How To Teach Children To Remember Their Phone Number

As a responsible parent, you probably want to make sure that you teach your child to be able to recite your home phone number as early as you possibly can. While we would all like to hope that our children will never have any occasion to need to use their home phone number, we also want to err on the side of caution in making sure that our children are kept safe. Knowing how to call home in case of an emergency or an accidental separation from us in a public place is a critical part of keeping our children safe. But how soon is too soon to teach children to remember their phone numbers? And how do you go about teaching this to them?

The earlier that you start with trying to teach your children their home phone number, the safer they will be Your child can learn his or her phone number during the preschool age without too much difficulty. Some kids can learn this important number by the age of three although four is usually the target age for most kids. By the age of four, your child should be able to remember at least the seven digits that make up your basic home phone number and probably even the ten digits that he or she will need if you have a long distance number or do a lot of traveling away from home.

The best way to help your child first start to learn your phone number is to make the process of learning it into a game or song. By putting a melody to the recitation of the phone number – in the same way that we all have a familiar melody for reciting the ABCs – you can make it easier for your child’s memory to be jogged about what the phone number is. This makes learning it easier since it’s a long number for a young child to remember without this extra help.

Teaching your child to remember this phone number will require ongoing practice. Like with learning all things, your child is going to need to practice the phone number again and again in order to have it ingrained into his or her memory. Because the phone number is such a short and simple activity though, you can practice learning it all throughout the day, no matter where you are with your kids. Once you have taught your child the basics of learning his or her phone number, you can ask periodically throughout the day what the number is in order to get in this practice.

While it’s important to teach your child your home phone number, it’s also important to remember that a safety lesson needs to go along with learning it. You don’t want your child to be giving your home phone number out to everyone he or she meets, so you want to make sure to instill that this is a special number that you use just with people you know. After your child knows the phone number, you can explain that if your child ever gets lost from you and needs to find you, it’s okay to give this number to an adult to help find you. Take each step in turn: learn the phone number, practice the phone number, cover the safety reasons and purpose of knowing the phone number.

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