feeding your child regular meals that contain all the essential vitamins and minerals and ensuring adequate intake of water. Apart from ensuring optimal health, this also nourishes his brain and keeps it properly hydrated.

Include foods that contain antioxidants, omega-3 fatty acids in oily fish such as mackerel, salmon or sardines, and complex carbohydrates which are particularly helpful in boosting brain health such as brightly coloured fruits and vegetables, nuts, peanut butter, eggs (especially the yolk), beans, broccoli, yoghurt, lean beef, avocados, whole-grain breads, pastas, cereals and brown rice, in his diet. Note that skipping or eating breakfast late may have negative impacts on your tot’s learning potential for the day.

READ ALSO: 8 Superfoods That Boost Your Child’s Brain Power

3. Ensure Adequate Zzzzzs

From between 10-12 hours of night sleep to about 2 hour nap daily, your tot needs adequate rest to stay healthy and refreshed and meet up with his daily learning tasks. Apart from this, a study conducted by The University of Chicago suggests that adequate sleep consolidates learning by restoring what was lost over the course of the day, protecting against further loss, and generally stabilizing and protecting memory. Make sure your tot isn’t sleep deprived.

4. Be His First Teacher

In the early ages, brain cell connections are believed to grow in trillions but the rule of thumb is for caregivers to help children continuously stimulate these connections or they’ll forfeit them. Hence, keep your child’s brain as active as possible by nurturing it through various learning activities. Engage him in meaningful conversations and ask open-ended questions in place of those that elicit yes or no. Sing songs that require finger play so that they stick to his memory. Introduce varieties of creative and exciting indoor and outdoor play activities that facilitate acquiring language, psychomotor and cognitive skills.

5. Blocks And Puzzles

When toddlers build blocks, solve puzzles or explore puzzle pieces, they are acquiring knowledge about logic, physics, reasoning, balance and so much more. In addition to this, stock up your home with brain building toys such as shape sorters, nesting toys, simple board games, magnetic boards with letters and numbers, musical toys, hand puppets, art and crafts materials like crayons, construction paper, finger paints, and so on, to encourage further developmental exploration.

6. Less TV

Your tot needs to stay active and excessive screen time, which has been linked with obesity, attention deficit disorder and poor concentration, does not help with this objective. Experts therefore recommend limiting toddlers’ screen time to only high quality educational programs that are interactive for a maximum of two hours per day. Supervise what your child watches, reinforcing what is being taught. Watching TV with high quality content can stimulate his brain positively.

Note that exposing your tot to too much than he can handle can be counterproductive and should be avoided. Don’t set unrealistic expectations and begin to put unnecessary pressure. Keep play and learning activities simple and fun, introducing them one at a time.