5 Ways to Begin Creating a Nurturing Environment at Home
Children need a certain type of environment to thrive. To be properly develop and his specific milestones, babies and toddlers need a loving, safe space where their unique gifts are celebrated, and where they are understood from the start. This will help ensure they grow into adults who can achieve their highest potential because of the tools they’ve learned from their formative years. In fact, creating a nurturing environment at home is one of the best ways you can help your child find emotional safety and grow.
PALS Praise and Leadership Schools is proud to be a part of your child’s journey toward a future of success. To encourage that journey from the start, put intention toward the following 5 tasks to provide your children with the environment that allows them to flourish.
Listen to Your Child
Engage with your child in a way that shows you’re listening and helps them feel vulnerable in communicating their needs. That means getting down on their level and talking to them about what they’re feeling and saying. This type of active listening is key to helping build their self-esteem and independence from a young age. After all, the more you listen, it shows that you’re respectful of your child and interested in what they have to say. It shows that you find your child important enough hear them, no matter how difficult it may be, and that you are willing to put their needs first. This is a great way to set your child up to find confidence in their words, opinions, and emotions.
Validate Emotions
It’s not very fair to talk about children being in their terrible twos or threes. After all, at that age, toddlers don’t really understand what it takes to regulate emotions or why they feel the way that they do. That’s why it’s so important to help your child understand the big emotions they feel when something happens in their world. When those emotions build up and your child is extremely happy, sad, or angry, talk to them about what they’re feeling to help them process the emotions and learn to recognize them. Acknowledging those emotions shows that you validate them by being willing to empathize with your child. Furthermore, it helps them build emotional intelligence both today and into the future. Validation is important for creating a nurturing environment at home.
Take Time to Bond
Bonding helps build attachments between you and your kids. From the time your child is an infant, it’s important to build that bond to promote your child’s development and growth. Taking the time to cuddle and touch your baby and looking at your baby eye-to-eye helps build confidence and communication skills. As your child develops into a toddler, make sure you’re spending quality time together. Remove any tech and play and read together as well as find other activities like dancing, cooking, and coloring to do together. It’s an important piece in giving your child tools to succeed.
Set Boundaries
Children need boundaries. Even when they test them, researchers say these boundaries build life skills like patience, problem solving, responsibility, and self-discipline. If you’re wondering how to begin creating a nurturing environment at home, holding true to your boundaries is one of the basic ways to do it. When your child sees you set specific boundaries and are clear, specific, and positive, it helps them grow up into caring, respectful adults. You’re setting the stage for their future decision-making, and even modeling behaviors that are healthy for them to experience.
Provide Rich Experiences
Children do their best when the experiences we share with them are memorable, warm, and filled with love. To best nurture your child, provide them with experiences they’ll remember for a lifetime. It may be as simple as playing games with your child or more involved like taking them on a weekend camping trip every summer. If you are there and allowing them to safety navigate the world around them, those experiences will be what helps them explore the world around them and feel connected to the people they love.
Choose PALS for your Child
In addition to creating a nurturing environment at home, it’s important to consider the type of education you can provide your child from the start. PALS Praise & Leadership Schools is the first call to make if you’re in the Peoria IL area. The PALS curriculum is designed to help your child flourish at every stage of development. It’s tailored to your child’s needs and developmental milestones. In fact, within our daily activities, we work to build self-esteem, moral character, and the important developmental skills your child needs for growth. And it’s all designed to allow your child to think, reason, be responsible, achieve, excel, and communicate long before they are adults.
PALS offers two campuses in the Peoria area, both which provide the same incredible standards of care for your child. Schedule a tour of one of our two facilities today. Contact us at our North Peoria campus, located at 2327 W Willow Knolls Rd in Peoria IL, at 309-228-2505. Or give us a call at our Downtown Peoria campus, located at 700 NE Greenleaf in Peoria IL, at 309-740-4463. Once you’re here and see our school, you’ll see why PALS Praise & Leadership Schools is the best choice for your child.
