Heuristic Play and Loose Parts

CHILD DEVELOPMENT FEATURE HEURISTIC PLAY AND LOOSE PARTS

By Ella Diprose

When it comes to play, what do children truly need? What does play look like and what types of play provide greater outcomes for our children?

HEURISTIC

This means enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves.

HEURISTIC PLAY

An activity children engage in to explore the properties of objects from the real world.

LOOSE PARTS

Objects and materials that children can move, manipulate, control, and change within their play. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to play with them. They are ‘open-ended’.

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

Having heuristic, loose parts play items is literally a basket of treasures and a basket of potential! They don’t have a purpose and that is the catch! The possibilities of what your child can do with them are limitless. Offer these items to your baby or child and respectfully observe their play. With loose parts your child can create, construct, manipulate, explore, investigate, express, imagine and analyse.

WHY USE LOOSE PARTS?

“Loose part, heuristic play encourages investigation and curiosity! Together, these materials and philosophies are the key to it all. They are open. Open to interpretation from your capable, inquisitive baby! Your baby can’t fail, your baby can’t become frustrated, your baby doesn’t need you to show them how to do it, or fix it. There is no right or wrong way to interact with them and that is the beauty. Let your child be the actor, director and script writer in their own play.” - Navy Baby Company

WHERE DO I FIND THEM?

The exciting thing about loose parts is that you can collect them from almost anywhere. Your kitchen cupboards can be a great place to search for spare baby friendly utensils, wooden spoons, jar lids, metal tins, measuring cups. You can collect loose parts from outside and have a nature theme with sticks, leaves, flowers, and small stones. You can use ribbons, scarves, different textured materials, and cloths. There are also some New Zealand based companies who you can buy loose parts and open ended play items from who sell affordable, quality products that meet toy safety standards.

WHAT AGE IS THIS FOR?

There is no set age or age limit that loose parts can be played with. The Navy Baby company suggests you can start “as young as 8 weeks old by placing an item close by for observation.” The great thing about loose parts is that they can fit into your child’s stage

of development and level of understanding whatever their age.

• Sparks children’s creativity and

imagination. Rather than a child simply knowing that a noise happens when they push a certain button, with loose parts imagination leads their play. Heuristic open-ended play opportunities allow children to explore, learn and develop in a completely natural way. • Stimulates sensory perception. Children can explore using their senses and discover concepts like hard and soft, light and heavy, the sounds objects make when banged together.

• Allows children to develop their own

ideas and investigations, which enhances their autonomy, self-direction, and selfknowledge and supports feelings of pride, self-efficacy, and self-esteem.

• Develops their problem solving and

negotiation skills. When a child is exploring a wooden ring and trying to put different objects through the hole, they might discover some fit through and some do not, and others have to be turned sideways.

• Provides development for children’s fine and gross motor skills. • Promotes social interaction and

conversations. You can talk with your child about how they are using the different objects and introduce new words to describe objects or describe what is happening in the play such as,

“You’re holding a shiny metal spoon,” or,

“I can see you are putting the block on top of the cup, and uh-oh, it fell down.” • Promotes critical thinking. With an electronic toy a child learns how to work it in order for a noise or sound to be made. When engaged in heuristic play children can explore the sounds made by banging different objects together or knocking them on different surfaces. Unlike the electronic toy, this then leads them to wonder, “How did I make that noise? Can I make it again? What would happen if I bang it with a different object?”

• Promotes early mathematical

conceptual learning. When children are provided opportunities to play with items of different weight, size, shap,e and texture they begin to explore these mathematical ideas.

HEALTH AND WELBEING FEEDING AVERSIONS: WHEN FEEDING IS NO LONGER ENJOYABLE FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN

My name is Rebecca Robinson, a local lactation consultant. I have many supporting roles which include private birth preparation, labour and birth support, and birth story listening. I offer a holistic approach for all aspects of my work. Currently I am working towards becoming a qualified counsellor. Recently I was contacted by a family who were at their wits end because their 11 week old baby was having major feeding problems: • He is hungry but when offered the breast he screams, arching his back • Placing him into the feeding position will elicit a cry at times • When he does feed it can be 6-8hrs after his last • His output has lowered dramatically • Doctors and Emergency Department aren’t concerned • Tried feeding in cradle hold, rugby, side laying positions • He is screaming for hours • He prefers the left breast, however is starting to refuse both. • I feel like my baby no longer loves me • My husband dreaded watching me trying to feed, as he felt helpless Does this sound familiar? Perhaps you have experienced this or heard a story of someone else experiencing this. I want to bring awareness to feeding aversion and the emotional impact it has on the whole family. I want to acknowledge the judgement, shame, and confusion that women/families can feel when our infants are refusing to feed. I want to share how understanding the feeding roles and responsibilities can impact aversion, to help equip families with a wider understanding. What do we do when our baby isn’t latching? • You get worried • You try to do it better • Perhaps try readjusting positions • You get anxious • Forcing your baby’s face into your breast or bottle. • You become frustrated • Keep trying over and over Our babies continue to push away or refuse to feed and the cycle continues. This cycle then becomes a pattern and our babies begin to respond by: • pushing away when cueing to feed • becoming fussy or distressed when offered feeds • cry as they are being placed into a feeding position • cry as soon as the breast/bottle is shown This patterned behaviour has been contributed to by the pressure to feed and is now distressing for everybody involved. Because the baby is not feeding often, you begin to see a reduction in how often your baby is urinating and stooling.

