Spending time with your child as a parent is important. However, it’s equally vital that your toddler meet and interact with others, both adults and children their age. At a licensed daycare, they can get attention from new people and develop new skills.

How Interacting with New People Helps Your Child

1. Develop Language Skills

Most children speak their first word between 10 and 14 months old, and by age three, a toddler will usually have a vocabulary of 200 words or more. Your child will progress through these milestones faster if they regularly hear language, both from other children and various adults. Workers at a licensed daycare can spend extra time reading to your child, which has been shown to improve language development.

2. Learn to Work Together

Interacting with other children will help your toddler learn manners and social cues in an organic environment. At a licensed daycare center, they’ll learn to respect others and cooperate on tasks. Even just building a block tower with another child or saying thank you can improve your child’s social skills.

3. Respect Authority Figures

It’s important that your child interacts not just with other children, but with adults as well. At a licensed daycare center, your child will learn from adults, which will help them learn to respect authority figures other than their parents. 

4. Learn How to Share

Sharing is generally not a skill your child will learn organically, especially if they don’t have siblings. Playing with other children teaches your child how to let other people have a turn with their toys. This is especially true at a licensed daycare center, where a caregiver can step in to work out issues.

For a comprehensive learning center that provides certified daycare and after-school care that will fit both your and your child’s needs, check out Northern Lights Preschool & Child Care in Anchorage, AK. Their toddler program accepts children over 15 months old, and their preschool program works on developing your child’s language and social skills for kindergarten. They provide a safe, loving, and exciting environment where your child will love to learn. Visit their website to learn more or call (907) 274-2040 to register your child.