Three Activities You are Probably Already Doing to Support Your Child’s Cognitive Development

A: Cognitive skills are the functions your brain needs to complete everyday tasks. These functions include the ability to pay attention, to process and store information, and to plan and learn.

A：It refers to the process where cognitive skills become more and more sophisticated as we grow and mature.

A：As children’s cognitive abilities expand, their capacity for further learning also increases.

A：Children acquire vocabulary, sentence structures, grammar and communication skills, enabling them to express their thoughts, understand others, and engage in meaningful interactions.

A：Children develop the capacity to use symbols, such as words, numbers and images, to represent objects, events and ideas. Symbolic thinking allows them to engage in imaginative play, understand abstract concepts, and manipulate mental representations.

A：Social cognition refers to a child’s understanding of themselves and others within a social context. It includes skills such as perspective-taking, empathy, understanding emotions and theory of mind. Social cognition is important as it enables children to navigate social interactions, understand others’ perspectives, and develop positive relationships in life.

A：The bath time routine provides a consistent structure and repetition, which supports memory development. For example, your child can remember the steps involved in bath time, recall the order of actions, and anticipate what comes next. This repetition and memory recall strengthen their cognitive processes related to memory and learning.

A：Co-regulation challenges your child to be more cognitively flexible. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to shift attention, adjust thoughts, and modify behaviors in a changing social context. While co-regulating with you, your child is supported to flexibly adapt their emotions and behaviors in response to your cues and guidance.

A：Through understanding the characters’ experiences and emotions, children build on their social cognition as they learn to comprehend various human emotions and social dynamics.

A：Just by simply providing a rich and stimulating environment and engaging in age-appropriate activities, parents are contributing greatly to their child’s cognitive development.