Play and your child's development

Your baby's brain doubles in weight in the first year due not to the growth in the number of brain cells but to the connections between them.

These connections only begin to form when your baby has to think about something. Contact with new sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches make your baby think, and that's why stimulation is essential from birth.

Approximately one-third of a child's intellectual skills will have been mastered by the time the child is six. Nearly fifty per cent of the child's mental capacity will have developed between birth and the age of four, a further thirty percent between four and eight, and the remaining twenty per cent between eight and seventeen.

Development of your child is continuous, although at times your child's progress may seem very slow. The speed and ease of acquiring skills, however, is entirely individual so don't worry if your child is slower to develop in some areas than other children of the same age.

Although you can influence the pace of your child's development by giving them the right stimulation at the right time, the stages of development occur in a strictly unchangeable sequence.

Babies and children learn through play, and play is a very serious business! Everything is a learning experience for your child, playing is learning, and playing is fun.

Teaching your young child is not a formal process where specific rules and targets must be met. All teaching should be playful and be done with games. Feed your child's curiosity and need for new experiences.

Your child's development will center on play and this is the most natural way for them to learn.

Choose toys for their educational value. Reading, writing and counting proficiency require certain basic skills that your child will acquire through building and construction toys, playing with puzzles and jigsaws, and matching colours, shapes and textures.

The best toys are ones which children return to again and again because they are limitless in their appeal - usually encouraging inventiveness.

Your child will first learn to form relationships and to share with children of their own age through play, and toys will have a significant educational role in all your child's development milestones.