Toddlers are known to be very busy creatures! Getting them to slow down, look and share attention with you can be a challenge. While it may seem easier to let them occupy themselves and bounce from one activity to another, it is important for learning and future relationships to engage meaningfully with them. Teaching your little one to look at you, use non-verbal gestures like pointing and actively listen will help them to communicate better with others.

Some little ones seem to engage more naturally and don’t need much intentional prompting from an adult, while others are happy to be in their own little world and need help to actively play with others. So how can you, as an adult, draw your child out of their solitary play and entice him to enjoy the give and take of playing with others? As occupational therapists and experts on play, we share some of our best pointers to get you started:

1. pointing – encouraging your little one to point while looking at books or birds flying overhead will illicit shared attention and engagement. If he struggles to isolate his pointing finger, you could gently roll and tug along his finger from the base to the tip with your fingers, like a massage. Also try activities to isolate this finger such as finger painting, poking holes into playdough or planting seeds in the garden by poking holes for them.

2. reading – carve out some time to read at least 2 books a day with your little one. If his attention span is short you don’t have to read each word – rather focus on the pictures and choose books with actions he can do. Read his favourites over and over and see if he can remember the story and “read” it to you.

3. child-led play – imitate what your little one is doing by getting down onto the floor with her and copying the actions, sounds, facial expressions and activities she is doing. If your little one struggles to get started with this you can bring in a few favourite objects and see what she does (e.g. a ball, doll, teddy, mixing bowl and spoon).

4. requesting – many in tune caregivers know what their child wants before she has asked for it. It is important to “play dumb” and create the need for her to actively ask for what she wants. This could be gesturing (e.g. pointing or signing) or using language (e.g. saying “more juice”). You can model how to do this in the beginning if you need to. Look for opportunities during activities for your child to request, for example when colouring you could show her 2 colours and she can request the one she wants to use.

5. waiting for a response – young children in particular take a little time to process information. As adults we often expect them to gather, process and respond as fast as we do. Try to slow down a little and allow your child time to process and decide on a response. If you ask a question give him time to reply (count to 10 in your head if you have to!), if you request a choice from her give her a moment to pick an option, if he is hesitant to start an activity allow him a pause to decide where he wants to begin.

6. eye contact – this is such an important part of engaging with others. Show your child that he has your full attention by giving him eye contact from your side and then ask for his eye contact when he is responding to you. To encourage this you can wait for him to look at you when he is awaiting your response before answering him, gently guide his head up so that he is looking at your face, call his name or ask him to look at you before giving him a response or requesting something from him.

The seemingly “good” child who is easy to manage due to being able to play quietly on their own can seem very convenient, but needs our help to draw them out into meaningful play with others. Relationship is our ultimate goal, which can facilitate friendships, form the basis for learning and create self confidence from which your little one can engage with his world and those around him. Regular short periods of time throughout the day where you as a caregiver, intentionally engage and purposefully connect with your little one will go a long way in helping him on the playground, in class and with his family.

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In today’s rushed and digital era it is easy to miss opportune moments to strengthen this bond. We may be rushing from one activity to another, trying to multitask or distracted by an email as we try to work from home. This is why we have to be purposeful in order to ensure that this connection is secure.

Feeding is an opportune time where this bonding and attachment happens most naturally. As the baby feeds and gazes into their caregivers eyes, they are perfectly positioned on a sensory and neurological level to grow this attachment. Most often Mom is the one feeding her baby and thus inherently benefits more consistently from this magical attachment activity. This can leave Dad feeling less of a bond initially with his baby. Often this bond strengthens with Dad when a new sibling arrives, forcing Mom to be less available as she cares for the new baby. This gives Dad some focused opportunities to bond with his child. However, there is no need to wait for a new sibling to strengthen your baby’s attachment to significant others, you can start from the very beginning. Strong early attachment bonds have been proven to impact positively on future relationships and emotional well being.

Tips for strengthening attachment from the start:
1. skin-to-skin – make sure to spend some time daily with your baby in just their nappy and lying directly on your chest (their skin to your skin). Anyone can do this – not just Mom!

2. eye contact – be intentionally present when feeding, changing, bathing or singing to your baby. Try not to be distracted by others, screens or background noise. Try to position yourself approximately 30cm from your baby’s face as this is the best distance for them to focus on you.

3. contrasting colours – babies are able to focus on strong contrasts the easiest. You can wear make-up to contrast your eyes and lips or wear solid, bold coloured clothing which contrasts with your background.

