Cognitive Skills Development

A thorough understanding by parents on child skills development especially during early years for me is a very crucial. This is to ensure our children grow happily and healthily. One of the skills to be developed is cognitive or intellectual skills development.

What is Cognitive Skills Development?

Cognitive skills development is the constructive of thought processes such as learning, remembering, problem solving and decision-making progressively starting from childhood all the way till we grown up.

Cognitive skills are the core skills which relate to attention, memory and thinking, that our brain is cognitively used to pay attention, to think, to learn, to read and to remember.

Children are aware of their surroundings since they are born. They begin to learn when they actively explore. Children are naturally curious and they constantly learning about the world around them. I admit this as I observe Harris from time to time.

Then, they process the information gathered around them and use the data to develop perception and thinking skills, analyse and make comparisons, and can understand causes and effects, as well.

Most cognitive skills development are learned and can be improved with practice and the training, eventhough some are genetically inherited.

The Core of Cognitive Skills Development

❤️ ATTENTION

When children learn to focus, this enable them to concentrate on one task at a time and learn to avoid distraction, too. Children younger than five years old tend to have short spans of focusing and paying attention ability; typically last 15 minutes or less but eventually increase for longer period as they grow up. Yup Harris always watching television for no more than 15-20 minutes before moving and playing around and then keep coming back and forth watching cartoons again 😂

💛 MEMORY

Memory is important as children use this cognitive skill to retain and to remember what they learned and experienced. These will eventually build future bases of knowledge. Eventhough children younger than five years old have difficulty with short-term and long-term memory retention, soon as they progress into school years, both short-term and long-term memories increase.

Teaching with rhymes or catchy songs can facilitate children’s memories, especially when there’s a lot of information to digest. These help their brain organise and retain the content better. And no wonder all this while Harris loves happy songs, music and dancing 😍

💙 THINKING

This cognitive skill helps children with the ability to think, which includes being able to reason out and find solutions, also to generate ideas. Once Harris knocked on his head to the dining table and said “Jatuhh”, in other word he was in pain. Whenever he got hit again and cried, I would simply ask WHY and he reasoning it out by saying “Jatuh” while showing the table 😆

(Sources of info: study.com, healthofchildren.com, learningrx.com)

Why All Of These Are Important For Parents?

Cognitive skills for children especially toddlers include rhyming ABCs, counting numbers, knowing colours, sorting shapes, identifying objects such as vehicles, animals, fruits and vegetables, people, etc.

You cannot make people learn. You can only provide the right conditions for learning to happen.

Vince Gowmon

Better understanding on our children helps us develop better learning surroundings for them. We can also sharpen our powers of observation and of course, to create beautiful bonding with our little ones by involving ourselves in their growing process. I pray that I can always watch Harris growing up right before my eyes 😘

Love,
Momma Hana 🌹