Whether or not you let your child stay up until midnight to usher in the new year, the aftermath of the holidays can leave everyone feeling a little worn out. Children often return to daycare feeling overtired and a bit emotionally overwhelmed. But the new year is the perfect time to reset routines. You and your child may be aching for the normalcy of a regular schedule again, and one of the best places to start is with bedtime. Re-establishing a regular bedtime and nap time routine (when age-appropriate) will help your child be rested and ready to learn.

Importance of Sleep

Consistent sleep is vitally important for a child’s physical development, cognitive function, and emotional regulation. When children get enough sleep they are able to better handle big emotions, focus and participate more during the day, and their immune systems are stronger at fighting off sickness. Sleep plays a huge role in behavior, as well. One article from the Mayo Clinic states, “Children who don’t get a sufficient amount of sleep may not appear to be sleepy. Instead, they may struggle with attentiveness, hyperactivity, aggression or disruptive behavior.” It is not surprising that studies have shown, as the National Institutes of Health summarizes, “shorter sleep is associated with more observed and parental-reported behavioral problems and more rule-breaking” for children of all ages.

Age-Specific Sleep Recommendations

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Infants (6-12 Months)

Total Sleep: 12-16 hours in 24 hours.

Night Sleep: 9-12 hours

Naps: 2-3 naps per day

Typical Bedtime: 6:30-8:00 pm

Putting babies down drowsy but awake can support good sleep habits as the child learns to self-soothe to sleep, an important developmental skill.

Toddlers (1-2 Years)

Total Sleep: 11-14 hours

Night Sleep: 10-12 hours

Naps: 1-2 per day

Typical Bedtime: 6:30-7:30 pm

Keep toddler bedtime routines calm and consistent.

Preschool (3-5 Years)

Total Sleep: 10-13 hours

Night Sleep: 10-12 hours

Naps: 0-1 nap per day

Typical Bedtime: 7:00-8:00pm

Even if a child is unable to fall asleep during nap time, having the child still take a consistent quiet time is healthy and supports emotional regulation.

School Age (5-7)

Total Sleep: 9-12 hours

Night Sleep: 9-12 hours

Naps: none

Typical Bedtime: 7:30-8:30

Try to keep bedtimes consistent even on weekends to avoid Monday morning drowsiness.

Tips for Resetting Bedtime After the Holidays

If your schedule has gone out the window during the holidays or if your child’s bedtime has drifted later and later, little steps toward regularity make a big difference. It may help to adjust the bedtime gradually by moving bedtime 15 minutes earlier every few nights. Get back to a calming night time routine. This may include a bath, books, a cuddle, or prayer time.

Try to limit screens at least an hour before bed. Screens emit blue light which signals to the brain that it is the middle of the day. Blue light interferes with melatonin production–the hormone the body produces to make you sleepy and prepare your body for deep rest. Unfortunately, screens at night negatively affect how sleepy your child will feel, how easily they will fall asleep, and how deeply they will sleep throughout the night.

Healthy Sleep Habits at Milestones Learning Center

Milestones Learning Center reinforces healthy sleep routines through age-appropriate nap and rest times, calm transitions, predictable schedules, and open communication with families. Learn more about our mission at Milestones Learning Center, helping   your child sleep, play, and grow into their best self.

There are few things more beneficial and beautiful than reading aloud to your little one. Read aloud becomes a time when toddlers slow down, snuggle in, and connect with their parent or caregiver. Reading aloud is also immensely important for a child’s cognitive and language development. Here are some classic and beloved books to read aloud with your toddler, organized by age group. (Keep in mind that ages are approximate. Many books span multiple stages, and it is always okay if a child enjoys a book earlier or later than listed.)

0-12 Months

Board books with simple images, great for short attention spans.

1. Peek-a-Who? – by Nina Laden. This was the book that made my children fall in love with books. Babies always love the mirror at the end, accompanied by the text, “peek… a… YOU!”
2. Baby Faces – by Margaret Miller. Simple photos of baby expressions that children love to imitate.
3. First 100 Words –  by Roger Priddy. A great way for children to learn the names of everyday objects.
4. Where Is Baby’s Home? – by Karen Katz. A lift-the-flap book with animals.
5. Moo, Baa, La La La – by Sandra Boynton. We love Sandra Boynton books, and this is a short and funny rhyme about the sounds animals make — and don’t make.

12-24 Months

Predictable patterns, counting, colors, animal sounds, and lift-the-flap elements keep young ones engaged.

1. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? – by Bill Martin Jr. & Eric Carle.  The repetitive and predictable text helps children learn colors and animals. Carle’s signature collage technique makes the artwork vivid and unforgettable.
2. The Very Hungry Caterpillar – by Eric Carle. Children learn the days of the week and the names of fruits and other fun foods in this whimsical story of transformation. Again, Carle’s illustrations make this book charming and full of life.
3. Goodnight Moon – by Margaret Wise Brown. Children can’t seem to get enough of this classic story with its soothing rhythm and distinctive, high-contrast illustrations. Bonus: For any Pride and Prejudice Fans, Goodnight Mr. Darcy is a delightful parody that might be even more fun for parents.
4. Dear Zoo – by Rod Campbell. A cute lift-the-flap book with animal surprises.
5. Little Blue Truck – by Alice Schertle. Children love the animal sounds in this story about kindness and friendship. There are iterations for every season, like Little Blue Truck’s Springtime.
6. Blue Hat, Green Hat – by Sandra Boynton. This story makes my children laugh like no other book. Children learn the names of colors and clothes and very memorably how not to wear them.

