For those of you who are wondering, kids don’t really learn how to talk properly until they are around two years of age, way after they learn to walk. Until I had children of my own I thought it was the reverse and was really shocked and concerned.
ME: He’s hardly talking yet!
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL: Of course he’s not. He’s only one!
ME: But he’s walking.
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL: Yes, they walk first. Didn’t you know?
Ok, now that you know the WHEN, here’s everything you need to know about the WHY.
These are the six things to start teaching your kids as soon as they start to talk:
1. Learning their phone number and address – by heart.
I started trying to teach my son my phone number as soon as he could memorise nursery rhymes. Every Thursday when we’d drive to and from my mum’s house for our weekly visit (an hour’s drive each way) we’d practice. After a few weeks he knew it. You can even use your child’s favourite nursery rhyme to teach it to them.
Now he and I are teaching my younger kids my phone number and our address as well as other information they can share with ‘safe people’ when needed. Start off easy with your phone number, the suburb in which they live and their surname.
2. Personal care.
Keep most of your children’s everyday shoes and clothing simple so they can start to learn how to dress themselves. They won’t be able to do their shoelaces or more complicated clothing until they are much older, however teaching them to dress in more simple clothing teaches them responsibility and personal care.
Start with sandals, jackets and hats. Keep them in the same place so that every day they know where to find them and then they know where to put them back when they get home. As they master each item, you can start teaching them more complicated things like shoelaces, buttons and zippers. Pack an emergency bag filled with clothes and toys just in case you need to leave home urgently.
3. Who to call in an emergency.
Learning your phone number is important, but you need to add at least one more number to that list – that’s Triple 0 in Australia. However it’s not enough to teach them the number. Phones can be complicated these days, even to our tech-savvy cherubs. I ended up teaching my kids how to call emergency on my smart phone. It was just easier than teaching them on the cordless. Then you can also show them how to make calls to important family members using pre-programmed features.
The great thing about teaching them to use smartphones for this is that they will end up calling someone in your contacts list, and smart phones can be traced.
4. Emergency plan.
As soon as your children can walk and talk and understand basic instructions, you need to run through your home Emergency Plan with them. RACQ Get Ready Queensland Week is on 12-18 October and is a great opportunity to create your own plan including designing an emergency kit and then practice your plan with your family. When it comes to extreme weather events in Queensland, it’s not so much a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’. The more prepared we all are, the faster we’ll bounce back. We just need to “Get Ready”.
Sit down with all the grownups in your family, and older kids, and discuss your scenarios, meeting points, evacuation plans and other important details. The RACQ website will help you make all of these decisions. When it comes to teaching little kids, they don’t need to know any of the scary details. You’ll just need to teach them a trigger word, a meeting point, a safe space in your home and an evacuation plan. Practice it a few times each year until they know exactly what they need to do.
5. Personal safety.
The “who can touch you where” conversation is one we now need to have with our children when they are quite young. There are some great resources such as books that can help you teach your children these important lessons and you can practice scenarios like a game. The Morcombe Foundation has some brilliant videos for parents and carers to watch and can give you some tips and inspiration when it comes to having your own talk with your kids.
It can be confronting and hard to have this particular conversation with your children and the Morcombe Foundation will give you all the motivation to get it started.
6. Road safety.
I’ve never lived in a home where I’ve been able to drive into the garage. It’s part of the charm of having a husband who is a hoarder. Instead I’ve had to park in the driveway and navigate my son and two toddlers to and from the house safely. Easier said than done when one of those toddlers is a runner, which is how we came by our own personal road safety rules.
Your road safety rules for your toddler will be different depending on your lifestyle. Holding hands is rule number one and never letting go is rule number two. Then you can add specific rules you need them to learn such as walking, not running, across the road and never ever going near a road, any road, without a grown up, no excuses.
Have you taught your child any of the above?
It's important to be prepared for all emergencies:
