Anticipatory guidance manual for children’s mental healthcare (Aged 0-6)

chinacdc.cn | Updated: 2022-03-01
Neonatal period
Parenting Tips:
1.Parents should raise infants by themselves as much as possible and make more contact with newborns through ways such as talking, smiling, and hugging.
 
2.Learn to recognize the crying of the newborns, appease their emotions and meet their needs in time. On-demand breastfeeding is an important method of adaptive feeding for the newborns.
 
3.Touch the newborns, let the newborns see the faces or bright toys or listen to the sweet sounds of bells and music to promote the development of their sensory perception.
 
4.Newborns can perform prone exercises one hour after feeding, and passive exercises can be performed for infants 1-2 times a day.
 
Recommended activities:
Touching; passive exercise; breastfeeding on demand
 
1-3 months
Parenting Tips:
1.Pay attention to parent-infant communication and eye contact, talk to and tease the baby with emotion in the process of feeding and nursing, and respond to the baby with smiles, a gentle voice and nods. 
 
2.Exercise the baby movement and control ability of head and neck in the prone position, vertical holding practice, and passive exercise.
 
3.Play sweet music for babies and play noisy toys with them; use bright toys to attract their attention and eye tracking; give them the opportunity to touch different objects.
 
Recommended activities:
Playing toys; prone-position exercise
 
3-6 months 
Parenting Tips:
1.Accompany and raise the baby as much as possible. Identify and respond to the baby's physical and psychological needs in time, and gradually establish a secure attachment relationship with the baby.
 
2.Cultivate the baby's regular eating, sleeping and other living habits, and play parent-child games such as looking in the mirror, hide and seek, and looking for the source of sound with the baby.
 
3.Create a good language environment, talk more to infants and imitate a baby’s voice, so as to encourage them to talk.
 
4.Encourage babies to turn over freely and practice sitting properly; let the baby reach out and grab toys and items of different textures to promote the development of hand-eye coordination.
 
Recommended activities: 
Looking in the mirror; Practicing sitting
 
6-8 months 
Parenting Tips:
1.Accompany and raise the baby as much as possible. Expand the scope of their activities and encourage contact with their external environment and people under safe conditions.
 
2.Call the baby’s name frequently, say the names of items at home, and cultivate the baby's ability to understand language. Guide the baby to utter simple sounds to improve their interest in pronunciation.
 
3.Help the baby practice sitting alone and crawling, and help the baby practice jumping while holding them under their armpits. Practice reaching for distant toys, passing toys and tearing paper with both hands and grabbing and pinching with fingers, so as to improve hand-eye coordination.
 
Recommended activities:
Saying the names of things at home; Practicing crawling and reaching out for items
 
 
8-12 months 
Parenting Tips:
1.Help the baby recognize other people’s different expressions. When the baby has negative emotions such as anger, boredom and unhappiness, divert their attention.
 
2.Enrich the baby's language environment, often talk to the baby and make the baby look at pictures. Let the baby make movements and expressions according to instructions, such as answering their names and knowing how to wave a goodbye.
 
3.Help the baby practice crawling on hands and knees and learn to stand and walk with objects. Provide babies with cups, building blocks, balls and other safe toys to play with to develop hand-eye coordination and accurate motor abilities.
 
4.Play imitation games with the baby, such as clapping hands and saying "welcome", pinching noisy toys, patting dolls, and dragging blankets to obtain toys.
 
Recommended activities:
Imitating goodbye; talking to babies/looking at pictures; crawling on hands and knees
 
12-18 months 
Parenting Tips:
1.Give children the opportunity to explore the environment and express their wishes and emotions. Take children to play parent-child interactive games, such as mutual bowling and crawling games.
2.Tell children more stories and sing them more songs, teach them to identify pictures in books and body parts, guide them to connect language with objects, and encourage them to express ideas consciously in language.
3.Offer them a safe place for activities, and improve their ability to keep balance by practicing walking, throwing and kicking a ball, pulling a toy and other activities.
4.Encourage children to play more games such as turning pages, capping bottles, drawing with a pen and using building blocks to improve their cognition and hand eye coordination.
 
Recommended activities:
Practice walking; drawing 
 
18-24 months 
Parenting Tips:
1.Parents should be consistent in their parenting attitude and behavior towards children. On the premise of ensuring safety, give children the opportunity to do things independently, encourage and praise children's every effort, and cultivate their independence and self-confidence.
 
2.Play dress up games such as "feeding the baby, patting the baby to sleep" with children. Learn more words, say the names and phrases of surrounding objects, and encourage them to express needs with simple dialogue. Learn to distinguish between sizes, match shapes and colors.
 
3.To improve children's physical movement coordination ability, help them learn to hold the railing while going up and down the stairs, kick the ball, walk and run on tiptoes, hold a pen to imitate drawing lines, and stack high building blocks.
 
