• Children create their own games- Rather than when they are inside playing video games, outside play allows children to be creative, and make up their own games and rules. This not only helps them explore their creativity, but it also helps them develop important decision making skills and problem solving skills.

• Exercise- Children who spend most of their playtime inside on the computer or playing video games don’t get the same level of exercise as those kids that choose to play outdoors. Outdoor play helps boost fitness levels.

• Developing important skills- The great outdoors provides a play land of possibilities with different textures, colours and sounds to explore. Not only does outside play help children develop problem solving skills but it also assists with the development of motor-funct

  ion skills and even emotional intelligence.

• The social aspect- When children are free to play outside, they learn to develop important social skills. This is because when they are playing indoors, at school for example, they may not have the opportunity to choose who they work with. However when they have free play outside they are able to decide who they want to play with, and their social interaction skills get more of a workout.

• Important to the childhood years- If you really think about your childhood, one of the things that most people would say is that outdoor play is a huge part of what they remember. Outdoor play helps kids to experiment, discover and push their limits through activities where they can dance, yell and run without the boundaries of indoor play which require children to be careful and keep their voices at a lower level.

• Children learn about the world around them- Being able to play outdoors and learn about gravity for example, by knowing we can slide down the slide not up, and that snow feels cold when we touch it, means that they can learn so much about nature and the world around them and how it works. While this can also be taught in the classroom, through play and discovery young children are often better able to remember things they’ve learnt through outdoor play and actually experiencing while they are leaning.

If your child is more interested in playing video games then getting outside, consider buying them toys that encourage outdoor play. Ultimately if you guide your child to find and discover just how much fun there is to be had outside, they’ll not only learn more, but they’ll eventually trade the hours of indoor activity after school for a few hours of outdoor play on returning home each day.

Play With Your Children

Playing with your children with their toys is important. Not only will it help your child build skills in playing with others, but it will give you a clear indication on where your child may struggle when using certain games and puzzles. You will then be able to see which activities to organise for a play date and what items your child may struggle with and are therefore best to leave out.

Arrange Play Dates

Organise play dates with other children who are of a similar age. If you don’t know who your child would like to invite over, ask them. If you don’t have contact details of parents, you can always talk to their teacher. It’s best to keep these play dates short, so that things don’t have a chance to get boring or little ones get tired and end up having a bad time. Organise activities for them to do that you know your child enjoys and is good at. This will help he/she feel comfortable and less nervous about interacting.

Keep the Play Dates Regular

Once your child shows that they are having a good time and enjoying the play dates you set up for them with certain other children, then you should try to discuss with the parents to repeat the play dates once a week. You can always change the location to a park or the other person’s home. Once your child is leaving you to run off and play, you may want to see how they go by leaving them on a play date under the supervision of the other parent for a few hours.

The Latest ‘IT’ Toys

Sometimes a great way to help boost your child’s self confidence in the playground is to give them something that they are able to talk to other children about. Look at some of the latest online toys with your child and ask them what’s the ‘it’ thing at the moment. This may help them to establish common ground with other kids and give your child a chance to join in activities during recess and lunch times.

Show Your Children How You Interact With Your Friends

Children will always observe and often mimic your behaviour. If you have your own friends over and they see you having a good time, they will get a positive impression of what friendship is about. If possible, invite friends over that also have children so that you can have a double play date.

Once you know how to give your child the relevant skills and support, you’ll find that in their own time, they will develop the confidence and the social skills necessary to get out there and make friends on their own.

Communicate

One of the most important things you can do is communicate with your child. Have they told you what they might be interested in trying out? Have you had a conversation with them and asked them what they would like to do? Sometimes it’s as easy as communicating with your child first.

Make it Fun

Children will pick up on whether or not you want them to simply enjoy themselves, or compete and win every time. This can often stop children from wanting to participate because they feel like there is too much pressure. If you think that your child may be reluctant to participate in activities for this reason, then take a step back and let them know it’s all just for fun, and not about winning or losing.

Try Outs

Many sporting teams and extracurricular activities have evenings or afternoons where the kids can try out or ‘sample’ if you will, the different activities to see if they like it or not, or sometimes even to get an idea if it is something they may have a natural ability for. These sessions are usually free and a great way to give your child a chance to sample a number of activities and choose what they like best.