In order to stop the cycle and patterned behaviour of offering and not accepting have you tried strategies like? • spend time skin to skin, • removing the pressure away and make it fun again • taking a bath together • Letting itself resolve for 2-4 days I learned about feeding aversion from a past client, I had heard about aversion where the mother has a feeding aversion however I had only heard of nursing strikes and breast refusal. So, what is the difference between a nursing strike and feeding aversion? Personally, I think a nursing strike is identified once it has been resolved after 2-4 days. Anything longer is an aversion. With any feeding aversion you have to identify what the infant is trying to avoid. What could be unpleasant, stressful, or painful for your baby when feeding? In order to remove the aversion: Narrow down possible causes, eliminate and break the pattern, and remove the negative association with feeding. (Rowena Bennett, https://www.babycareadvice. com/article/detail/Feeding_Aversion) This new understanding has really opened my eyes to see how aversion answers those questions about what to do next when skin to skin and persuading the baby to take the breast no longer work!

There is no fast solution

As I spent time supporting the family to work with the feeding aversion, within the first 24hrs the feedings were starting to move in the direction they were after. The average feeding aversion can take 1-4 weeks to resolve. When the family shared with me what had been happening there were a couple of things that stood out: • having a fast let down and he was unable to keep up with the flow causing him to become overwhelmed when feeding. • Family expectations with how often he should feed • When he refused to feed, there was pressure to keep trying to get him latched. • Lowered wet and dirty nappies increases family anxiousness which drives family to keep trying to feed, due to worry and concerns for dehydration • Mothers’ full breasts signalling that not enough milk has been removed, compounding the fact that baby needs to feed. Here you can begin to see the tug of war or cycle of pressuring to feed and the anxiousness around feeding not working and that it all begins to spiral out of control. Mothers have expressed feeling as though she is being pushed away by her infant, which can lead to women feeling rejected and unloved by their child. My client expressed, “I felt like a failure that my baby wasn’t feeding off me and I couldn’t soothe him.” This is where the feeding journey becomes a negative experience for everyone involved. It can be hard to acknowledge that the feeding journey has become a negative experience for everyone. The hardest feeling to navigate can be feeling as though it has spiralled out of control and intensified by the pressure to feed the infant. There is no one recipe that works for everyone, every feeding difficulty is unique. Providing a safe environment where families can feel heard, acknowledged, understood without judgement or shamed is the foundation of what I do. After meeting this family and listening to what they were experiencing now and what their expectations are with feeding, I helped them to build the path of where to go next.

Did you know that there are divisions of responsibility with feeding infants?

Yes, there are. Three in fact. This may help you understand how pressure feeding eventuates. When you are feeding your baby, you are responsible for what your child eats (breast or alternative supplement). Your child is responsible for how much they eat and how often. When parents/caregivers cross over this boundary of responsibilities, it is usually due to a distrust that the child is unable to carry out their feeding responsibilities. Finding where the distrust started can uncover where and when the boundaries of responsibility got blurred. This is where listening skills are very important in order to help identify and eliminate the pressure to feed. My client also mentioned that feedings had become very pressured due to expectations on how often feeds should occur. Once we reset the expectation on feeding spacing we were able to trial a no pressure strategy. So, taking into consideration the divisions of responsibility when your child cues to feed you would offer once, if your child rejects the breast then move on with your day not offering again and again, just the once. After 30mins-1hr as infant begins to cue, offer then. Fortunately for this client he fed and then continued to do the same at each feed again. For some this doesn’t work this fast, it can take 1-4wks for aversions to resolve. So, I recommend seeking support with a lactation consultant or other health professional that has experience with feeding aversion. With all of this in mind when we look to eliminate the cause, it is not to find anyone to blame. I truly believe that we do what we can with what we have in each moment. The hardest thing can be asking for help and hoping that you are going to be listened to.

Perhaps I am that person for you!!

“If it wasn’t for the LC Rebecca we would still be struggling and getting nowhere - paying for the private consultations was worth it.” “If it wasn’t for Rebecca at Unique beginnings and her support and knowledge we would have been lost. She is supportive and knowledgeable and looks at the whole picture rather than just the feeding.”