4. co-sleeping – newborn babies do not form habits for the first few months, so co-sleeping during this time can have lovely attachment benefits without the fear of forming these sleep habits. You can co-sleep or rest with your baby during their nap time, it does not need to be all night.

5. peek-a-boo – there is a reason why babies love this game so much. It is because by playing this game they are learning that their caregiver is always there, even when baby can’t see them. In this way babies develop form constancy (knowing an object or person is there, even when it is out of sight), which helps them not to be anxious when they are separated from their caregiver for a short period of time. This trust that their caregiver will come back does wonders for bonding and attachment.

6. purposeful time – taking daily pockets of time to stop everything and focus solely on engaging with your little one (without background noise or other distractions) will grow this attachment bond. You could try cooing or imitating facial expressions (e.g. puckering lips or sticking your tongue out) and waiting for your baby to similarly respond. For the slightly older baby you could have fun with hand clapping games, nursery rhymes or action songs.

7. attachment object – many babies will attach to an object that smells familiar (like mom, dad, granny). You could try sleeping with one of their receiving blankets or a taglet. Then give this to them when they are sleepy, upset or away from you for a time. Babies sense of smell is stronger than adults’ and thus you should be careful not to overstimulate them with strong perfumes.

Just like we all have different personalities, we also all have different sensory needs and preferences. Some babies can tolerate a lot of attachment and bonding activities in their day while other babies become easily overwhelmed with too much. The best way to know what your baby needs is to watch their signs. Follow your baby’s lead and watch for cues that he has had enough. He may look away from you, yawn, hold up his hands in front of him, suck on his fingers more, start to hiccup, arch his back or give you a little frown. You don’t need to spend one long period in the day bonding with your baby, shorter more frequent periods throughout the day can be just as valuable. Happy bonding!

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Motor planning or praxis is the ability to come up with an idea, plan and then smoothly execute the idea as a movement. It is important to distinguish between cognitive planning (a process that happens mostly on a brain level) and motor planning (which happens on a body level). Many children are very creative and have fantastic ideas but struggle to get these ideas to translate into action. For example, cognitive planning would be making a mental list of what you may need to make supper this evening and motor planning would be used when you learn a new skill, such as learning to ride a bicycle or drive a car. As adults we don’t tend to motor plan a lot because activities have become more automatic for us. For children, however, who learn new skills every day, motor planning forms a big part of their development. 

Just as some adults learn how to drive a car easily, showing good praxis, others will take longer to learn this skill. It is the same with children. Some children will be able to run up to a jungle gym and seem to have ideas of how to navigate their way around the obstacles without thinking, others watch first and are slower to take action. Having good praxis skills as a child is not only linked to outdoor play. Children who struggle in this area also display a slower work pace in the classroom, tend to talk through tasks rather than simply executing them and watch others around them to help them get started on school tasks. All this leads to them struggling to complete tasks on time. 

Children with motor planning difficulties use more mental energy and cognitive planning to compensate for inadequate praxis skills. This can be tiring and frustrating as they try to keep up with their classmates and the pace in the classroom. Have you noticed this tendency in your home or classroom? We would love to hear your thoughts on why you think this is and what you are seeing and experiencing as parents, teachers and therapists. Watch this space next week for some tips and strategies to help your children improve this important skill.

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Sensory Integration is the ability to organise the senses your body is exposed to and to act appropriately on that information. Your little one’s amazing body has 7 senses to help him make sense of his world. He has 3 “near” senses (touch receptors, proprioceptors and vestibular receptors) which give him information about what is happening to his body and the immediate world around him. Proprioception provides input on his body’s position in space (e.g. whether his body is upright or lying down). The vestibular sense provides movement information, which is vital for balance. There are also 4 “far” senses which give him input on his environment. These include hearing, taste, smell and vision. Integration is complex. Each person’s response to sensory input results in unique behaviours. Enjoyment and functionally effective behaviour comes from the integration of ALL these senses simultaneously! What incredible assimilation your baby has to learn in time to come!

As caregivers, you will need to learn which senses are alerting and which are calming for your precious baby. Sensory input can have different effects on different babes! For instance, rocking may be calming for most babies. However, it may be alerting for some. Moreover, the physical and social aspects of his environment will influence your baby’s ability to respond appropriately. The key is to observe your baby’s behaviour on an ongoing basis, especially in new situations. Look out for signs of enjoyment and signs of sensory overload.

