Category: Parenting

Learning how to swim is an essential life skill that everyone should learn at a young age. Children with special needs can still learn how to swim so they can avoid drowning and other water-related accidents. Enrolling children with special needs in swimming lessons can help remove fear of going into the pool.

Swimming lessons also ensures their capability of handling themselves should they fall into a body of water.  There is more to swimming than just water safety. Whether your child has a neurodevelopmental disorder or physical disability, they will highly benefit from this life-saving skill.

This blog discusses the various benefits of swimming lessons for kids with special needs.

Benefits of Swimming Classes for Special Needs Children

Swimming holds various benefits for kids with special needs and conditions. Here are some of the advantages your child will get when you enroll them in infant swimming lessons that specialize in handling these students.

Burns Excess Energy

Parents of children with ADHD can attest to how much energy their child has. Swimming is one way to redirect this energy to learning a life-saving skill. An hour in the water can burn up to 500 calories. It can tire their body quickly as it requires concentration and coordination of different parts. You can sit them down much easier so they can focus on their everyday tasks or turn in for the day.

Since physical exercise drains their energy, it can promote better sleep. Special needs kids will also have greater control over their emotions and behavior even while out of the pool once they are swimming more regularly due to lessons.

Maintains a Healthy Weight

Special needs children have a higher rate of becoming obese. Enrolling them in swimming classes will challenge them to be more active in exercising. Since swimming is a low-impact activity that engages the whole body, it is an efficient way of maintaining a healthy weight.

Provides a Sense of Calmness and Freedom

The water environment also offers a sense of freedom and calmness for children with cerebral palsy, ADHD, and autism. Water buoyancy reduces our body weight by up to 80% and offers a greater range of movements. Children with cerebral palsy complain about restricted actions on land but will love the freedom that water provides. The hydrostatic pressure from the water also reduces everyday noises that can be irritating for most children.

Apart from freedom of movement in the water, the pool is also a serene place where children with ADHD can learn how to swim calmly. You don’t let them swim on their own entirely but instead still facilitate their movement, so they remain alert. Special needs kids may even think of the swimming pool as a fun escape from their everyday living.

Moreover, children with autism will significantly benefit from the predictability and repetitive movements in the pool. Doing repeated movements can be a way for autistic children to keep their anxiety in check and concentrate better. Learning how to float in the water also helps them become more aware of their bodies while dealing with overwhelming emotions.

Improves Communication

There are various activities during baby swimming lessons, including blowing bubbles and regulating breathing underwater. These activities can help special needs children with their speech and oral articulation. Moreover, toddlers become more expressive of their emotions, whether through verbal or non-verbal communication.

Boosts their Confidence

Mastering a skill can be difficult for special needs kids. As they progress through their curriculum, the lessons become more difficult but not impossible. Failure can lead to a lack of self-esteem and may even result in not trying at all. However, learning how to swim lets your child celebrate small attainable victories. With the help of trained swimming coaches, they can perfect a stroke, stay afloat, and do a lap on their own.

Swimming also boosts the confidence of children with physical limitations. While their peers can do everyday activities alone, being disabled limits what they can do independently. Toddler swimming lessons are tailored for special needs children to help them learn and explore beyond their limits.

Moreover, your child can receive rewards for every skill they learn, giving them the confidence boost they need. With these small achievements, they can become more confident to face other challenges in life. There’s no stopping a child who believes in themselves, right?

Build Relationships with Peers

A swimming school is a great place to meet new friends and build a relationship with them. Swimming classes group your child with students of the same age and skill level to avoid feeling shy or intimidated by their peers.

Letting your child engage with other children introduces them to people outside their regular home and school life. In fact, they can also mingle with their swimming instructors and other parents. The public setting lets them be more comfortable with people outside their comfort zone.

Puts No Pressure on Students

Unlike other sports, swimming puts no pressure on passing or catching a ball to a teammate. Swimmers can compete with themselves by finishing a lap faster or swimming a farther distance than before. Enrolling in swimming lessons for kids with special needs lets them learn at their own pace with the help of a swimming coach that tracks their progress.

Enroll in Private Swimming Lessons Today

Swimming offers many benefits for every child, and kids special needs shouldn’t be left out. Provide them with the opportunity to learn this life-saving skill to reap its long-term effects. This low-impact activity goes beyond enjoyment and promotes their developmental health while boosting independence and confidence.

Find a school that offers special needs swim lessons and enroll your child today.

Your children’s education should be more than getting straight A’s or enhancing their memorization skills. Education isn’t only limited inside the school premises. Instead, their learning must also continue even outside the classroom. You can motivate your child to keep learning everywhere, everyday. It’s a lifetime pursuit that continues even when they’re older.

