NURTURE YOUR CHILD’S MENTAL HEALTH THROUGH PLAY – just a few tips to guide you as parents to help make life fun.

Jungle Tots Chidren’s Day Nursery in Peterborough fully understands how play is crucial to children’s healthy development and happiness and is vital for children’s mental health and wellbeing.

The staff at Jungle Tots Day Nursery Team value play so much we are always looking for ways to keep making it more fun. We came across this article written by Play Matters and NI Executive.

Play allows children to create and explore the world; developing lifelong skills and competencies. From birth through to teenage years, babies and children develop important social and emotional skills through watching, listening, and interacting with YOU and through their play.

Good play experiences can therefore help nurture children’s emotional and mental health.

Play is a natural part of childhood and through play, children:

make sense of the world;
can feel in charge, express and learn to manage their feelings;
build skills and self confidence in themselves;
learn about relationships – making friendships, negotiating with others, leading and
following, being patient, caring for others;
develop resilience and empathy, and learn to control their impulses or frustrations;
learn how to make decisions, fix mistakes and to feel better and

HAVE FUN!

How parents or adults can support children’s play:

allow time for play – try not to schedule too much into a child’s day (whatever age);
provide playthings (dependent on child’s age) and allow children to play in their own way both indoors and outdoors;
play and interact with babies, toddlers and children throughout the day – most children love adult company and babies in particular need frequent positive interaction and engagement with adults;
join in, when invited – follow the child’s lead and resist the temptation to always direct a child’s play experiences;
watch for play cues – children have different ways of signalling if they would like adult involvement or help, resources or encouragement and

BE A POSITIVE, PLAYFUL ROLE MODEL!

If parents and carers are interested in more articles about the importance of play there are some good articles on the Play Matters web page.

If you are worried about any aspect of your child’s development or would like more help at home as we know how hard parenting is, please just ask for some time with our day nursery manager. You can contact her here.