Category: exercise your brain

From the moment your kids are able to hold something in their hands, they will probably be grabbing your tablet to try to use it. Kids love technology, and many parents love that all they have to do to entertain their kids is hand them a tablet. There are many benefits to allowing your kids to use tablets, including familiarizing them with technology at an early age, but there are also some serious drawbacks. Here are 10 reasons you may want to hide your iPad from your kids:

Poor Sleep Quality

School-aged children need 9-11 hours of sleep per night, but their sleep may be affected by exposure to tablets. If children sleep with tablets in their rooms, they may be more tempted to stay up late and play games, watch shows, or surf the web. But, the device can interfere with your child’s sleep even after it has been shut off. The blue light from the screen tricks your child’s brain into thinking it’s daylight, so he or she may struggle to fall or stay asleep.

Vision Problems

Staring at a tablet screen for a long period of time can cause eye strain, which may affect your child’s vision in the future. In fact, the problem is so serious that it’s recommended that children let their eyes rest every 20 minutes by looking away from the screen for 20 seconds.

Posture Pains

If your child uses a tablet too long, he may develop aches and pains related to how he is holding the device. For example, his head, neck, and wrists may start to ache because of the way he grips the device. The repetitive motions of tapping on different icons, scrolling through pages, or sending texts and emails can lead to strain injuries, especially in the fingers and hands. The only way to prevent them? By taking a break from using these devices!

Emotional Recognition

A University of California, Los Angeles study found that children who have regular access to technological devices had more trouble reading human emotions than children who did not use these devices. This could affect a child’s ability to connect with others or feel empathy.

Changes to the Brain’s Gray Matter

Research has shown that those who spend a great deal of time in front of a screen experience loss of tissue volume in gray matter areas in the brain. This affects the areas of a child’s brain that control planning, organizing, and impulse control, which could severely limit your child’s development.

Screen Addiction

Kids could become addicted to screens if they use their tablets frequently. Research has shown that screen addiction is real. For instance, researchers have found that dopamine is released into the brain when kids play video games.

Weak Cognitive Muscles

When children listen to their parents reading a story, their brains must process every word and help them visualize what is going on. But, when they use a tablet, the words and pictures are right there, so they don’t have to exert as much effort into following the story. Over time, this may weaken their cognitive muscles and slow down their development.

Loss of Social Skills

Kids need to communicate face-to-face with parents, classmates, and teachers in order to develop strong social skills. But, the more time they spend on their tablets, the less time they will spend interacting with others. This could affect their ability to foster healthy relationships with other people in their adult lives.

Increased Risk of Metabolic Syndrome

People with metabolic syndrome may suffer from obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar, and are at a higher risk for heart attacks and strokes.

Unfortunately, children who spend a lot of time in front of a screen are at a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome as they get older. These children remained in the high risk category even if they balanced their excessive screen time with moderate physical activity, which shows the only way to lower their risk would be to reduce screen time.

Aggressive Behavior

Kids often choose to play violent video games or watch violent shows on their tablets. This love for violence could translate into aggressive behavior as your child grows older.

Although there are many benefits to tablets, there are also downsides to using these devices. The next time your child reaches for a tablet, hand him or her a book instead!

We all want the best for our children — we want them to be kind, curious, engaged citizens with a passion for life that will help them find a path to happiness. Often, one of the things at the top of our list is intelligence — why else would we lose so many hours of sleep worrying about sending them to the best schools and starting those college funds before they’re even born? Intellectual development and ensuring your child can be a successful critical thinker and problem solver is a top concern for many parents.

If you or a parent in your life is looking for ways to promote your son’s intellectual development, here are some of the best toddler boy gifts to get them.

The Value of Books

There’s no better gift you can get a child than a book. It will provide hours of special memories for a parent and their child, as they read the book together. It can become a treasured heirloom that they’ll cherish down the decades and share with their own families.

But more than that, it can be a source of pleasure and entertainment, while also being a crucial intellectual development tool. Studies have shown that children who are exposed to reading before preschool are more likely to do well in every aspect of education. This is because reading not only helps develop basic speech skills and imparts a mastery of language, it also helps hone logical thinking, communication skills, and concentration.

When you read to toddlers, they become much more likely to acquire the skills that enable them to express themselves in a healthy way — they can gain valuable insight from the interaction with those who read to them and witnessing the relationships between characters. This is especially crucial for little boys, as men are often conditioned not to express emotion or to restrain their feelings — reading can help teach them to express themselves in a healthy way.

Reading can also children apply logic to abstract scenarios (and begin to grasp how to implement those tools in their own life) and to recognize cause and effect. These skills will help them become excellent readers, but also effective problem solvers in many walks of life.

Reading also helps cultivate focus and concentration, which promotes a longer attention span, self-discipline, and memory retention. Additionally, these skills and merely sharing the joys of learning will instill a love of reading in your child from a young age — this could help you in future battles over video games, television, tablets, and phones. If your child already wants to choose books over computer games, you’ll be ahead of the game. Finally, reading to your child helps them recognize their own lives and emotions in storytelling, which helps them feel normal and relate to others well.

Use Your Imagination

One of the best toddler boy’s gifts are toys that will promote their imagination — stock up their toy chest to help their fantasies soar to new heights. This means you can never have too many dress-up items (whether it’s a cloak to be a knight in shining armor or a fireman’s hat and jacket) or too many stuffed animals, action figures, and so on. These toys will make the sky the limit when it comes to your child’s sense of play and their imagination.

Developing your imagination is not only key for promoting a strong sense of self and divining hopes, dreams, and motivation, but it’s also a safe space for children to explore their emotions and feelings within a controlled environment. If you see your child re-enacting home scenarios (whether it’s playing school with their stuffed animals, cooking dinner in a mini-kitchen, or putting their action figures in time-out), this is their way of making sense of their own lives and testing their emotions and frustrations in a consequence free environment. It can also be a space for wish fulfillment where they enact scenarios that follow their desired outcome. If you want to promote intellectual development, keeping a well-stocked toy box is crucial in helping your child understand and explore their emotions.

The Classics

If you want to go beyond a stuffed toy or action figure, go for blocks, stacking cups, or a bouncy ball. Their simplicity makes them versatile toys that can assist with cognitive reasoning on multiple levels. Blocks can help a child understand concepts like gravity, as well as assisting them in learning how to recognize patterns and grasp concepts of space and organization.

Stacking and laying out blocks of different shapes and sizes help children learn to recognize patterns, which is the first crucial step in building math skills. Building structures with blocks helps toddlers understand how to organize and enclose space, as well as how to problem solve to create a sturdy structure. Failure to do so will help them understand the precept of gravity in its most basic form.

A bouncy ball is fabulous for improving motor skills and promoting scientific reasoning. Following a ball with your eyes or crawling across the floor after it helps you gain spatial awareness. Playing catch or even rolling a ball back and forth develops basic motor skills and hand-eye coordination. As play becomes more complicated, such as throwing two different size balls, children will perceive differences and ask questions that are the building blocks of scientific inquiry and exploration.

Lastly, something as simple as stacking cups, which has been commodified into a game called Speed Stacks, can help promote motor skills and memory retention. Playing with cups, whether it’s stacking them or filling them with something, helps toddlers learn about volume in an organic way. Having to remember how things stack or how much they’ll hold promotes memory skills.

No matter what you go with, playing with and engaging with your child is the most crucial part of intellectual development. Be there for them, as a parent and playmate, and they’ll be well on their way.