Learning skills are practices one can utilize to be successful in life. But how can you foster the importance of learning so children embrace it with a positive attitude? To get started, here are six ways you can help improve your children’s learning skills outside the school:

Feed Curiosity Through Sunday School

You can encourage your kids to participate in Sunday school sessions during the weekend. Sunday school is full of unique stories that pique most children’s curiosity, a factor in enhancing their creative skills. They will be introduced to Sunday school teaching materials that they wouldn’t normally see in their regular school. Examples are worship storybooks, mystery puzzles, and temple crafts.

The more children are exposed to storytelling, the more they develop their imagination and creativity.

Hit Multiple Learning Skills With Baseball

Starting at age seven, your kids can be signed up for your neighborhood’s baseball program. This is a great sport to help kids improve their motor skills while get much needed exercise. But it doesn’t end there. Baseball touches a lot of life skills and learning skills including teamwork, situation analysis (assessing challenges and opportunities in the field), and decision-making (whether or not to commit interference).

Strategy development (researching and analyzing for potential ways to win in future matches) can be introduced to children who’s inclined to watch footages of their game play. This can also be applied to other team sports your kiddos are interested in, such as basketball, soccer, and hockey.

Moreover, focus can be largely improved if your kid practices hitting a target during this fun activity. A simple pitching net could help them work on their precision and concentration a lot. You can even mark it with colors and set a challenging game of earning points. This will further motivate them to improve their skills and have fun at the same time.

Organize A Day For A Food Factory Tour

If there’s a food factory nearby, and if they conduct tours to their production facility, grab the chance to visit. Kids will love candy and chocolate factories, but you can also consider tours offered by makers of other food products. Factories have equipment and setup that kids don’t typically see. And when they get to see how the chocolates are made, with precision, timing, and speed, they are indirectly introduced to a handful of organizational skills.

Organizational skills are habits that make one’s performance of tasks effective and efficient. The concept may still be very new to children but watching the systematic production at work at the factories may give them insights into many components of this skill set. Example components are time management (prioritizing activities), schedule planning (putting tasks in the most practical sequence possible), and productivity (getting things done).

Solve Puzzles At A Toy Convention

Did you like playing with interlocking plastic bricks as a child? Your kids may do, too! If there is a major convention or even just a private fair of this particular toy in your area, you can definitely head out there with the whole family. Building blocks and bricks teaches a couple of learning skills to children.

Creative abilities they can enhance are problem-solving, innovation, open-mindedness, and repurposing (coming up with many uses of a particular thing). Critical thinking skills they’ll start applying can be paying attention to detail and thinking analytically. By teaching them these 21^st century skill sets, you can put them on a path to becoming sought-after professionals when they become adults.

Find Meaning In Pet Shops And Volunteer Work

Put a cat in a child’s arms and watch that kiddo’s face light up. A dog can have the same effect. Bringing your children to the nearby pet shop can strengthen your kids’ connection to others. The same can be said about volunteer work. Look up age-appropriate volunteer programs in your area.

Examples are cleaning up around the neighborhood, supervised working at soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and animal sanctuaries, and teaching other children if your kiddo is academically inclined. Allowing your kids to have these experiences early on will reinforce their communication skills, two of which are empathy and respect. Aside from these, working with their peers and adults teaches them reliability, task delegation, and engagement. These are significant collaboration skills they can continue to train in themselves as they grow to adulthood.

Gaining Higher Order Thinking Skills At The Library

A child comes out to this world, and they start to have unique personalities. If your elementary schooler is the reading type, spend time with them at the library. They’ll feel quite at home in the quietude of its halls. Let them go to the books they’re interested in, with your supervision, of course. Pick something you like, too, so you can sit beside them while both of you silently read on your own. Or read the same book softly together, if possible.

Reading at a young age gives a lot of benefits not only in terms of expanding your kiddo’s vocabulary, diction, and perspective, but also in higher order thinking skills. Examples of components within this latter skill set are critical thinking (questioning the truth of concepts), inferencing (using reason to get to conclusions), and evaluation (testing the credibility of claims). All are important learning skills.

The Takeaway

Learning is a never-ending journey, and it’s something everyone should do. With these tips, you can create an environment that will stimulate your children to keep learning and stay curious.

Explore 8 ways to support your kids in school.

Attitude is one important aspect to pay close attention to in child development. As they grow, children should learn to adopt a positive attitude towards life as a whole. A positive attitude will boost their ability to deal with stress. It will also play a big role in their level of perseverance and endurance when life gets tough.

Overall, kids with a positive attitude are better placed to face life’s challenges.  They will grow into people who are not afraid to take risks and always do their best.

Things That Create a Negative Attitude

Many factors can come into play for a child to develop a negative attitude. For instance, their temperament can make them naturally inclined towards negativity. In the traditional categorization of personality traits, melancholic kids tend to exhibit such traits. A child’s environment also plays a major role in the attitude they develop.

