The Parents’ Role in Early Childhood Development

Early childhood education is an effort to stimulate, guide, nurture and provide learning activities that encourage development and skills of children. Early childhood education is performed on children from birth to age eight. The process of teaching in early childhood should be done with the aim of providing meaningful concepts for children through real experience. It is real experiences that enables a child to absorb the information and actions they are given optimally.

In early childhood, children experience the Golden Years, which is the time when children begin to receive various stimuli faster and more thoroughly. This sensitive period in each child is different, but usually always occurs in the first 3 years of life. During this time, physical and psychic functions mature, all in preparation to respond to the stimuli of the child’s environment. This is also a time for developing cognitive, motor, linguistic, socio-emotional, religious and moral skills. Understanding the development of children is an important factor that must be realised by parents in order to optimize the potential of a child.

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Aspects of Early Childhood Development:

1. Cognitive Development
   Early childhood is the motor-sensory stage and pre-operational stage. At first a child's ability is limited to reflex movements, discuss the beginning, present time and near space only. They then move on to the pre-operational phase, a phase of cognitive development characterized by the functioning of the ability to think symbolically. This ability can be viewed when a child starts to develop an imagination, or become egocentric in his or her actions.

2. Physical Development
   Children’s motor skills consist of gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Motor skills of children aged 4-5 years are focused more on gross development, at school going age fine motor development is more prominent. At 4 years old, kids enjoy simple movements like jumpingand running around, they have the nerve to take risks and don’t feel fear as much as adults do. The will climb high ladders, jump off of high obstacles and slide down slopes as fast as they can, all because they are discovering and enjoying their physical abilities.

3. Language Development
   Language development is characterized by a high interest in letters and numbers, the ability to recall and understand basic words and possessing a vocabulary of more than 2500 words. At first, young children might have difficulty pronouncing letters like R or SH and often misuse a word. Parents and teachers can help children to overcome these stumbling blocks by gently correcting them.

4. Socio-Emotional Development
   Kindergarten is a school for early developers. It is in groups like these that children learn the concepts of cooperation, competition, generosity, desire for social acceptance, sympathy, empathy, dependence, friendly attitudes, selflessness, imitation and attachment behaviour.

Developing Potential and Creativity in Children
Parents need to support the intellectual growth of children and they need to realise that education is a lifelong process that includes the family environment, school, and society. The age of 0- 5 years is a period in which children learn faster than the next stage of life. The most important parental contribution to child development is ensuring that a child has the opportunity to gain many diverse experiences.

All children have their talents. Some succeed in developing them, while others remain unaware of the talents they possess. Exposing children to different things and allowing them to explore will help them to discover their talents, so that they can develop them.
Early childhood potential can be realized if parents are very concerned about the development of their children. Based on the principles of child development, early education should be based on the needs of the child, tailored to the values shared in the surrounding environment and implemented according to the stage of physical and psychological development.

Parents can stimulate children by asking questions that stimulates the curiosity and spirit of the explorer. Thus, the child will be motivated to engage in the learning process, with the parent’s facilitating them each step of the way.