Communicating with children of any age can present questions. Intuitively, parents know that children have different needs and communication skills at different ages, and they know children have different communication needs than do adults. Though, they are sometimes not certain how their own behaviour might look as they speak to, with and around their children.
As we adults spend so much more time with our children in this pandemic moment, how we communicate matters. Put simply, less can be more when it comes to words. The larger picture of communication is, of course, another matter. If 70% of our communication as humans is non-verbal, then we have lots of ways to come at this. Our word selection, timing, tone and motives all contribute to this larger picture.
Especially with very young children, under the age of three, simple and often silent presence can be plenty of communication. A smile. A hug. Most of what we do, we do together to communicate with our actions. Parallel activities, such as when we are working at a desk while our child is amusing herself or playing with an older sibling, are non-verbal or low verbal ways of communicating. She could be dressing a doll or playing with trains, climbing and digging in the yard, or participating in joint activities with older children such as chopping vegetables or cleaning windows. Our presence is a communication. In verbal communication, speaking clearly and simply supports our child’s speech development, while maintaining a quiet and calm environment allows her the space to dream and imagine. It supports the process of naturally “coming into her own” in the world.
As a child gets to three and a half and four, we may notice how spoken words often need our close physical presence to have any impact on behaviour. We must remain close, use our bodies to help children understand. For instance, “Amy, time to put away the toys.” Amy keeps playing. When spoken to again, she runs to the other side of the room. When you come close to help her body and spirit comply, she fusses, makes her body rigid, tries to get away. She has gotten a lot of what she wants here: your attention, your close physical presence, information about your own ability to help her find boundaries and right behaviour, help putting things away. A lot of communication went on.
We may have also been wanting physical closeness without really knowing it. Next time we can plan some physical closeness before the clean up time- wrestling during indoor play, snuggling, or sharing a story during some lap time. Then when it is time to clean up, we have both been nourished and have more ability and social capital to get a job done. It does not mean that clean up will be seamless, but figuring out what everyone is communicating, or even what was communicated three hours earlier and is still unresolved, contributes to a greater understanding of how to make the whole process more successful.
Words are only one piece of the communication process. Because it is an exchange in which both parent and child are communicating several things—the desire to keep playing, the need to clean up and move on, the desire for attention and perhaps physical contact, a lack of interest in the cleaning up activity, the desire to teach good habits, the desire to be acknowledged, the desire to know that our child trusts us enough to do as we ask—it is imperative to know what the most important message is to be communicating at a given moment.
Sometimes it is just comfort for one or both parent and child. Sometimes it is event-specific such as when transitioning from play to bath time, or washing up for supper. We must be clear with the goal of our communication but also consider our child’s personality. Does she need a heads up before a transition, or a firm and clear boundary with particular activities? We must be aware of our child’s developmental moment and choose our objectives/battles accordingly. For instance, three to four years old can be a pretty independent time for children–they push a lot of boundaries. Sometimes it is best to ignore some of the naughtiness rather than have them learn a self-concept of non-cooperation or orneriness. On the other hand, at five and six years old, children are very capable of much more self-regulation, so helping them to develop good listening and cooperative habits— by staying close and following through with requests— is important. That means we want to disrupt poor listening habits or lack of courtesy, etc.
So at four, five, or six, clean up might look like the following: Clean up starts with a “heads up” and check in to see that our child heard us. “Five minutes, Bud. Bell rings and we are on it. Got it?” When he says “got it”, it is play time until that bell rings. We must ring it on time so he can build an inner clock for 5 minutes. Also, when the moment arrives, we are sure to be very close to our child, and maybe it is his job to give the bell three rings before returning it to its proper place. Once can see that a big part of this discipline is our own. We must be sure to follow a predictable and cooperative routine on which our child can count. Messing with his inner clock—being that they as yet have no relationship with an actual clock—cannot help him to build either trust or a sense of timing for tasks. So we must be consistent.
Some days it is harder than other days- we may be tired, hungry, or out of sorts. Extra help will be needed on those days. When we read the need for extra help, we might provide this by putting the toys right into our child’s hands and dancing her to the toy box. It is helpful to have consistent places for everything so that children know exactly where everything goes. Maybe we take out a novel ‘basket’- such as the stroller or a butterfly net- for collecting the legos or doll clothes to awaken that sense of play even in a chore. This switching up on tough days can shift the mood. Let them be surprises rather than overused ploys that end up feeling a bit like bribes.
Communicating successfully requires a few things: knowing our child’s developmental moment, understanding their challenges and joys, using preventative strategies to reduce melt downs (either theirs or ours), and knowing what exactly we want out of the communication. Preventative strategies include consistency in schedules, developmentally appropriate requests and support with compliance. We should target these requests for when our child is not overtired, hungry, or ill, or when we have been apart from her for some time. For instance, after a long day at school or when we have been at the work desk for many hours, is not the time to make requests beyond doing something nourishing together.
Knowing what we want from a communication includes the immediate and the longer view. Longer view—independence, self-help skills, self-soothing strategies, courtesy, responsibility, joy in both work and in family time—is affected by immediate wants such as supper, a tidy house, and tidy bottoms. So each communication takes into account both what we need now and what we hope to build over the long haul.