4.Cultivate children's self-care ability, such as eating with a spoon, drinking water with a cup, and learning to take off socks and shoes and indicating to parents when urinating.
 
Recommended activities:
Playing dress up games; Practicing walking on tiptoe
 
24-30 months 
Parenting Tips:
1.Encourage children to do what they can and improve their awareness and ability to overcome difficulties. Children can do some simple household chores in this period, such as tidying toys, sweeping the floor, helping to get things, so as to promote the development of their self-confidence and stimulate their enthusiasm for participation.
 
2.When children try to engage in dangerous activities, they should be stopped in time. In case of inappropriate behaviors such as unreasonable crying, ignore or divert their attention, so that children can differentiate right from wrong in daily life and gradually develop good behavior habits.
 
3.Teach children to say their names, gender, body parts, as well as some short sentences and songs. Cultivate children's understanding of spatial concepts such as inside and outside, up and down, front and back.
 
4.Teach them to go up and down stairs alone, stand on one leg to improve physical coordination and exercise ability; Through building blocks, beads and other games, improve their ability to make fine movements.
 
Recommended activities:
Tidying toys; going up and down the stairs; building blocks
 
30-36 months
Parenting Tips:
1.Encourage children to develop peer relationships, teach them to take turns, wait, cooperate, help and share so as to cultivate love, compassion and self-control.
 
2.Cultivate children's interest and imagination by playing games such as "driving a train", "riding a bamboo pole" and "having a family" with children.
 
3.Tell stories to children, encourage them to retell simple stories, teach them to sing songs and tell pictures, constantly enrich their vocabulary and improve language expression ability.
 
4.Practice walking up stairs with both feet alternately, and making long jump to improve physical coordination. Through drawing horizontal lines and circles and buttoning and wearing shoes help them to improve their ability to make fine movements.
 
5.Gradually cultivate their regular living habits and learn life skills such as washing hands, eating, dressing, defecation and so on. Help children learn to adapt to the new environment, improve their ability to overcome difficulties and prepare for entering kindergarten.
 
Recommended activities:
Learning children's songs; washing hands by themselves
 
3-4 years 
Parenting Tips:
1.Help children adapt to the collective environment and gradually establish good partnerships. Pay attention to negative emotions and properly deal with them.
 
2.Use a big number of words and sentences to talk to children, tell stories in picture books to them, listen to them patiently when they speak and retell stories, and encourage children to ask questions and answer them carefully. 
 
3.Under safe conditions encourage children to practice walking in a straight line, alternating between walking and running, riding tricycles and learning origami, paper cutting, painting, using chopsticks, and similar activities.
 
4.Through themed role-playing group games, encourage children to associate freely and maintain their curiosity. Cultivate children's attention and observation of things, and guide and cultivate interests and hobbies.
 
5.Help children learn to abide by the rules of life, playing and learning, and encourage children to complete eating, dressing, going to the toilet and urinating independently.
 
6.Allow children to make mistakes in their growth and let them learn from their mistakes. Correct bad behavior with appropriate methods, and avoid rough discipline methods such as spanking and scolding.
 
Recommended activities:
Riding a tricycle; adapting to the collective environment
 
4-5 years
Parenting Tips:
1.Cultivate children's independence and self-care ability, and teach them to sort out and keep their toys and books. Help children correctly understand gender differences and accept and identify with their own genders.
 
2.Guide children to express their feelings and requirements in language, and gradually teach them to control their emotions and behaviors. Encourage children to get in touch with society, abide by various rules, and strengthen their awareness of being happy and helping others.
 
3.Play simple abstract thinking games such as guessing riddles, and learn to classify items according to shape, size, color and purpose, so as to help children understand the laws and internal relations of things. Learn children's songs, stories and performances; practice throwing and receiving the ball; and complete complex graphics, paper cuttings and jigsaw puzzles.
 
Recommended activities:
Item classification
 
5-6 years 
Parenting Tips:
1.Promote the development of children's attention. Communicate more with them about what happened in and around the kindergarten, and answer their questions.
 
2.Establish appropriate codes of conduct for children, guide them to abide by the rules and requirements of social and family life, affirm and encourage children's efforts and progress in time.
 
3.When children encounter difficulties in play activities, help them describe and express their feelings, praise them in time when they make efforts to overcome difficulties, and cultivate their quality of persistence and patience.
 
4.Teach them to gradually understand, sympathize with and share the needs of others.
 
5.Practice rope skipping, one-footed jumping and hitting the ball. It’s also better for children to draw pictures, do handicrafts and play creative games. Teach them to tidy up schoolbags, stationery, books and other items, and make preparations for entering primary school.
 
Recommended activities:
Jumping rope; drawing pictures