Harper’s Parenting Tips – From Infant To Toddler

01:35 – Let them sort out their senses
02:00 – Start to help them understand where different places are in the world
02:35 – It helps children understand measurement and just basic elementary math
03:15 – It helps the mind in understanding how to follow instruction
03:55 – Cooking teaches children patience

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Hi everybody, Harper Jones here with Bow Tiger and you’re watching Saturdays with Harper. And today we are going to talk a bit about cooking with our children, with our toddlers. What are the benefits to having our kids in the kitchen? It sounds not fun. It doesn’t sound fun at all. But it actually can be a really fun experience. It helps you out, it helps your toddler out. Makes them feel like a part of a task that you’re doing, and it also can be really stimulating and educational for them as well. So I’m just going to go over some of the key benefits today. Of course I’m sure you viewers, you guys have some other suggestions or comments. If you do have any comments please be sure to leave these comments on the videos. You can leave them on any of our social media pages and we’ll make sure to mention it on one of our next videos as well.

Okay so we’ll dive right into it, what’s the first benefit to having your child help you out in the kitchen. Food, food is very different. Vegetable to vegetable, none are really the same, fruit to fruit etc., nothing’s really the same. Everything has different consistency, different feels, different looks, different shapes, different colors, etc. Looks shapes, colors, all these things that I’m talking about consistency, these are part of the elementary things that we need to teach our children. Now in addition that, food has different smells, different tastes, different textures. These are all senses. This is something, this is what our children, our toddlers really use to start to understand or explore the world at all. So why not make that available to them in a task that we already have to do for the day which is cooking for our family. Involve them in the task and let them sort of use those senses, let their brain develop even faster while we’re going through some of our daily chores at home.

Another thing that we can do is, food comes from different places whether it’s grown in the ground, or in a tree, in a tropical environment or in a colder environment, the places that food grows geographically, this is something that we can start teaching our kids too. Start to help them understand where different places are in the world and maybe even take out a globe so you can show them where your cherries are from, maybe in North America, where some of your fruits come from, maybe down south. All these different things can help your child start to understand geographically what they’re eating and where they’re looking at on a map. Very, very helpful when they get to the school age, they’ll have kind of a one up on everybody if you’ve been doing these kinds of tasks with them and activities with them at home.

Another thing that cooking does is it helps children understand measurement and just basic elementary math. If your child can start to understand at a young age what a full cup is, what half a cup looks like, a quarter cup, things like this you’d be amazed at how helpful that will be in their next few years and when they start to jump into school. Another thing and this is, there are two more things that I did want to mention. Providing or getting our children and our toddlers to follow instruction is sometimes the most difficult task of all. Because they kind of veer off, they don’t want to concentrate for too long or they can’t concentrate for too long. This is sort of a task that aids the mind, that helps the mind in understanding how to follow instruction. Because to get through a recipe or to get your food tasting the way it’s supposed to be, you have to follow that recipe. You have to follow instruction. So not only is this going to help their brain sort of understand and start to develop a reason for instruction, it’ll also help them in other with other daily tasks that you give them, like if you instruct them to clean up their room or if you instruct them to put the markers away, something like this.

They’ll start to understand that to get a result there has to be instruction and they have to follow that instruction. Okay so the last thing that I wanted to mention, we are running out of time, but the last thing I wanted to mention and this is the best part of all, is cooking teaches children patience. Patience is not something that a lot of toddlers have or they don’t have much of. But in cooking you have to be patient, whether you’re waiting for the cak...

01:18 – Maybe a reward system
02:18 – Alecia’s idea is not an extravagant reward system
03:05 – She gets to pick an extra snack
03:29 – Picking out dinner

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Hey, everybody. Harper Jones with Bow-Tiger, and you are watching our Ask Harper segment. Now last month, I switched it up a little bit. As you guys may or may not know, once a month I do an Ask Harper segment where I take your questions and I try to answer them on air. The answers that I provide you guys are from personal experience and also personal research. As being a mom, I do a lot of research on children’s topics. And then, of course, being part of the Bow-Tiger family, research is really the name of the game for me or for my position.

Okay, so last month, we will get back to last month. Last month, I switched it up, and instead of answering your questions, I actually had a question for my viewers because I was having an issue with my daughter in regards to getting her to clean up any mess whatsoever. She basically refused, so I wanted to get a little bit of insight from you guys to see maybe different things that you’ve tried or ideas that you came up with to fight this little battle that I know a lot of us must go through with our kids.

So I did get a response, and this was probably my favorite response, and it’s gonna sound a little funny to be my favorite response as I’m not normally prone to any reward system, but we will explain that in a minute. Now the response was from Alecia. And Alecia mentioned, “Maybe a reward system. Every day she helps clean, she gets a star,” that’s cool, “And if she gets a full week of stars, then she gets a small price from say a price shirt. She gets to pick an extra snack like ice cream or she gets to select or choose what everybody’s having for dinner.”

Okay, now, normally, I am not big on the reward system, and why am I not big on the reward system because I feel that a reward system sort of initiates the handout problem. Immediately, when a child thinks that they’ve done something good, they’re doing that because they expect to get something in return. Now, does the real world work like that? Absolutely not. You have to do things because you know that they need to get done. You do not always do things and expect something in return. We know that, whether it’s from work, whether it’s from people, friends, family, etc., a lot of the times you’re just doing things because you know it’s the right thing to do, not necessarily because you’re getting anything back.

