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Improving cognitive skills

Children develop in several areas when growing. Some are physical and visible while others are within the human body and often invisible.

Some of the physical development we look out for from birth are neck control, sitting, crawling and walking.

In addition to physical development, there is communication development. Children are expected to be able to communicate in a certain way year by year. Children who show delay in their development may need specialist support.

One of the areas children develop when growing is their communication skills. Communication is a highly complex skill which forms part of cognition.

Cognition is the term for the mental processes which occur in the brain. These processes include how a child thinks, learns, plans, pays attention, and remembers. A child’s development of these skills can be affected by changes in the brain because of injury, disease or because the brain is working differently in the absence of a disease or injury.

When a child’s attention is limited, for example, they may not know how to listen when someone is talking to them. This will impact their understanding and use of language.

Signs of cognitive difficulties

When a child has cognitive difficulties the signs they show may include:

  • Difficulty with paying attention/focusing on tasks
  • Difficulty sitting still for any length of time
  • Difficulty remembering things learnt
  • Difficulty with problem-solving activities
  • Difficulty with planning
  • Poor listening skills
  • Reading difficulties
  • Language delay

Help

If you are concerned about your child’s cognitive development, seek help. Children with cognitive difficulties often require help from professionals such as speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, and clinical psychologists to ensure they are being supported to maximise their potential to communicate and to a higher quality of life

A child’s cognition can be strengthened by improving their pretend play skills. Play is essentially a cognitive skill. Pretend play means experimenting with social and emotional roles in life when playing. Children use their imagination during pretend play. It is an important indicator for language development. Pretend play can involve using one object to represent another object. Like pretend play, words are symbolic. Words are symbols that represent objects, people, events, and even abstract concepts like emotions (sad, happy, angry or surprise) or physical states (hungry, tired, or cold).

To improve your child’s cognitive processes, you can do some of the following regularly with them:

·       Teach your child to use familiar objects functionally. This involves helping your child to know that a phone is for talking, a ball for throwing or kicking, a spoon is for eating, and a toothbrush for brushing teeth

·       Teach your child to use objects herself. For example, brushing their teeth, talking on the phone

·       Teach your child to use the objects on others (where appropriate). For example, trying to use a toothbrush to brush mummy’s teeth, feeding daddy with a spoon.

·       Teach your child to combine objects during play. For example, your child will feed a baby doll with a spoon or bathe the doll.

As a parent, you have a big part to play in supporting the cognitive development of your child.

 

The author is a Speech and Language Therapist/Clinical Tutor at the University of Ghana

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