What Do Their Friends Do?

If your child is shy and you get the feeling they don’t want to participate in after school activities because they might not know anyone, why not find out what activities their friends enjoy, or speak to one of their friends mums about putting them into a sport or afternoon activity together? This will certainly make them more eager to participate and get involved.

What Does Your Child Enjoy?

Children will often show signs of talent or enjoyment for particular activities. Look out for these signs. For instance, they might be really good at swimming and enjoy the pool, or they might be really good at music and are constantly asking you to buy them online toys and things to make music with in order to help them develop and harness their talent. These are often glimpses into the activities that they are best suited to and generally would most likely enjoy.

The main thing is not to lock your child into a particular activity by paying a full term’s fee without them having the chance to try it out and give it a go first. With the right amount of patience and communication you will be able to help guide your child into choosing a wonderful extracurricular activity for them, that will hopefully be enjoyed for many years to come.

Get Started Early

The first thing you should do is start planning a few months in advance. Write your list for gifts and for Christmas cards. Then create a budget for this. By making a budget you wont overspend which is so easy to do at Christmas time. Then it’s a matter of writing down a few suggestions for each person’s gift and how much you want to allocate to each individual.

Buy As You Go

If you are out and you see something that’s perfect for an aunt, uncle or cousin for Christmas, don’t put off buying it because you’re three months out from the big day. By buying your gifts as you go, you won’t even realise how quickly the shopping list will go down, so by the time you are a few weeks out from Christmas, your shopping list will be rather bare.

Shop Online

There are several reasons why shopping online is great for busy mums:

• You can shop online at any time of day, seven days a week. So when you finally get the kids to sleep, you can get to it.

• You can avoid the Christmas rush by shopping online. You know what it’s like, people are everywhere trying to buy their Christmas gifts in the last few weeks before the big day. Shopping online means no traffic, no parking issues and no need to buy the kids a few extra things while you’re out just to keep them happy.

• Search for the best deals with ease. Rather than running around a shopping centre, you can easily look for what you want online, at the best price.

• Shopping online also means having everything delivered straight to your door. So whether you are buying online toys, jewellery or pajamas, all of your Christmas shopping will come to you.

Buy from Only a Few Different Places

It’s a good idea, specifically when you are shopping online, to buy from a select few online stores. This will not only keep postage costs down, but it will also help you keep track of everything you are waiting to receive.

When you’re a busy mum and Christmas comes around, it can often feel like you don’t even get the chance to enjoy the festive season because there is simply just too much to do. I hope our list of tips have given you some useful suggestions for helping you with your Christmas shopping this year, so that you not only get everything done, but you are able to enjoy yourself and spend time with your family during this important, and special time of year.

Enjoy Fun & Creative Activities With Them

Of course, one way to help your child embrace their creativity is through drawing, painting and other forms of arts and crafts. Let them use the colours they want as well as think together about some fun things to paint. Don’t limit them in what they use and how they use it. Let them have the freedom to be creative without restrictions.

Turn Off the Television

The television is fine in moderation but, in large doses, it can stifle your child’s creativity. Your child should be using their free time to play, explore and have fun making up games. Not constantly glued to the television screen. Show your kids how to make their own fun, and they will soon learn to harness their creativity to make playtime more enjoyable, minus the television.

Let Kids Be Messy

When it comes to manageable mess, such as the books being taken off the bottom shelf or a bucket of water and bubbles over the porch, you should learn to let your kids have fun. If your child is too limited in what they can do, explore and play with, they may not be able to reach their full potential with their creativity.

Don’t Cram Too Much In

When a child’s schedule is too full with extracurricular activities or planned play dates and other things they don’t really have the time they need to explore, have fun and just be kids. Children need unstructured playtime in order to develop their creativity and so you need to ensure they have this on a regular basis.

Creating the Right Atmosphere

Your child may be asking you a million different questions all at once, and while you are trying to cook dinner. Rather than brushing this off, or giving them short answers, try to take the time out to go through all of their questions and encourage them to keep asking. You want to encourage their curious and inquisitive mind.

Give Them the Right Tools

All kids need are a few little things to get them started. This may be as simple as some crayons and paper, or some specific online toys they have been asked for. Either way, giving your child the right toys and creative tools to be themselves and enjoy playtime is imperative to ensuring you are nurturing their creativity.