And that will be why I don’t like reward systems, but what I did like about Alecia’s idea is that it’s not an extravagant reward system. It actually...it’s sort of on small scale. So this isn’t necessarily something that’s going to, you know, dent our children or give them the idea that they always need to expect something for doing something. The small price to her, I feel that I’ve... This is what I’ve started on actually, small price to her, I did stickers, did some little erasers. I did do some sugar-free candies, just different little things in there, but nothing that’s super pricey or super extravagant.

And then the second two ideas that she provided, I haven’t tried these out, but I really like this. One, if she didn’t say pick an extra snack like going out for ice cream because then it’s like a trip that the child gets to taste. You go out for ice cream and you get the big ice cream that cost you, you know, bookoos of dollars, with sprinkles and everything else. Well, no, she just gets to pick an extra snack. So maybe you guys are at the grocery store, she gets to pick out some ice cream that the family gets to enjoy during the week. I think that’s a good way to incorporate a reward. Get what you’re wanting and also get them...which is cleaning the room, and also get them something. Initiate the idea that they want to do this, the cleaning up for you or different chores that you’re trying to do. It’s not an extravagant price.

And then the last one was picking out dinner. Well, what’s great about this is this is one of those like reverse psychology rewards because your child gets to pick out what they want for dinner or what the family wants to have for dinner. Now, I will say when they’re picking out what you guys are eating for dinner, don’t just randomly say, “You can choose whatever you want.”

What she gets to do is you get to provide these different options and say, “Okay, you get to choose between these.” So regardless, you win because they were all your options initially, but she is feeling rewarded in the fact that you’re taking her opinion on what the family’s going to have for dinner. Okay, so that’s enough about the Ask Harper seg...

00:35 – Prepping them at home
00:57 – Eye contact
01:35 – Staring contest
02:11 – We greet them
02:20 – How to properly say hello with a good handshake
03:31 – The last thing is the conversation itself

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Hi, everybody. Harper Jones here with Bow-Tiger, and you are watching Saturdays with Harper. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about conversation with your toddler today, how to really prep them for conversation, whether it be with kids on the playground, teachers at school. There’s a few things that you want to teach your child, and you can do at home, to kind of prep them for this sometimes very, very scary thing that they have to do. A lot of toddlers are really shy and somehow difficulty chatting or speaking with people. So prepping them as best as you can at home really, really will help them when they get into social situations. As I said, whether at the playground, at school, out with mommy and daddy, at a birthday party, whatever it may be, these little tips should definitely help your little ones when they’re out and about.

Okay, so the first thing that I want you guys to work with your toddlers on is eye contact. Eye contact means you’re engaging in the conversation. If you are having a conversation with somebody, but you’re looking down at the ground, or you’re looking all around, you’re not really engaging that person. You’re not really having the conversation with the person. You’re having the conversation around the person. But it makes what you’re speaking about, or what you’re toddler is speaking about, and what the other person is saying less important or seem like less important, because you’re not able to look them in the eye.

So how do we teach shy toddlers to look everybody in the eye? I mean, I used to have a very difficult time even getting my daughter to look at me in the eye, but I found one thing that really, really helped was having staring contest. I would have staring contest with her all the time. My other family members would have staring contest, friends, other kids would say, “Okay, it’s a staring contest. You have to stare for 12 seconds, 15 seconds, as long as you can stare.” Doing this and making it kind of a game initially made her really more confident in looking at somebody. She didn’t have this issue wherein she had to kind of look around. She was very happy staring straight at somebody’s face, looking right at them while she was having a conversation.

What’s another thing that we normally do when we say hello to somebody or we meet somebody? We greet them. Well, we’ve already got the eye thing done. If your toddler is looking somebody in the eyes down and they can do that, the next thing they need to know how to do is how to properly say hello with a good handshake. A handshake is a nice way to, one, greet somebody, and also to let them know that they are important, and also to let your toddlers know the importance of their handshake. You wanna teach them a nice, firm handshake, a nice welcomed greeting, a warm greeting to whomever they’re greeting. And the way I did this is just teaching it with a little web game.

I taught my daughter that with the web of my hand and the web of her hand, the proper handshake was done if those two webs touch. So she practiced. She actually would sit there and practice shaking her own hand, but she also practiced shaking my hand. And then I noticed when we’d go out, and I’d introduce her to somebody, and I’d say, “Honey, can you shake their hand? Can you say hello?” she now had the eye contact down. Although she still looked a little shy, she may have been blushing a little bit in the cheeks, she was able to say hello looking directly at the person. And then when she go to shake their hand, she gave them a nice, firm handshake. And that really shows her that she’s got the confidence within her, and it also shows people that she’s middle-ish. [SP] She’s was a confident, young girl.

So the last thing that we can do, we went over the greeting, the handshakes, we also went over eye contact. The last thing is the conversation itself. A lot of toddlers maybe don’t know how to have conversation. They wait to be asked a question or they just ask the question, “Nope. Okay, now what do I do?” You need to teach your toddler that conversation is questions back and forth. Conversation means engaging with somebody else and being interested in what that other person also has to say back. So the way I did this is we have a little game. We use this little ball. It’s this little kind of pink squishing ball that she’s had forever. And we used this in a million games, the quiet game, the talking game, all sorts of game.