Schemas in Toddlers and Why They Matter

Have you ever noticed your little ones doing something seemingly mind numbing (and sometimes annoying) over and over again?

Like emptying a Lego box, throwing food on the floor, rolling cars on the floor and such? It’s actually all part of their wonderful brain development, called a schema.

A schema in short, is a pattern of repeated actions that leads to later concepts and advanced development. It’s a necessary step for children to understand themselves and their environment. It’s important for parents to understand these schemas so you can be aware of your child’s interest and way of thinking, instead of reprimanding them for a behaviour that seems foolish to you.

There are a lot of schemas but the most common ones are:

• • Trajectory – throwing things, kicks balls, and drops things all the time, they are exploring trajectories – how things move through the air.
  • Positioning – lining objects up and putting them in groups eg., cars, legos, soldier toys all lined up
  • Enveloping – covering themselves or objects completely, for eg., using a scarf, painting on themselves, etc. Wrapping items up or placing them in containers.
  • Rotating – enjoys spinning items round and round. Likes to run around in circles or being swung round.
  • Enclosing – adding boundaries to play areas e.g. fences around animals. Adding borders to pictures.
  • Transporting – carrying or moving items from one place to another; carrying items in containers or bags.
  • Connecting – setting out and dismantling tracks, constructing, joining items together with tape or glue.
  • Transforming – exploring the changing states of materials, transforming them from a solid to liquid state and back again.
  • Orienteering – an interest in positioning themselves or objects in different places or positions e.g upside down or on their side.

Discerning schemas is helpful for both you and your child as by identifying and encouraging patterns in your children’s play, you are helping them to learn and you are putting less stress on yourself when they keep dropping their food from the highchair for the hundredth time and never understanding your kid’s purpose for doing that and such.

-My Gym Editorial Team –