2-3 Years

Simple storylines, rhyming, and humor keep these books interesting for toddlers and support literacy and emotional intelligence.

1. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom – by Bill Martin Jr. & John Archambault. A fun way to reinforce the alphabet. You might be surprised how quickly your child memorizes this rhythmic story.
2. If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – by Laura Numeroff.  If your child likes this story, they will likely love the Amazon Prime series based on the book.
3. Llama Llama Red Pajama – by Anne Dewdney. This story is a humorous and lighthearted way to talk about big emotions, especially at bedtime.
4. Sheep in a Jeep – by Nancy E. Shaw. A terse and funny rhyming book with humorous and charming colored-pencil illustrations.
5. How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? – by Jane Yolen. Children learn bedtime behaviors with humorous dinosaur characters.

Tips for Reading

• Make it interactive – point to objects, make sounds, ask questions like, “where is the sun?” or, “do you see boots in this picture?” Feel free to go off script.
• Use different voices – you might be surprised how fun this makes reading for your toddler — and for you
• Follow their lead – even if it means reading a book many times. Children crave repetition and learn from hearing a story over and over.

At Milestones Learning Center we are all about books. We love seeing firsthand how children delight in stories and grow in vocabulary, intuition, curiosity, and emotional intelligence through regular reading times. Contact us to learn more or to schedule a tour. We’d love to meet you!

 

 

The holidays give us lots of opportunities to be grateful.  Thanksgiving is, of course, a holiday about being grateful, but it is also a good time to teach children about thankfulness, particularly in looking ahead to holidays like Christmas and Hanukah where many children anticipate receiving gifts. At Milestones Learning Center, we celebrate the season in part by using this time to teach children how to be thankful. Here are four ways you can do this at home.

1. Say “Thank You” Every Day

One of the best way to teach your child to say thank you is to model it. Say “thank you” to your partner for washing the dishes. Say “thank you” to your children for putting their dirty plates in the sink or cleaning up the milk that dripped onto the table. Say “thank you” to the cashier. Say “thank you” to the server at the restaurant when she refills your water. The more children hear you expressing gratitude, the more likely they are to follow suit.

You can also whisper a reminder in your child’s ear to say thank you when they are out. Whispering a reminder avoids the awkward “what do we say?” reminder in front of stranger that may put your child on the spot or make them feel resentful. The goal is that saying “thank you” becomes second nature for your child, and it will likely become that way if it is second nature for you.

2. Write “Thank You” Notes

When your child receives a gift, there is no better way to express thanks than with a hand-written note. In a culture where everything is fast-paced and texting is so easy, writing a note with your child expresses thankfulness in a concrete way. Here are

some tips for writing thank you notes with your children.

• It’s never too late to send a thank you.
• If your child is preschool age, write the note for them but use their exact words. They may want to sign their name.
• Ask your child what they liked best about the gift. How did it make them feel? Try to be specific.
• If the gift was money, don’t mention the amount; instead, have your child say what he wants to buy with the money.
• Even if your child doesn’t like the gift, thank the giver for their thoughtfulness and generosity.

3. Teach Delayed Gratification

It is hard to resist your child begging for the greatest new this or that, but it is worth it. Teaching your child to wait for what they want builds excitement and gratification and increases the enjoyment of a thing when it is received. Another way to teach patience and diligence is to have your child work to earn money for part or all of the item. Help them to see the value of a dollar and to associate hard work with monetary reward, a skill they will need to harness later in life. Depending on the age of the child, hiring them for various jobs around the house may not be much of an actual help to you. But the important thing is that you are teaching the principles of hard work and reward. Hire them to “help” you pull little weeds in the front flower bed, or sort laundry, or wipe down the fronts of the cabinets. Children gain a sense of accomplishment when they are able to do the same kinds of work they see you doing, and are able to participate in buying the things that they want.

4. Count Your Blessings

Find ways to be thankful for the things you have. Listen to your child and prompt them with questions like, “what made you smile today?” “What was your favorite part of the trip to Gramdma’s?” “What was your favorite thing that we ate today?”

Maybe you find time to count your blessings during bedtime prayers. Maybe it is with a thankfulness jar, where each person puts in slips of paper expressing what they are grateful for. Thanksgiving dinner is a great time to read what is in the jar. Another idea from Focus on the Family is to play an alphabet game during a car ride where you have to come up with something you are thankful for that starts with each consecutive letter of the alphabet. “Thank you for ASKING how I am doing”; “thank you for playing BALL with me”; “thank you for CAMPING with me last month.” If you have multiple children, they can thank each other for things too! This is a great game to redirect children to if they are arguing.