Everyone has the ability to be creative, especially children. If you give them the right tools, encouragement and create the right environment, your child should be able to explore and develop their own creativity through playtime and enjoying artistic activities.

Set up a designated work space for them

We all know if can be hard to work at the dining table with the television going and younger siblings playing. Invest in setting up a work area for your child with a desk and comfortable chair. The area should be peaceful without distractions so they can get on with what they need to do.

Purchase a large wall calendar

By purchasing a large wall calendar you can mark the dates for when large assignments are due. There’s nothing more stressful than having to rush an assignment because it was forgotten and by having a large calendar up clearly marked with when things are due, this won’t happen.

Regular breaks

Depending on how old your child is, they will need to take regular breaks from studying and homework. Younger children may only last 20 minutes on one task whereas as a teenager can last over an hour. Give your child the freedom to do this as a reward each time they’ve finished a section of work or read a certain number of pages of their text book.

Routine

Help your child get into the routine of doing their homework. If they can get themselves into this routine early, when it comes to high school and big exams, they will be used to putting the time in each night to study. Good habits start in primary school.

Helping your child with homework

There’s nothing wrong with helping your child through their homework by checking over math equations they’ve worked out or looking at their list of spelling words. It only becomes a problem when the parent feels that their child is constantly asking, when the know what they are doing.

Rewards for good effort and concentration

If your child has been good for the last week and completed all of their homework on time then it’s a good idea to reward them for this. Give them a treat or let them choose from a selection of online toys for an assignment well done they worked really hard on. We all want acknowledgement when we do a good job and kids are no different.

Helping your kids with their homework is all about making sure that they have the right environment to work in and are able to focus on the task at hand. If you are there to guide them and assist them when necessary, this is also important. By helping your child learn how to focus on doing their homework each night, you are helping them to gain the necessary skills required as they head towards examinations and end of high school exams so they find concentrating and studying a relatively easy task.

Seize every chance to provide an accurate answer

You don’t have to wait to have a sit down with your kids to outline the ins and outs of sex. In fact, even while they are still young, say under 6, you can help them understand the concepts of sex without being too graphic. The best way to do this is to always answer their questions honestly but without going into too much detail.

For example, if they ask you, ‘how does the baby come out of the tummy?’ The response to this question will depend on your personal views and the age of the child. Even a direct answer about going to the hospital and a doctor removing the baby will avoid any embarrassment.

No distractions

When you do want to sit down with your child to have this discussion, you want the television off and nothing around them that can be distracting. Make sure that you also aren’t distracted or awkward, otherwise your child may pick up on this. You want them to feel comfortable talking about this topic with you so that in the future should they want to ask a question, you are the person they feel comfortable going to.

Kids about to hit puberty

This is the age where you can introduce the ideas of sex within a loving relationship and what marriage is all about. These conversations are important to have once your child knows the basic concepts behind sex. Before starting any conversation like this, get an idea first about what your child already knows.

Guiding them with books

If you feel you’re starting to blush or there are some serious in depth questions your child wants answered and you aren’t quite sure what to say, a helpful book targeted at teaching sex education to your child’s age group can be a great help. You can either look at the book together and go through it with them, or give it to them following your conversation so they can read over it in their own time and come to you with any added questions they might have.

When your child moves on from wanting only to pick their favourite from a number of online toys to asking you some serious questions about how babies are made, there’s no harm in being prepared. Kids are always going to be curious and it’s better to be ready for their questions then turning pink when they ask you where they came from one day out of the blue.

A drop in marks

If your child is being bullied at school, they aren’t going to be paying much attention in class. If you notice a sudden severe drop in their marks, then you should be talking to your child about what’s causing their grades to drop.

Big change in mood

If your child is usually very carefree and now has become anxious and unpredictable, it could be the stress of being bullied is causing he/she to act this way.

Poor behaviour towards younger siblings

Many children who are bullied take their frustrations out on younger siblings at home. They could start shoving  them, destroying their drawings and just begin to act mean towards them.

Unexplained marks or bruises

Kids are always going to get bumps and scratches while playing, but if you are noticing that your child seems to have more than the usual, then this could point to something happening to them on the playground involving other children.

Pretending to be sick

We all have our off days when we’d rather stay at home then go to school or work. However if your child seems to be constantly saying they feel sick when you know yourself, they are faking sickness to stay home, it could be to avoid someone who is bullying them at school.

