Tips for parents to ensure their child's overall development

An increasing number of urban parents are now choosing to refrain from second pregnancies to focus on raising one child while maintaining the delicate balance between their professional and personal lives. For some parents, the added cost of raising another child is also a major deterrent, especially if they are already facing issues financially.

Even parents with a single child don't have it easy all the time. With the busy lives that most urban parents lead, it can often be difficult to give their child the amount of attention they need.

However, by interacting with them, understanding what things they enjoy doing and participating in those activities with them, parents can play a critical role in boosting their children's self-confidence.

Since you cannot be always around her/him, it is important to keep your child engaged with different activities to ensure better development of skills and intellect.

So, to help all those parents raising a single child, here's a few tips shared by Arunprasad Durairaj, Co-Founder and CEO,Flintobox.com (Discovery Boxes for Early Child Development) on how you can ensure she/he grows to be happier and more confident:

-Engage your child with educational activity boxes instead of toys: Play-based educational activities for kids that promote early child development in a fun and explorative way are gaining popularity as new-age parents look to keep their kids away from gadgets.

-Flintobox, for instance, offers a series of various activity boxes for children aged 2 to 12 years old that are specially designed for early child development. Every box comes with activities that help the child create, play, explore and read about a particular theme while targeting 12 critical developmental areas. Typically, parents can subscribe to these boxes in 3, 6, or 12-month durations, and the boxes are delivered to their home.

-DIY (Do-it-yourself) learning: Arts and crafts are the most creative and engaging activities for children at the elementary level. Platforms offering DIY videos and products can be useful in helping you bond with your child while teaching them fundamental skills. HobbyIdeas.in is one such platform for art and craft lovers and young children. The portal, while providing a huge amount of high-quality content to art and craft hobbyists, also aims to create a community for craft enthusiasts to interact and share ideas.

-Get your kid involved in the household chores: Whenever you are preparing a meal, your child can assist with little things in the cooking process. And, who knows, they might just develop a real passion for cooking and explore it further. Engage your kids in cleaning, dusting and inculcate habits like keeping their toys and clothes back in place. This will also give you a chance to talk to them, especially if you are a working parent.

-Form a family book club: Gather other families from the neighborhood or school and take turns choosing age-appropriate books each month and preparing a list of questions for discussion about the characters, plots, themes, and settings. Make the meetings a fun potluck lunch/dinner with foods that relate to the story - your child can take part in the cooking and brainstorm with other kids on ideas for the food.

-Spend as much time as you can with your child: If yours is a nuclear family, then it becomes doubly important to give your child as much attention as possible. It is important to ensure that your child does not feel lonely. So, you should spend some quality time and play with your child while at home. Moreover, by distributing the work around the house equally, you and your spouse can focus better on your child's development.

-In the absence of a sibling, it is important to teach your child the importance of sharing, and encourage them to share what they have, be it with friends or members of your extended family, like grandparents. Also, in today's age, parents need to make sure that their child spends ample time outdoors, by actively playing a sport, rather than being stuck to digital devices all day.