If they come from a home that models negativity, they will catch on. Basically, this negativity can be in terms of the parents’ response to life, the words they use around them, or how they treat them in general. Introducing kids to positive role models can have the opposite effect. Knowing this as an educator, you can either make the situation better or vice versa.

Here are some tips you can use to help children develop a positive attitude.

Encourage Them to Take Risks

Give children tasks above their current abilities. They may get scared at first, but with time they will realize that taking risks is not such a bad thing.

Be Realistic In Your Interactions With Them

Do not offer false praise. If a child messes up or performs below what you expected of them, say it. You will help them learn to take criticism positively and come up with new strategies to work on things. Plus, they will learn to be realistic too.

Offer Constructive Criticism

In line with expressing displeasure, do it wisely. Do not tear down a child just because they messed up. Find ways to give positive feedback and tell them they were wrong without making them feel like they’re a complete mess who can’t ever get anything right. This way they will learn that one mistake does not necessarily ruin everything.

Make Room For Vulnerability

If you allow the children to express their emotions freely, they learn that it is not a weakness. In turn, they grow into people who work through their feelings instead of bottling them up until they explode. Don’t be overprotective and tell your kids that it’s ok to fail. Let them know it’s a natural process of learning and growing.

Appreciate Effort

Recognize every effort they make towards progress- as little as it may be. It will foster a desire to keep learning and growing because it is worth something. Re-enforce their strengths but equally let them know they don’t have to be the best at something to enjoy it.

Affirmations

You will be surprised at how much difference affirmations can make. Use positive affirmations for kids to help them replace the negative thoughts they have with good ones. Constantly speaking positivity will gradually help them “rewire” their minds.

Instill Responsibility

Give them tasks and quit hovering around to make sure they get things right. When you allow them to take matters on minus your supervision, they understand that they can be trusted. They will then learn to be good stewards of what’s entrusted to them.

Practice Well-Being

Well-being activities don’t have to be slow meditative practices that are boring for kids.  Incorporate self-esteem games that also boost their confidence levels.  It can be done within the family or group games with friends.  Either way, engaging the minds and bodies of children does wonders for their inner selves.

To help you on this quest, you can get effective tools and resources such as journals, teaching guides, and printables for children of all ages from Big Life Journal.

Wrapping It Up

Life seems to be getting more complicated by the day. Hence, raising a society of people with a positive attitude will go a long way in making the world a better place.

Read about the 24 Tips to Build a Bond with your Teenage Son.

Sleep is an important part of your child’s daily routine. To function well during the day, they need to get enough sleep. And most kids aren’t getting enough rest. Poor or inadequate sleep can cause problems in many areas of life. Difficulties with behavior and learning are often related to lack of sleep.

Kids who get enough sleep don’t tend to be moody, tired during the day, and have trouble staying focused in school or their jobs. They also may be irritable or quick to lose their tempers; some even become hyperactive or aggressive.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, children aged 3 to 5 need 10 to 13 hours, while kids aged 6 to 13 need at least 9 to 11 hours of sleep a night. Teenagers need at least 8 to 10 hours.  But the average American child gets less than eight hours of shut-eye each night.

The good news is that there are lots of ways you can help your child get more rest every night. Even young children can learn to say goodnight, quiet down, and fall asleep on their own.

Here are 9 tips that may help your child sleep better at night:

1. Establish a bedtime routine that works for your child’s schedule

While it’s fine to keep them busy, try not to push your kids too hard during that last half-hour before bedtime. Stop before they become overtired; that means they probably need more rest.   If they can brush their teeth and change into pajamas without too much grumbling, you’re right on schedule. But if arguing, complaints, or temper tantrums ensue, you’ll want to hold off until tomorrow morning. Whatever activity is part of their pre-bedtime routine needs to be relaxing and calm for a better night’s sleep.

The right time to go to sleep is when your child feels tired but not overtired. It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour after lights out for kids’ brains and bodies to get the cue it’s time to shut down for the night. If you make them fall asleep too early in anticipation of their required wake-up time, they’ll just wake up earlier in the morning than necessary. This will also interrupt their normal sleeping pattern. So set an appropriate bedtime that allows them to be alert and awake during daylight hours, then let them fall into a deep sleep at night when darkness takes over every evening.

Keep consistent bedtimes and wake times. Establishing and sticking to a sleep schedule is important for healthy sleep habits. Kids need about 10 hours of sleep each day, and if they don’t get those 10 hours at roughly the same time every night and day, they can develop irregular sleeping patterns that make it hard to fall asleep and stay asleep if your child misses their usual bedtime on weekends. It can throw off their internal clock and cause trouble falling asleep on Sunday night —and back into the early morning routine come Monday morning.

