Problem Solving Skills and Educational Toys

One of the skills your baby will have and develop is his problem solving skills. At first, soon after birth, his skills will show as being reflexive. One of these automatic responses will be the sucking action to feed. Later, his development in this area will be more voluntary.

A few months after birth he will soon start to explore his surroundings. This eagerness will push him more towards every little and big thing to discover what it is. Soon he will move into further depth of exploration by using his newly developed motor skills of hand-eye coordination and body control.

Talking to your child will help him move further in development (see language skills). Diamond and Hopson report in there book that many parents have seen a strong correlation between how much they talk with their child and their child's problem solving and creativity skills development. These authors also point out that psychologists have reported that children who were talked (by their parents) to extensively at very young ages had significantly higher IQ's then those children that were talked to less by their parents.

At around nine months, your child will be grasping most everything in sight to experience what happens to an object when squeezed, hit, and/or banged against another. These actions while maybe disconcerting to you, actually perform a great deal of development for his brain. He experiences through this needed cause and reaction sequences that provide further problem solving skills development for the future. At first these interactions cause heavy brain stimulation that soon gets "hardwired" into the brain to provide for more in depth solving of problems in the future.

At about two years old he will be using his memory more. This is one more tool that he can add to his problem solving toolbox. He will learn actions and reactions by just watching others. He can then use his memory to do the same thing later..probably when you least expect it. All this adds to his problem solving skills.

From three to four your child moves to another stage of seeing what happens if he does "this" but a little more in depth. Sometimes he may want to do something one particular way. If it doesn't work he may get aggravated and not continue in his effort. He just gives up.

At about four years he will become a little more focused in his problem solving. Doing something one way advances to doing that same thing in different ways. He should be more likely to think things out at least on a small level.

Great Brands for educational toys that promote problem solving skills