Guest Post: Why Toys Are A Great Advantage For Your Toddler by Ruan Smit

Toys are a great source for amusement and many parents celebrate the fact that it keeps their children busy while they watch their show on the television or work in the garden. Toys are much more than just your simple keep-your-child busy products but they are also a great form of education. Here is a list of things you might not have known about toys and what they develop in your child.

Fine Motor Co-ordination

Fine motor coordination is used in daily routines such as dressing yourself and fastening buttons and shoelaces. Toys which improve this motor function help strengthen children’s finger muscles which give an advantage with writing and cutting with scissors.

Hand eye co-ordination

Improving hand eye coordination helps with perception, calculating trajectories, with sport, reading and writing. These skills are improved when your child throws and catches balls, bean bags and other throwable objects.

Gross-motor co-ordination

Gross motor co-ordination skills target the bigger muscles in your toddler’s body. This usually entails bigger toys such as trampolines, see-saws and jungle gyms. Any other games and toys promoting actions such as jumping, rolling, stretching and jogging also help to strengthen their muscles at a young age.

Responsibility

Your child learns about responsibility when you give him a toy. When you impress upon him that the toy is his it will create a sense of ownership. This forms a pack of responsibility on him, especially when he has to clean up his toys and ensure that they don’t break (from playing too rough). Learning responsibility will help your toddler know the value of objects later in life.

Social Skills

When other parent’s toddlers come over to play they usually bring their toys with them. Sharing toys and playing with each other’s toy builds your child’s social skills since they have to learn to let other people play with their toys. Toys also bring children together and help them with their social skills when they interact with others. Taking turns and taking other toddlers in consideration will be a great attribute to have developed at a young age.

Know that you know how your toddler’s toys affect more than your social life you might think about putting more consideration in what you buy and how they will affect your child. Everything they learn and do at a small age helps them grow into strong, intellectual and socially acceptable adults.

About the Author:

 

Ruan Smit has been a big kid all his life, when he's not playing with his kids and their imaginext batcave and wheelies stand n play rampway he's typing away furiosly on his laptop, bringing out yet another article!