communicating partners

1. Talk about anything your child is doing or is interested in, no matter how insignificant it seems to you. Any kind of conversations are important at first. It is less important what you talk about than the fact that you both are talking back and forth for increasingly more and longer times. In daily life, we often have conversations mainly for the social connection with someone and not primarily for information or accomplishing a task. We need to allow casual conversation time for our children especially since the major task is to make them want to return for more conversations. 2. Allow actions to be part of the conversations. Conversations do not have to be continuous talking. Let actions do the talking at times. When you are playing with your child, join into the things he is doing and make words a part of the play. Occasionally, play and interact in the activity back and forth without talking. For many children, conversations are best learned as a way to supplement or help

  HOW TO BE PLAYFUL AND AFFIRMING 1. Accept what the child is doing, then playfully join his activities. 2. Be more interesting than child’s distractions. 3. Be animated, funny, silly. 4. Identify and respond to little positive or new things your child does. 5. Reward child for doing “better” not doing perfectly or like an adult. 6. Show him new things to do in playful nonjudgmental ways. 7. Try to reduce tension and stress between you and your child. 8. Frequently let him know you enjoy him with touches, smiles, or words. 9. Make the interactions fun for YOU too. WHAT TO AVOID 1. Interacting without smiles and humor. 2. Being business-like or task-focused during play sessions. 3. Judging and criticizing the child. 4. Showing irritation with what your child does. 5. Sending messages that tell your child he is doing something “wrong”. 6. Allowing yourself to be stressed with the child. 7. Trying to get the child to do the impossible. 8.

Children learn to be social and communicative by interacting with people. Consequently, they will learn a lot from the ways partners interact with them. Below are some ways adults can interfere with a child becoming social and communicative: Do his partners act in ways he cannot try? Do partners focus on getting him to do what they want? Do partners do most of the doing without waiting? Do partners mainly question and command the child? Do partners dominate or control interactions with the child? Do partners act serious and focus on specific answers? Do partners ignore the child and focus on their goals? Do partners act more like a directive teacher than play partner? Do interactions lack a sense of humor or enjoyment? Do partners criticize or penalize the child for his attempts? Do partners attend more to negative than positive behavior? WHAT HAVE ADULTS DONE TO HELP CHILDREN BECOME MORE SOCIAL? Forty years of clinical research have shown that certain strategies help adults build

One notion that helps many people understand turntaking is the comparison between ping-pong and darts. Turntaking is like a ping-pong game in which each partner takes a turn and then waits for his partner to take his turn. Ping-pong requires 'matching' in that each person hits the ball in a way that the other can return. Each partner has a turn and expects to keep the game going. In darts, there is only one person and a board, and the person throws the darts at the board. The point here is that a child will learn more if he is more like a ping-pong partner than like a dart board or a dart thrower. The kind of turntaking we are referring to can be misinterpreted in many ways. Turntaking here refers to people-to-people interactions, doing something directly to or with a person in a way that relates to what that person is doing. When a teacher tells a boy to "wait his turn" on the slide or says "it's not your turn yet, you tell your story after Carlos," tha

. The first words that children use describe their own experiences and motivations. Ordinarily they do not first talk about adult or school ideas. They have their own first language and appear to develop language best if they are helped to develop that special language before they learn adult or school words. Children learn words and use them in communication best when those words do the following things: 1. Describe what the child is doing and thinking. The people and actions that directly engage the child and the objects and events he genuinely cares about are most likely to be reflected in first words. These words, which represent the child's own opinions and thoughts, are more likely to become a part of his natural vocabulary than are abstract concepts like numbers, letters, colors or other experiences that are primarily important to adults. 2. Describe things he knows. Think of words as things that tell us what the child knows. He is more likely to begin talking, especially on

TO HELP ANY CHILD COMMUNICATE MORE. FIRST: Believe that your child will learn to interact and communicate with you more than anyone else. SECOND: Understand that every interaction you have will help your child learn. The more you interact back and forth every day, the more your child will learn with you. THIRD: Be a possible partner. Ask yourself, "Can my child try to do what I am doing?" If not, try hard to act like your child, plus one. "Plus one" means you to do what your child can do and frequently show the next step-- for example, another sound or word. FOURTH: Make your life together one of frequently taking turns and waiting for your child to respond. Silent waiting is one most effective ways to help a child communicate. Note: I suggest that you post this list where you see it frequently. These habits have helped many adults help children to communicate more. Let us know what happens. Dr. Jim macdonaldj86@gmail.com