P is for Productivity: Building Skills

 P is for Protest is the plan I had as it is very important for children to be able to protest and use the word 'no!' to express themselves. While adults quickly tire of the continual use of the term, it is a time when children learn that they are an individual able to express their own views, wants and needs. While a foot-stomping temper tantrum level of NO! is quickly squashed, we do encourage the use of the word overall. For today, I will simply say that protesting is a valuable and necessary, developmentally appropriate skill to build in children.

Another P word is Productivity. This is something that is a lifelong endeavour and a skill that is highly valued in society. We all want to be productive and contribute to the world we live in according to our knowledge and skills. What is not always realized by people, though, is that even the very smallest ones have an innate desire to be productive. A toddler wants to help wash dishes and sweep the floor and they are happy to hold your book or get your phone. They may not do it very well in the beginning and it takes patience to teach them the right steps involved in a task. It is important to encourage them in their endeavours though and not get angry at their attempts and harm their progress.

In fact, the more productive you help them to be, the quicker they will progress. A child who has a lot of roles or jobs to do in their day is able to associate words to their meanings sooner and gain an understanding of how things work and the order in which to proceed. They are making more connections at an earlier age and then they can continue to build on those and expand their knowledge base quickly. For example, you need to learn your alphabet in order to learn to read so if you can recognize letters earlier, you will likely build on that and read earlier too. If you learn to put your own clothes on at a younger age, you will take less time getting ready and have more time available to learn other skills that may be more fun. 

Productivity has the added benefit of helping you accomplish more.  If you are the first to finish reading over your notes, you have time to read and study them again before the time is up. This will help you retain more and be more successful on the subsequent testing of that knowledge. The higher grades open more doors of opportunity too. Productive employees are likewise recognized for their hard work and offered promotions sooner than their counterparts. For a toddler, it looks different but the principles remain the same.

The question is, what does a toddler do that is productive? The answer may surprise you because of how vast it is. Almost everything a child does in productive. You simply have to break an activity down into smaller steps and teach the parts of the whole to the toddler. For example, can they follow your directions and go to the cupboard and get their juice cup? If so, they can comprehend words, walk or crawl, remember locations, find the right place, open a door, recognize their cup, reach for it and take it out then close the door again. Wow! A child can open a door, turn on a light, pull over a stepstool, climb up, turn on a tap, wet their hands, get soap, scrub, rinse off in the water, turn the tap off, get down, get a towel, dry off, turn off the light and go out. Do they know those steps automatically? No. But they quickly learn when you model it for them and gradually give each part of the task over to them to learn. In the blink of an eye it seems they master skill after skill and move through one developmental stage to another. It is so exciting!

Children who do not have these opportunities, do not thrive so be sure to offer all the learning experiences you can to a child. It doesn't have to be costly. There are many things to learn at home with everyday items. For example, discover if cornstarch and water make a liquid or a solid and experiment scientifically with two items easily accessible at home. Go for a walk in the woods and search for birds. Learn their songs and their names so you can identify them again next time. Learn about fabrics, patterns and matching pairs by doing the laundry and learn about bugs, plants, photosynthesis and growth cycles as you work in the garden patch outside. As I said, the list is incredibly long.

It may be easier to do something yourself and it is often faster to take over without a doubt. However. we want the child(ren) in our life to build new skills and giving them the tasks and roles so they can practice and become productive people is a part of that process. Give them the opportunities to learn and watch them shine!