In this post you will learn what is happening in your child’s mind as they move from the sensorimotor stage to the stage where they can recognise their own ego.
Have you ever told your child is around 2 years to share the things that they are playing with and they don’t and you angry or embarrassed, and you may even shout at them and force them to share. Well it turns out that you are shouting at them for reasons they don’t understand, because in their mind no exist other than themselves, so when you tell them to share nothing exists in the world view other than themselves, and many studies have been done to prove this.
So instead of getting upset with them, which limits the development and especially emotional development learn the strategies to help them.
During the preoperational stage, which usually occurs from around age two to age seven, children may start to show egocentrism, or that they only think about things from their own perspective and have a hard time understanding that other people may see things differently. It’s important for adults to help children develop their understanding of perspective-taking and empathy during this stage.
In addition to egocentrism, children at the preoperational stage may also start to develop classification skills, or the ability to group objects based on what they look like, feel like or even same colours. This means they can sort things into categories, like animals and plants, and understand concepts like size and quantity. These skills are important for more complex thinking and problem-solving that will be developed in later stages.
While children at the preoperational stage have made significant cognitive achievements, they still have limitations in their thinking. They may have trouble with seeing another persons perspective.
As parents you need to help them, develop and master this stage, I would suggest that you get them to recognise different feelings and try to get them to understand how other people may feel. You could do this by making a happy face and tell them its a happy face or make a sad face and tell them its a sad face. Show them faces of random children of a similar age who are happy or sad and get them to describe why they are happy or sad.
Get them the toys where they have to put the shapes in the corresponding holes, get them to learn different sounds.
if you do this you will notice a difference in how your child interacts with you and others, they will be able to communicate with you what they are feeling and thinking, in which you can then do something to help.
if you want to discuss this with me further or looking for extra strategies then please get in touch.