Communication is the way by which you can establish strong bonds with persons around you! Communication is the way to develop relationships and to strengthen it further. You can understand how important communication is, but at times, you may find it pretty confusing to communicate with your child. As parents, you need to understand what your child needs exactly. You need to admit the fact that your child will not be able to express himself properly at the initial stages. Thus, it will be your sole responsibility to understand him and to allow him to express his thoughts in a better way. Child psychology may seem to be pretty complex and you may not know what may hurt your child!
Communication can be both verbal and non-verbal. Non-verbal communication includes all kinds of emotional expressions, actions, body language, and meaningless words. Even silence may also be considered as a part of non-verbal communication. We, as parents, act as mirrors for our children. They learn every action from us and whatever we do is being imitated by them. We are the examples and what many of us do not realize is that our non-verbal messages and actions are stronger than our verbal ones.
Here are some tips to communicate well with your child:
- Play with Your Child: Children learn the best through play. Get on the floor with your child for at least 20 minutes and play with him. Do it for at least three times a day. Engage in the play that your child is interested in. Challenge your child during play to make him start communicating.
- Be a Good Listener: Children have lots of things to talk about and all they want is an interesting listener so that they can pour out all they have in their little hearts. This satisfies their sense of importance apart from improving the parent child relationship. Sometimes, listening may prove to be the best way of communicating!
- Give Him the Undivided Attention He Deserves: Make spending time with your child and talking to him your first priority. Ignoring this may certainly ignite resentment in his heart.
- Get Involved with Him Completely: Show that you are genuine towards him and his play world. You can do this by seeing things from your child's perspective. Participate actively in the discussion and express surprises and curiosity.
- Encourage Your Child to Talk: Don't show your dominant nature while encouraging your child to talk. Ask simple questions that he will enjoy answering, encourage him to describe an event with more expression, emotions, colors, mimicry and more. Let him talk about his little achievements, and he will jump out of his soul to tell you so many things.
- Take Help of Pictorials and Visuals: Educate him by showing pictures, flash cards, videos related to his interest like the ones on games, animals and study projects.
- Tell Stories: Tell stories with lots of expression. It will captivate him.
- Maintain Smile on Your Face: Avoid a serious look on your face or even in your tone. Try to keep a smile on your face as much as you can to show how cheerful you are towards him. Non-verbal communication consists of expressions, tone of voice, eye contact and actions. If one looks angry or disappointed, communicates in a nasty tone or looks all around while talking, then this non-verbal communication sends negative messages to the recipient. A look is worth a thousand words. Choose wisely.
While communicating with your child you will need to go back once again to your childhood days. Don't forget that you were a child someday! Try to remember what has troubled you or hurt you or had given you the maximum happiness when you were a child. This way, you will be able to bridge the gap between an innocent, playful childhood and a responsible, matured adulthood!
