In volunteering at head start today, I met a great number of different children. It was easy to see that a variety of cultures were present, and the ones I could identify were Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, African American, Caucasian, and Native American. This is an amazing setting for cultural diversity! By interacting with them I realized how differently it is to communicate with them because of the altered meaning they take from what is being said. Although there are various cultural backgrounds, the children all posses the innocent/childlike mindset which is what creates a variance in communication with them. In the following are three different ways in which communication with children is approached differently than adults.
First of all, by interacting with the children I was reminded how energetic, enthusiastic, and creative they are at all times. This is quite different than adults, who generally aren’t “go-go-go” all the time, and don’t get as excited about simple things as children do. Because of this enthusiasm, it is very important to give children options they can decide upon instead of being told what to do all the time. Allowing this “choice time” lets children learn how to make their own decisions and allows them to work on expressing communication effectively.
Secondly, because children bear their emotions on their sleeve, feelings of anger and sadness can easily come to surface over a simple action- i.e. not getting to play with the puzzle, or having someone cut them in line. As an adult, it almost makes me laugh in compassion at the simplistic thinking of children, and how they take statements such to heart! One little girl was in tears because another little girl said she did not want to be her friend. Because children say what they feel, you need to teach them to “use your words” when they get mad or sad. If not children can get physical instead of effectively communicating how they are feeling. This allows children the ability to develop their communication skills.
Thirdly, children have to be directed to carry out specific tasks, and may need to be retold (and retold) what they need to do. However, saying “no” does not help the children understand what is going on, so we need to explain what we would like them to do. Some of the children took direction from me, a new “teacher”, very well. Some question my authority. Through this, however, children start to develop an understanding for the communication process, especially in our culture here in America.
It is intriguing that some children attach themselves to new people so strongly, while others completely shy away. It is also very interesting how one little girl doesn’t talk to anyone, is extremely shy, but will come up to me to have me read her a book- when all she really wants is for me to sit and watch her flip through it.
Because of these aspects children possess, communicating with them is quite different. However, I always enjoyed it because it was kind of like a puzzle, trying to identify how to address the child and effectively communicate to them what I needed of them. I talked about this today because in order to run any childcare facility, learning how to communicate with children is very important because of the reasons I listed above. As an adult caring for these children, if you do not know how to address the children in a way they will understand and listen to, then you will have a bunch of children running around like crazy little monkeys. The first childcare facility I worked at did use the word “no” many times, and those children followed direction the least out of the three facilities I have worked at. It was the most chaotic facility I worked at, and it had a greater number of confrontations amongst the children than the other two. Therefore, the communication efforts employed by Head Start faculty and volunteers are a very important, noteworthy cause.
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