Inquiry

Communication with Children

How do we change how we communicate when it comes to children of different ages?

Ashley Aspenwall

Inquiry Proposal

For my Inquiry assignment, I wanted to look deeper into language and children.  Communication with children to be exact, as it is difficult to communicate to the younger ages whether it is a teacher and child relationship, or a parents and child relationship.

            I work with children on a daily basis at a daycare.  I have noticed that communication can be a very difficult thing when it comes to the younger ages.  This is natural though and we sometimes change how we speak or communicate depending on who we’re talking to anyways.  I have noticed that it is very hard on certain people to be able to communicate with children.  I have been working with kids now for almost 5 years in an actual daycare setting and have babysat children since I was in middle school.  I grew up going to work with my mom at the same daycare I work at now since I was 5 years old and have been with her while she has babysat.  So I have been around it and experienced a lot of different situations where communication to a child might have been rough or might have been done in a good way.  I now work in an 18 month year-old class, but I have done it all from infants up to 7 or 8 year olds and even older when I baby-sit.  You have to be able to change the way you communicate even between the different ages of children.  You don’t usually say as much when dealing with an infant.  Sometimes you are able to use sign language and connect it to an action or an item, so then the baby can make the connection and recognize it.  With older kids you can also use sign language as well as connecting words now to items and actions. 

            I am interested in this topic and want to look more into it because I would like to pursue the career of a teacher, an elementary teacher. The information I could find, plus my experience could really help me in the future in my career path.  I have learned a lot from my experience, but I would also like to learn more tools in what are appropriate ways to better communicate with children.  Children and teachers, as well as parents can become extremely frustrated when it comes to trying to figure out what a child wants, especially when they do not know very many words or none at all. 

            I could have gone a couple different ways with this topic, but when it comes to where I work and what I want to do in the future, I felt like this was a good place to focus on.  I always observe how different teachers around me at work try to communicate with the children in their class.  Sometimes they have an extremely hard time and become frustrated, even the children become frustrated.  It seems like there would be a lot better tools that teachers and parents could use to better understand what a child wants or needs.

What are different tools to help to have better communication with children of all ages? And how do we use these in everyday situations?

WEBSITES:

http://www.unicef.org/cbsc/files/CwC_Web(2).pdf

·         Principles, Media, Stages of growth, developmental characteristics and way to communicate with those different age groups.

http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/family/az1038.pdf

      ·         Activities parents, grandparents, and others can do to increase communication with a child, how to create a positive environment for communication.

VIDEOS:

·         Mother gives tips on how to communicate with your children.

·         Saying What You Mean, A Children’s book on Communication.


This information would be useful to:

The feedback from the class was very helpful and reassuring.  I pretty much had an idea of what direction I wanted to go in, but it was helpful to be able to share what I was thinking and hear their feedback to guide me in a better direction.  Once again, my topic is communication and children and my question was “How do we change how we communicate with children of different ages?”  I was thinking I could argue why it is most important with children of younger ages and how those early years of 0-2 are the most important and critical.  I got some other ideas about focusing on brain development, but I think I want to stick with the argument that I have.  With the experience I have, I truly agree with this argument. Do you think I should stick with this or is there something better to focus on?