Wants to bring lunch

Bullying mostly occurs during break times during the day. Lunch time being the most common time of day when incidents occur. If your child is asking to only ever bring their lunch when they used to love buying it, this could be because they are forced to give over their lunch money to a bully.

Damage or loss of their property

It was only a few weeks ago that the toy your child picked out from a range of online toys was his pride and joy and he wouldn’t be separated from it. After a day at school, it comes home completely damaged or worse yet your child says he’s lost it.

Knowing whether or not your child is the victim of bullying can often be tough because kids find it difficult to open up about these things. But if you know the signs to look for then you can be on the look out for any behavioural changes that suggest the need to talk to your child and find out what’s going on.

Your child:

There are a few things you need to make sure your child is ready for, should you buy them a pet:

• A young child may not be able to handle a small animal. Can they resist the urge to look but don’t touch so that fluffy doesn’t get let out of the cage without you knowing?

• Maturity level is another very important thing to consider. Think to yourself, does your child lose things, drop things, is still a little clumsy with fragile objects? It can all end is disaster if your child and the pet have an accident.

• Their personality is also something to think about. Does your child play calmly and show empathy for others? Or are you liable to see your child’s new pet guinea pig on a floating device in the middle of the pool one day? If that’s the case then waiting a little longer would be a good idea.

• Does your child have any allergies to fur? If so, you may want to get an animal that can be housed outside or alternatively you may want to look at pets that don’t have fur, such a fish or lizards. Depending on your child’s allergy, there are also dogs and cats that have low allergenic fur as well which you may want to look into.

Choosing a pet:

• It’s often thought that a smaller pet is best for a first pet, but this really isn’t always true. If your child is fascinated and still doesn’t know how to restrain themselves from poking and prodding things then a small animal just wont be appropriate.

• Larger animals are often better for boisterous kids who love to play and interact with their pet, a dog for instance would be ideal.

• What are you willing to do in terms of caring for the pet? This is a question you really need to ask yourself. Are you prepared to be walking, feeding and playing with the new pet too? Depending on the age of your child, more than likely he/she will be your responsibility mostly.

• What pets have you had in the past? If you know how to look after a dog, cat or rabbit because you’ve had them before then you know what you and your child are in for and can make a well informed decision.

Choosing a pet for your child is different from asking them to choose from a number of online toys on a website. While a child may think they are ready, ultimately you are the one that knows if the times right. All in all, a pet can be a rewarding, fun addition to the family as long as you and your child are ready for it.

• Being a positive role model for your children – If you show through your words and actions that you respect yourself and have confidence your kids will see this. Children do a great job of mimicking the behaviour of those around them and you are their most important role model they are looking to.

• Spend one on one time with your child – This could be 20 minutes playing with them, or watching sports. Whatever it is, this time spent together shows your child that you value their company.

• Be positive – There are plenty of negative things going on the world. Try to highlight the positive things rather than the negative.

• Empowering your child – There are several ways to make your child feel empowered. One way is to give them choices. You can predetermine the outcome by what options you give them, but by letting them make their own choices sometimes you can help your child feel good about themselves.

• Entrust your child with something important – Giving he/she something to do around the house that is their responsibility, even if it’s something small this can help build up their self esteem.

• Create routines – Kids need positive routines in their everyday lives to feel secure. Set a schedule for bedtime and meals and try not to deviate from this schedule if you can avoid it.

• Reward your child when they achieve something – Even if it’s something small, always reward your child if they achieve something. This could be as simple as taking them for ice cream or letting them choose from a selection of online toys to be delivered to your home. By doing this your child will feel an instant confidence boost and will feel proud of what they have achieved.

• Be constructive with your criticism of your child – Use your words carefully and try not to be critical.

• Monitor who your child is spending time with – If your child is spending time with someone who you consider to be unhealthy for their self esteem, then encourage them to play with other children. You want your child to make friends with happy, positive kids and avoid spending their time with children that are negative.

There are so many different ways to boost your child’s self confidence. The best way to start is to begin by being kinder to yourself and proving to your child that you have a high level of self confidence in your own abilities. From here you can use our tips as a guide to ensure your little one is happy and confident in themselves, even when you’re not around.