As a parent, you can enhance your preschool child's development in countless ways, the most important of which is showing love and affection. You guide your children through the challenges of this important time of life by talking and reading to them, providing opportunities for play, playing pretend with them, showing them how to get dressed or use the toilet, and setting boundaries and limits to their behavior.

You can also try specific techniques to help your child advance in all areas of growth and development.

Promote physical development by:

• Offering plenty of opportunities for exercise. Going to the playground, joining a gymnastics or dance class, or simply running races in your backyard allows your child to release excess energy and encourages new physical skills.
• Helping your preschooler develop healthy eating habits. Although you control what, when, and where your child eats, realize that he or she chooses whether to eat and how much. As long as you offer nourishing foods from the major food groups and focus on the big picture-how much is eaten throughout the entire day or over the course of a few days-your child should not have problems. Use the family meal as an opportunity to promote healthy eating habits, both by your example of good eating behavior and how you respond to your child's shifting food preferences.

Promote cognitive development by:

• Encouraging safe exploration. Exploration helps your child discover cause-and-effect relationships. Children who explore learn to master new skills and solve problems. Offer a variety of things to play with, read, create, and build. Resist limiting exploration because of safety fears by taking basic measures to minimize risks. For more information about preventing accidents and injuries, see the topic Health and Safety, Ages 2 to 5 Years.
• Encouraging a sense of security. Your child is more likely to feel safe and secure if you are dependable, consistent, respectful, and responsive. These qualities are especially important for parents of preschool children, because these children are gaining a basic sense of trust in themselves and in the significant people in their lives. This sense of trust lays the foundation for learning, social skills, adaptability, and emotional development. Secure children also keep and strengthen their attachment to their parents.

Promote emotional and social development by:

• Providing peer contact. Playing with other children even 1 day a week gives children opportunities to practice and develop important social, emotional, and language skills. Children learn to share, cooperate, and negotiate as they interact with their peers.
• Promoting self-control. Children need guidance, clear limits, and patient parents during this time of behavioral and emotional struggles. Help your child by modeling and teaching proper behavior. Also, encourage your child to think about the feelings of other people to develop empathy. Preschoolers crave acceptance and attention. Completely ignoring a misbehaving child is effective in curbing minor but annoying behavior problems, such as whining or complaining. Time-outs can also help, when they are used properly and sparingly.
• Helping your child build self-esteem. The foundation of self-esteem is established in childhood. Parents have the greatest influence on a child's belief about himself or herself. Letting your child know that he or she belongs, is doing well, and is contributing can help him or her develop healthy self-esteem.