2. Make their bedroom sleep-friendly

Create a space in their bedroom where they feel both cozy and safe to encourage sleeping. It should be dark, cool, and quiet in there with no distractions.  Avoid bright lights, TV, or video games in the room, which can interfere with falling asleep. Dim the lights for between 30 minutes and an hour before your child goes to bed; this will help them relax and fall asleep better. A warm bath or shower followed by a story also helps kids wind down to get some sleep.

3. Keep it cool

A cooler room temperature is recommended; a slightly chilly 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) is perfect for making your child sleepy. You could try using a fan to circulate air around the room, too, which may bring some needed relief from heat if you’re located in a warmer environment. Avoid hot temperatures as it makes it harder for children to fall asleep due to increased energy produced by their growing bodies, which conflict with circadian rhythms that make them feel tired during nighttime hours. That said, keeping your kid warm will help them stay cozy and content. So it’s important to use a comfy blanket that they can snuggle up in when trying to sleep at night.

4. During the day, get as much natural light as possible

 Encourage your youngster to get as much natural light as possible during the day, particularly in the morning. The hormone melatonin is suppressed by bright light. This helps your kid stay awake and alert during the day while inducing drowsiness before bedtime.

5. Let kids unwind with books

Reading is an excellent way to relax at night. But you don’t have to let reading be the only activity your child does before bedtime; other quiet activities are also fine. Avoid stimulating activities or exercises associated with playing video games or watching television. Also, avoid looking at any screens up to an hour before bedtime because of the associated blue light that can interfere with melatonin production, which tells our brains it’s time for sleep.

6. Limit liquids, and watch out for medication and alcohol

Your kid should limit their liquid intake in the evening hours, not only just before bedtime but during dinner as well. Drinking too much fluid makes kids wake up frequently during the night, increasing their chances of dehydration which will steal precious sleep from them.

Avoid caffeine at night. While some parents believe that coffee and tea can perk kids up, it’s one of the worst things you can give your child before bedtime because caffeine is a stimulant, and too much caffeine before bed can make it hard for them to fall asleep.

Remember that even over-the-counter and prescription medications, including some herbal remedies, can cause sleep disruptions. Alcohol is a depressant that will put your child to sleep, but it reduces their quality of rest and decreases the depth of their REM (Rapid Eye Movement) cycles.  Just like adults, children can also experience the effects of too much alcohol before bedtime, including dehydration and hangover symptoms such as headache or nausea coming morning.

7. Make sure your kids are getting enough exercise

Of course, not right before bedtime or soon before they go to bed because you don’t want them to be too energized. But regular physical activity helps them get the necessary amount of sleep each night by helping tire their bodies out earlier in the day.   Just make sure it’s an appropriate level of exertion for your child’s age, though. If it feels like hard work, you should scale back until they become more conditioned to physical activity over time.

8. Avoid big meals

Kids should not have a big meal either right before bedtime or within 3 hours of going to sleep because it can make them uncomfortable and interfere with their ability to get quality rest. Eating too close to bedtime causes heartburn, acid reflux, and discomfort, which can disturb your child’s natural sleeping patterns.

9. Help kids relax at night

When your kids start to feel drowsy, then take that as your cue that they’re ready for lights out. You don’t want to let them fall asleep while engaged in an activity like watching television or playing on their devices, though; this will only make it harder for them the next day when you try to extricate them from these tech-induced comas.

There are so many ways you can comfort your little one without resorting to screens just before bedtime.  From massage to reading books together, doing calming activities together will let your child know that it’s almost time for sleep—and help them relax into slumber once that familiar head hits the pillow.

Takeaway

Sleeping well is a challenge for us all, but it’s something that we need to do to keep our bodies healthy and functioning properly. Kids face special challenges when it comes to getting the essential 8 hours of sleep each night because they’re still growing and developing during their most restful periods. So if you can encourage your children to follow some or all of these helpful tips, they will be able to get the sleep they need at night, so they have more energy during the day to learn new things and be active with friends.

If you find yourself still having trouble getting your little one to hit the hay on time, consider making an appointment with your family doctor, who can help determine if there’s an underlying medical condition or sleeping disorder causing all the late nights. While most kids will fall asleep as they get older, it’s important to be aware of learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders that might cause them to have trouble with early bedtimes or staying in bed.

Author Bio

Jennifer is the Sleeping products expert and merchandise testers. She features a vast selection of experiences to effort from when creating the standard information our visitors come to seek out. She handles the daily operations of the site, and you’ll also see her in plenty of reviews, from mattresses to travel pillow and bed pillow reviews. She’s adamant about sleep health and knows just how important it’s to our well-being. Jenifer reports, writes, and edits sleep health and sleep industry news on  Sleeping Park. She will be found reading or traveling when she gets leisure time.