Hi All.
I have all of Doman books, except the How to teach your Baby to be Physically Superb and How Smart is Your Baby? Anyway, I feel like I missed out on the physical aspect of Doman teaching. I have ordered the book and won’t get it till a month to a month and a half. My son is 22.5 months now and I really wanted to what I can do to get him started.
I found this wondrful link of other mothers discussing something similar and had a few questions as well:
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-other-topics/what-about-toddlers/
The rolling, can I start with my son now? Is it safe for him to do so?
The monkey bars, I will have to take him to the park for this, but if I can get the how to’s and how many times, I will really appreciate it.
Also, the swimming. My son is a water baby and seems to LOVE water. However, as he got older, he has learned to become scared of water over his face. We have taken him in the pool and took him under water for a brief moment after counting 3 which was fine. I just want to know what can I do with him to make him love water the way he used to before. Any activities that I can do (Have also ordered a teach me to swim book) so would like to try things before it gets here.
Tatianna in the link provided above mentioned running a mile and building it up. Realistically, I’d love to do that but am soo out of shape that I don’t think that would be possible for me. Are there any suggestions? What else can I do with my son?
Thanks in Advance =)
I’m not a very big helper here because I haven’t read How to teach your Baby to be Physically Superb but I have just finished How Smart is Your Baby (I got it from the library), it gave me some ideas. I used to go into gymnastics so I have an idea what I can actually do with my toddler (24 months old). I put blankets and pillows on the floor by the sofa and my DD is happy to jump from the sofa on those pillows.
She likes swinging, when I hold her arms and swing her from side to side or turn around (she calls it marry-go-round), or I take her hand and her foot (it goes better when my husband takes her left foot and hand and I take her right foot and hand) and swing her counting to 5 in different languages and then put her on her back on the pillows.
I take her feet and put her upside down (she is putting her hands on the pillows, to make her arms stronger and it’s good for her balance).
I roll her forward through her head (don’t know how you call it in English), need to be careful with her neck here.
I put her tummy down on the sofa and her top part of the body goes on the pillows (on the floor), she is supporting herself with her arms and kinda pulling her body down sliding. This will make her arms stronger and her tummy muscles should “work” trying to support her body.
About water. I noticed that when she doesn’t go to the pool too often, she is getting scared of the water. She used to slide in the pool from a little slide with no problem, my husband was catching her under the water and pushing her to the surface, but we took a break for 2 -3 weeks and she refused to go on the slide and even in the bathtub she was screaming when I was putting water on her face. The problem went away after we started our regular swimming. Now it’s cold outside, no swimming for us. I take her in the shower with me once in a while and she has to deal with the water on her face and in the bathtub I keep putting water on her face, I used to count to 3 whenever I pour a cup of water on her head. Sometimes a nice toy will take all her attention and she doesn’t care much of whatever mommy is trying to do.
Sorry for such a long reply. I hope you’ll find some of my info helpful.
Regarding running, just start with walking and enjoying each others company and slowly build up to running, like short distances then increasing total time of continuous running (This will help you prepare physically as well). Does your child run now? To help encourage running - walking up and down hills helps because gravity pushes you forward and you have to go faster to keep up. The passive balance activities are very useful like FloridaMom said. Those are the introduction to gymnastics - personally I would love to install a tire swing in the house for over the winter then put it outside in the spring - but we’ll see. Other activities are balance beam (start with masking tape 4" width on flat floor), just hanging onto a dowel before working on brachiation (we have one that my daughter can step onto a stool and reach to hang whenever she feels like it, but I also hold the dowel and lift her - she’ll hang longer this way), and working on gross motor activities; like throwing, kicking, jumping, standing on one foot, etc. We like to do an obstacle course at home when we can’t go walking where she has to climb over, creep under and other stuff. The Physically Superb book does not go into swimming so I’m glad your getting the other book too. Do you have a pool available that you can go to 5 times a week? - that is what the book suggests, I couldn’t do it but would love to - but feel as though I am running out of time with all the programs I wish to do - these kids just grow too fast.
My bubby is only five months old but from what we’ve read, it is VERY important to encourage crawling and other activities that stimulate and develop cross patterns in the brain and this will later benefit them in reading, writing and communication among other things. I would encourage lots of back to basics crawling. This can be done using a tunnel at home (you can buy ‘pop-up’ ones fairly cheaply) or in parks and play centres where they would have lots of tunnels and activities to crawl through. You could also set up obstacle courses at home using whatever you have around the house to encourage crawling, rolling, hopping, running and other physical activities. You could have crawling races? Hope this helps!