Outdoor sensory play is a fun and educational way for babies and toddlers to explore the world. Activities like digging in soil or feeling different textures promote hand-eye coordination and early science learning.
Parents tell me this all the time, often with a mix of frustration and worry: My child just can't focus the way I could at their age. School feels harder. Emotions escalate faster. Distraction seems constant. But attention isn't a moral trait. It isn't a virtue some children have and others lack. Attention is a cognitive capacity-and it is deeply shaped by the conditions surrounding a child: sleep, stress, sensory overload, and the environment in which we're asking focus to happen.
Most parents of high schoolers spend hours checking their kids' every move, but I didn't want a smartphone when my children were teens. Instead, I insisted they tell me their destination when they went out at night. I'd sometimes follow up with another parent for confirmation, and I'm sure my kids weren't always where they said they'd be. But they usually came home by curfew and always paid their cell bills on time.
On a recent trip, my daughter and I were tossing her stuffed animal around the hotel room. The toy spun around near the ceiling and came to rest on the corner of the TV, high above our heads. My daughter pointed and tried to explain where the animal landed, on the, the, the ... she didn't have the word for "TV." Yep, we had to tell our 4-year-old what that big, black rectangle was called.
For years, my 8-year-old son has been asking for a phone. I'm sure he likes the idea of being social and playing games, but he also loves talking. Copper FaceTimes with friends on my phone (calling their Mom's phone) and regularly calls his grandparents to check in. We wanted to give him an age-appropriate amount of freedom and stumbled across a landline-esque phone for kids, the Tin Can.