At Milestones Learning Center we are always looking for ways to grow in expressing gratitude. Contact us today to see what we have to offer your family, and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

As parents and caregivers we spend a lot of time talking to children (often in the form of giving instruction) and may have difficulty when it comes to listening to children. One surprising result is that active conversation with your child, including active listening, is one of the key predictors of language development and future academic success.

Active Conversation Boosts Brain Function

One study demonstrates how talking and listening to your child is a key for language development in the brain. The study analyzed the childrens’ brain scans and test scores compared with audio patterns at home. They found that the number of “conversational turns” (the back and forth between parent and child in a conversation) directly correlated with an improved language score. “For every 11 conversational turns, a child’s verbal test score increased by one point.”  Interestingly, the researchers saw no such connections for the number of words spoken, which may indicate it is the act of listening and responding that is the predictor of language success, not merely amount of time either party spends talking.

Lead author of the study Rachel Romeo concludes, “What we found is that the sheer amount of language, the number of adult words, was not related to brain activation or verbal skills. But what was related, strongly related, was the amount of back-and-forth conversation between children and adults. We think this research finding suggests, instead of talking at or to your child, you really need to talk with your child to have meaningful brain development and language development.”

Lack of Conversation Delays Development

Another study looked at the effect of television exposure and its result on conversation between adult and child. While it may seem intuitive that parents and children would interact less with audible television, the findings are stark compared with claims of purveyors of digital content for children that these programs are designed to give parents and children a chance to interact.  “Having a television on was associated with significant reductions in discernible parental word counts, child vocalizations, and conversational turns for children 2 to 48 months of age. . .  Each additional hour of television exposure was associated with a decrease of 770 in the number of words the child heard from an adult during the recording session, which represents a 7% decrease.”

The researchers go on to theorize that their findings may partially explain the associations previously found between infant television viewing and delayed language acquisition, as well as attention and cognitive delays. It is not just the amount of media exposure that matters, it is also the content and the manner in which children watch is important. In other words: are parents talking and listening to their children over the content they are viewing? “Whether parents talk less (or not at all) during some types of programs or at some times of the day may be as important in this age group as what is being watched.”

The key takeaway: aim to make television a time of bonding and intentional interaction between you and your child. Listening to and interacting with a parent’s voice is what is predictive of language success, not whatever is being spoken on the television.

Listening Supports Academic Success

For older students, research found children were six times more likely to complete their homework and six times more likely to care about school if they reported they had a parent with whom they could share ideas and talk about things that matter. This bond was strong enough to offset the negative effects of significant trauma experienced by the children in the study, which included nearly 65,000 children ages 6 to 17.

At Milestones Learning Center we know how important it is to listen to children. We invest in your children’s development and success in numerous ways and one of the most important of which is listening attentively. Book a tour today to see what Milestones Learning Center has to offer.

At Milestones Learning Center, we know that music does more than just create a joyful atmosphere. Research shows that listening to and engaging with music supports language development in children from the earliest ages. A report of the scientific literature from the National Institutes of Health in 2023 concluded, “musical properties, such as rhythm and melody, affect language acquisition in semantic processing and grammar, including syntactic aspects and phonological awareness.” Music plays a central role a child’s comprehension of language from the earliest stages of life. The songs children love to sing and listen to are doing vital work behind the scenes — shaping their brains for language learning.

Music and Language as Communication Systems

Interestingly, language and music as communication systems bear some similarities. They are both systems in which smaller, separate units (phonemes–the units of sound that make up words–and the notes which make up music) are combined into ordered and complex structures (words, sentences, and musical compositions). Both rely on cognitive processes such as sound identification, and memory storage and retrieval.  

Listening to Music Strengthens Auditory Processing

Studies show that children who regularly listen to music and engage in musical and rhythmic activities show enhanced auditory discrimination — the ability to detect subtle differences in rhythm and pitch. This skill directly supports phonological awareness, which is the basis for recognizing sounds in spoken language and eventually in reading. When children listen to songs with clear rhythms and melodies, they are not just enjoying the songs, they are actually training their brains to understand spoken language.

Science indicates that it is music’s rhythm specifically that predicts infants’ language development. Infants use rhythmic cues to identify word units within speech. Sensitivity to these rhythmic distinctions make infants able to distinguish between different languages as well. Interestingly, infants will prefer languages within the same “rhythm” pattern as their native language (e.g., Italian and Spanish have a rhythm based on the syllable).

Music Expands Comprehension and Vocabulary

Music with lyrics naturally exposes children to new words, sentence structures, and ideas, all packaged in a catchy and memorable form. Repetition of words within a song helps solidify new vocabulary and promotes comprehension as children connect meaning through context. Children’s songs help connect words to experiences which over time increases understanding and expressive language skills (speaking).

Summary

Listening to and engaging with music helps children hear language more clearly, remember it more deeply, and use it more confidently. Nursery rhymes, chants, and favorite melodies are all pathways to literacy and communication.

At Milestones Learning Center, we see this magic every day. Through music, we’re not just teaching songs — we’re helping children find their voices.