Practical Ways to Support Your Child's Sensitive Periods
Sensitive periods is a term coined by Dr. Maria Montessori to refer to temporary windows of time during a child's develpment where they are naturally primed to absorb new knowledge and experiences.
Six key sensitive periods she identifed are Language, Order, Movement/ Small Objects, Sensory, Social, and Independence.
By supporting and honoring these periods, you can help your children grow not only in their skills and understanding, but also in their confidence and self-motivation to keep learning. And it doesn't take expensive setups, or complicated curriculum to do it.
Simple, family-oriented practices and routines are all you need to feed their interests and help fuel their minds and bodies.
Language
During this time, children are drawn to spoken language, words, and sounds. Children who soak up multiple languages when young? This is often because they were often exposed during a sensitive period for it!
Ways you can support their language development at home:
telling stories and reading aloud
naming people, objects, and places with REAL words instead of kiddie/ baby alternatives
singing songs
playing with poetry and rhyme
having good conversations
speaking in multiple languages with them
memorizing and reciting short surahs, dua and hadith
Order
In this period, children begin to crave and appreciate order, routine, and consistency. You can help them develop their organizational skills and structure by:
limiting clutter
providing them with easy-to-access storage solutions
helping them pick a "place for everything"
maintaining consistent family routines
including them in practical routine care tasks (pets, plants, home, and people)
using visual aids to help them follow daily routines
breaking down daily processes or rituals into steps
Movement
This is where children are focused primarly on their physical development. In this time, both gross motor opportunities and fine motor opportunities are vital.
Support your child's physical development with:
physical work and age appropriate chores
active, whole body play
outdoors exploration and extended park play
structured movements like stretching, yoga, obstacle courses, and physical games,
controlled movement activities like pouring, sorting, transferring, and tweezer pickups
open-ended small parts play like legos, dollhouses, bracelet making, or buttons
simple handiwork projects such as finger knitting or hand sewing
Sensory
In this period, children want to learn through exploration with all of their senses, often touching, tasting and smelling along the way.
Help them soak up all they can by:
providing a variety of different natural textures and smells at home
taking nature walks and touching, smelling, and tasting all that is safe to do so
take trips to ethnic grocery stores where they can explore new foods, sights, and smells
plant an herb garden in the yard or on a window sill
Social
Here, you'll see your child start to shift to wanting more community. Helping them engage socially can build their skills as well as help them make friends.
Think:
playdates or small group experiences
teaching adab and manners for various social situations
taking advantage of cooperative play or team opportunities
Independence
You'll know when your child hits a sensitive period for independence by their repeated attempts to do it all by themselves.
Support them in this time by:
teaching and encouraging self-care tasks like brushing teeth and getting dressed
offering limited choices when able ("this or that")
following their lead in terms of interest
praising their efforts and process over results
encouraging them to problem solve rather than jumping in to fix things right away
saying "yes" more often and keeping "no" for when you really need it
Read more about how to recognize your child's sensitive periods here.