So how could these senses impact on breastfeeding? Let’s look at two sensory systems that could have a big influence: touch and movement. Breastfeeding is a high touch activity. If your baby craves touch and loves hugs and cuddle time, then breastfeeding is probably one of his most favourite activities!

You can increase the amount of touch stimulation he gets by:

• feeding him skin-to-skin (with his clothes off against your skin),
• holding him a little tighter (like a hug) rather than letting him lie passively in a feeding pillow,
• encouraging him to use his little hands to stroke and move on your skin or holding his hand while he feeds,
• stroking and rubbing his skin while he feeds (back, arm or leg rubs can be very calming for him).

• feeding him with his clothes on,
• swaddle him while feeding (make sure his little hands are near his face and not tucked against his body),
• allow him to lie in a feeding pillow,
• don’t stroke him or touch him with light intermittent touches, rather use firm or holding touches.

• feeding in a rocking chair, sitting on an exercise ball or while walking (a baby carrier would be useful for this),
• adding a vibrating mat under a pillow while he feeds,
• having short movement breaks in between (e.g. sitting him up and bouncing gently on your lap).

• use a feeding pillow to keep his position still,
• try feeding him while lying down on your side with him lying next to you and pillows propping him from behind to keep him in the correct position,
• feeding while he is in a wrap, carrier or sling to help him feel contained.

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The below diagram of a tree may help you to visualise what is happening with your little one’s development. It is important that, just like a tree, the “root” (or foundation) skills need to be watered and developed first so that the rest of the tree can grow healthy and strong. These sensory systems (touch, smell, taste, hearing, sight, movement and body position sense) are the basis of all other development and require constant input as your amazing baby grows and develops. As we move up the trunk of the tree (postural security, awareness of two sides of the body, motor planning, body scheme and reflex maturity) the development of the skills becomes slightly more complex. If there are strong, healthy roots, then the trunk skills will have a stable base to build on and should develop with opportunity and practice. The branches (ocular motor control, eye-hand coordination, attention, auditory and language, visual perception, spatial perception and postural adjustment) are the next level of development and can only progress well when built on the strong roots and trunk skills of the tree. The final stage is the fruit of the tree (self care tasks, behaviour and academic learning) and these are the skills your child is measured and tested on. They are the product of all that’s below them. Just as a tree that is not watered has shallow roots or an unhealthy trunk that will not bear fruit, so too a child that does not have strong foundational skills will not be able to attain the more complex academic, social and emotional skills expected of them. For example, maturity of the touch system (root level) enables better motor planning ability (being able to plan and execute a purposeful movement) which is a trunk skill. This is important for eye-hand coordination (a branch) which in turn enables the development of writing skills for academic learning (fruit). In other words, input at the root level can have an impact all the way up the tree to the fruit.

Making sure you spend some time each day providing Sensory Play opportunities for your baby/toddler will help them to form firm foundations on which to build more complex skills as they grow and develop.

Play is your child’s “work” and it is the way he learns best. JumpLeapFly will be hosting a one day workshop together with Training for Life which will cover both Sensory Play as well as Baby/Toddler CPR and First Aid – the PlaySafe Workshop. This will be an interactive workshop with loads of sensory activity ideas for you to do at home with your little one. Presented by professionals in these fields you will also have the opportunity to ask questions and try out many of the practical aspects of the workshop. We would love you to join us! Please visit www.FaceBook.com/JumpLeapFly for more information and to book for the next workshop.

