Most people have more training before they receive their driver's license
than before they become a parent. Educating yourself on how to communicate
effectively with your child can be the key to achieving your parenting
goals. If you do not have children of your own, these 10 tips can help you
whenever you are around children.
1. Draw children out to speak about the things on their minds.
You can 'prime the pump' by talking with them about their favorite foods,
toys, movies, video games, etc.
2. Verbally reflect the emotions of a child before giving in to your need to
teach them something.
Parents are constantly making the error of educating their child when their
child expresses pain. "I hate my nose" is often responded to with, "you have
a perfectly good nose" and the child is left to feel all alone with what
could become an enormous problem for them in years to come.
3. Teach your child to wait instead of interrupting your conversations.
One technique is to teach your children to lightly touch your arm and to
wait peacefully and quietly to be acknowledged by you. Children who
interrupt miss a chance to learn to control their impulses and can upset the
flow of an adult's conversation.
4. Play little games whenever you see children.
For example, you could put something such as a coin in a hand behind your
back and ask the child to guess which hand it is in. This is a way to build
a strong connection with a child and make a child feel honored.
5. Lower yourself physically to a child's level by sitting down, bending
down, or sitting on the floor.
It may have been months since any adult has joined the child on their own
level.
6. Hold and play with a child's toys or trinkets.
Play is the language of a child. If you stop for even thirty seconds to draw
a picture alongside of a child who is coloring, you could become one of
their heroes.
7. Tell short stories to children.
Make the stories up or pull them from your own childhood. Stories can be
used to build a connection, to teach a lesson, or just to leave a child
feeling better than when the conversation began.
8. Follow up on the promises that you make to children with action.
Children are usually more hurt than adults by broken promises. Ironically,
many people treat their promises to children as less important than their
promises to adults.
9. Sacrifice some of your time to interact with children and to focus on
them 100%.
Most adults do not interact with children who are present because the
children are not able to meet their needs the way that an adult can. Five
minutes invested in the life of a child will pay dividends that an hour
invested in the life of an adult may not.
10. Master the art of Socratic questioning.
This means that instead of expressing facts or lecturing that you ask a
question to stimulate the child's own reasoning process. Socratic
questioning opens up a place in a person's mind for the answer to be
remembered. For example, you could ask, "How do you think we could take
better care of the puppy?" instead of telling your child what to do.
Written by Dr. Clare Albright, Psychologist and Parenting Coach. She can be
reached at drclarealb@.... Order her booklet "100 Tips for Parents
of Two Year Olds" at http://www.ParentsOfTwoYearOlds.com.
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com