For parents who love nature and gardening, we want to as much as possible include our children in our hobbies. Many people particularly find in therapeutic to commune with nature and to plant your own garden, and it is a good idea to bring your baby with you on this journey.
Gardening in your backyard is safe for children because it is just within your house, and you can still supervise them while they roam around. For most parents, this is quite an unexplored territory when it comes to parenting.
But once you know how to do it, it can be a fun learning experience for both you and your child. This experience will open your baby's eyes to the beauty of nature and will expand his world from the four corners of your house. Here are some helpful tips where it comes to gardening with your baby.
1. Enjoy Your Time with Your Child
Bringing a baby with you to gardening is not about being productive at planting trees and cleaning your garden. This is about spending quality time with your child so the main objective should be to explore and enjoy the surroundings with your child. Let your baby enjoy the breeze and the sights of green plants and colorful flowers.
2. Wear Your Baby
If you want to try to be productive at gardening with your baby around, you can practice wearing your child in a sling or in a baby carrier. This way, you can focus on gardening with your own two hands while also making sure that your baby is safe. Let your baby see the gardening process and don't forget to talk to your child every once in a while. By doing this, you develop a deeper sense of trust in your relationship with your infant.
3. Safety Practice
You may have other gardening tools and equipment that are sharp and pointy which will cause danger. It is best to keep them out first especially with your baby around. Always keep a watchful eye on your child because he might swallow soil and stones. However, you can also introduce him to some of your tools and how these are used but it is always safe to keep an eye on them as you would not want your baby to get hurt.
4. Let Your Baby Roam Around and Explore His Surroundings
A good practice is to set up a blanket and a shade where your baby can stay and play while you go and start gardening. Your baby can watch you and will sometimes move. It is important to always keep an eye on your child. Also, if there are some special areas you don’t want him to enter, place the baby gates there!
5. Let Him Get Dirty
Let your baby touch the sand and play with the soil because babies learn when they touch things. Exposure to dirt at an early stage also increases the immunity of your child. You should be mindful to avoid soil and dirt to be ingested by your baby as this may cause illness and germs and parasites from entering your baby's body.
6. Introduce Your Baby to Different Plants in the Garden
It may sound a bit crazy but bringing your child to the garden and introducing him to the different plants will make your baby learn so much in the process. Let him touch the texture of the leaves and the smell of the flowers. Just be open to the idea that your baby might pluck out some leaves and flowers. If you have plants that you value so much, it would be best not to let your baby touch your valued plants.
7. Let Him Know That Plants and Trees Are Friends
At the onset of child development, fear is a natural stimulus to stop your child from doing things they should not be doing. Let your baby know that plants are friends and that there is no harm in touching them. Here in the open garden, there are no baby gates for your child so you have to be extra vigilant.
8. Cook Food for Your Baby
You may have herbs and fruits in your garden that you might want to feed your child. Let your baby watch you while you make an organic baby food that is healthy for him. Babies also learn from what they see and by introducing your child to fruits and vegetables in his early stages, you will have no problem feeding your child greens when they grow up.
9. Babies Learn Through Their Senses
Babies learn through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. Give them a full sensory experience when it comes to gardening. You may show them different colors of flowers, let them hear the drip of water, let them smell fragrant flowers, and let them touch plants and you can also buy some fruit while gardening. This way, you ensure that your baby will have a fun and productive time at learning what happens in their surroundings.
10. Clean Your Child After Bringing Him Out
Never forget to wash the baby's hands right after the gardening experience. Babies put as many things as they can into their mouths as this is also part of their learning process. But sucking thumbs and putting the hands into the mouth right after gardening will bring more harm than good. There are many cases where babies have harbored parasites in their bodies just because of ingesting dirty soil, so it is imperative to take note of this.
There is no perfect guideline when it comes to spending quality time with your babies. You can tweak this and add more fun stuff such as bringing out toys for your children to play in the garden. As parents, it is expected that you know what the best is for your child and your protective instincts will come in naturally.
At first, it may be chaotic to bring him them to the garden, but once you get used to it, it will go smoothly. The most important thing to remember is to have fun and bond with your baby.