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• feed your child before you get there – most babies, toddlers and even older children do not eat well when there are so many other interesting activities distracting them, and of course their food choices may gravitate towards the sugar laden treats! Feed them at home or, if they can manage it, pack an exciting on-the-go lunchbox for the car trip there.
• make sure they drink plenty of water – take their own water bottle along and encourage them to drink often. With so much fun going on they may miss their own bodies signals that they are thirsty.
• dress them in comfortable clothes – cute party dresses and little shirts make for amazing photos, but being uncomfortable or unable to move freely can be very frustrating for your child. The build up of this over the course of the day can push your little one over into meltdown as their sensory systems are already taking in and trying to manage more than usual during parties especially.
• have a few breaks in between  – depending on your child’s sensory personality and their age, take some breaks from all the busyness of the outing. You could go for a short walk to a quieter part of the park or party area, perhaps hunt for some bugs or look for different types of birds. Putting a baby in a baby carrier and going for a walk may result in your little one getting a much needed nap before rejoining everyone again.
• use some sensory-smart tools – deep hugs and squeezes are calming while tickly or light touch will have the opposite effect. Being pushed and bumped constantly can be very overwhelming for some little ones and simply moving them to the edge of the activity, doing it with them or taking a break now and then can help to temper some of these intense feelings. Chewing crunchy foods and sucking are also very calming for your child’s sensory system, so help them pick some snack items accordingly.
• leave before the wheels fall off! – most of us know the limits of what our children can manage, according to their sensory personalities. Pay attention to reading the subtle cues your little one gives you and make plans to leave before they are unable to manage their responses and they are heading towards meltdown. These cues may be as simple as yawning, staring off into space or being more clingy than usual. They may also be unable to share space with other children so easily or you find they are not able to focus enough to follow simple instructions.
• most importantly…have fun! –  when you are relaxed and having fun your children tend to follow your example.

We wish you all loads of exciting outings in the days and weeks to come. Please share with us all your favourite outing destination. There must be so many we haven’t tried yet!

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What do you think of when you smell cinnamon, lavender, vanilla or lemon? Perhaps we should be asking what do you feel when you smell certain scents? Unlike our other senses, information from our olfactory receptors travels straight to the emotional part of our brains. From there it gets sent to other more cognitive brain centres, but our primary response to smell is emotional. This may explain why you can smell a certain scent and think immediately of the same person or event every time you smell it. You will also have an emotion attached to some smells, for example smelling apples and cinnamon may make you think of your grandma because she always baked apple crumble for you and you may have a very loving, positive emotion attached to that smell. Unfortunately, the same is also true for negative emotions associated with certain smells. These strong emotional reactions to smell (both positive and negative) occur even before our brain has registered what the smell is (e.g. “vanilla”) because identifying the smell only happens once information has been passed on to the “cognitive” areas of the brain. So smell really can impact our (and our children’s) mood and behavior!

Understanding this link between smell and emotion, as parents we need to be mindful that our child’s response to certain smells may really be a true reaction from them, and not a willful manipulation of the situation. This is probably most evident in a child’s reaction to the smell of certain foods. Especially for a child who has a particularly sensitive sense of smell. As adults, we have a dampened sense of smell, but babies in particular have a heightened sense of smell and can therefore have a stronger reaction than what we may feel is warranted in some instances. We can help their sensitive little sensory system from becoming overwhelmed by being aware of the smells in their environment. Be aware specifically of smells that stay with your baby (e.g. perfume, baby lotion, laundry detergent). And for very young babies be aware of intense smells that stay on you (e.g. perfumes, shaving gels, hair sprays) as they spend most of their time being on or close to you. Air fresheners and scented candles can also be rather overwhelming for babies and sensitive toddlers.

As adults, we can become better at either filtering out a smell once we know what it is or even moving ourselves so that we are further away from the smell. For children who are particularly sensitive to smell it is not so easy. As babies and toddlers are too young to identify that it may be a particular smell that is making them feel overwhelmed they are not able to tell you and therefore their behaviour often changes to alert us to the fact that something is not quite right in their sensory environment. So how do we know?! Well you have to become a sensory detective and try to put the clues together! Your sensitive little one may turn and bury his face in your shoulder or his own shirt, hold his breath, try to plug his nose or simply fuss more in environments with more intense smells.

Some tips…

• Simply being aware that your little one has a more sensitive sense of smell than you do can help you to understand his behaviour as well as help him to cope better with his sensory world.
• Steer clear of “smelly” situations where possible (e.g. sit far away from the kitchen in a restaurant).
• Investigating different smells as they come up can go a long way in helping him especially if it is an unfamiliar smell. Talking about it and giving him the words he can use can enable him to alert you in future if there is a particular smell bothering him.
• Serving food cool rather than warm can help to dampen the smell for him.
• Making sure his snack box is not packed with any smells that he finds overwhelming.
• Try out washing powders that have very subtle smells and avoid wearing perfume for a time to see if these things have an impact.

If you would like to find some really fun activities to do with your little one to help them explore their sense of smell, please take a look at our book Groovy Adventurers: How to encourage your baby to move from one developmental stage to the next while having a blast!

Wishing you a happy “Smell” Day, and hoping you have a host of positive smell associations as you explore this amazing sense with your little people!

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