When your child is:

You have a window of opportunity for:

What you can do:

Newborn to 2 years old.

Emotional development

Nurture your child’s emotional and social well-being

• Show your love by what you do as well as what you say..
• Provide your child with a safe and secure environment..
• Acknowledge your child’s emotions, happy and sad..
• Respond to your child’s cues, whether for interaction or for solitude..
• Reinforce your child’s enjoyment of interaction by responding with hugs, smiles, sympathy, laughter..

Nurture your child’s physical well-being through:

• Good nutrition..
• Regular check-ups..
• Immunizations..
• Safe home and day care settings..
• Safe travel, using a car seat.

Newborn to 4 years old.

Math and logic.

• Play counting games...
• Teach one-to-one relationships...
• Music lessons may help develop visual-spatial skills..

Newborn to 10 years old .

Language

• Surround your child with language. Your baby’s adult vocabulary will be determined largely by the words she hears before she is 3 years old..
• Talk and read with your child. During his first year, your baby is learning his native tongue, and practicing his pronunciation of the sounds -- the phonemes -- that make up that language..
• Play riddling, rhyming, and singing games..
• Ask what your child thinks will happen next in a story..
• Have your child recall what happened yesterday, imagine what will happen tomorrow .
• Provide paper, crayons, markers, finger and watercolor paints, coloring books, games. .
• Protect your child’s hearing.
• Introduce second languages before age 10. By the time your baby is 5 years old, her brain will have "pruned" the synapses she would need to speak the sounds of "non-native" languages without an accent..

3 years old to 10 years old..

Music.

• Sing songs.
• Play melodic music and marching games.
• Offer early training in musical instruments if your child shows interest or aptitude