How to talk with Kindergarten tamariki
The below wisdom is shared by Mary Willow; we hosted Mary here at Four Seasons some years ago to share with our whānau/parents. We are grateful for the work Mary does with communities. You’ll find her via her website: Plum Parenting
Once there was a popular saying among parents: ‘children should be seen but not heard.’ Today it is almost the opposite: we hear a great deal from our children and we talk to them as much as possible. But do we really see and understand who we are talking to?
Who Are We Talking To?
Young children are fully absorbed in:
Growing their body and mastering its function
Exploring the world and their relationship to it
Imitating others to learn what to do and how to do it
Processing all these experiences to develop their movement, emotion and thinking through creative, imaginative, free play
The period of the early years is the critical time for building a sound body and a healthy willingness to connect to the world and respond to it. The emotions of the children have their critical period of development in the middle years of childhood, and the thinking matures its powers in the teens. Although feeling and thinking are present and developing in the preschooler, these faculties are not yet grown up enough to see the ‘big picture’ and direct the children’s actions in a consistent, reliable and responsible way.
Children in this age-group tend to be more instinctive and reactive. They do not easily understand other points of view. They readily demand and refuse, and are not easily influenced by reason. ‘You can talk till you’re blue in the face but they just don’t listen!’
Preschoolers’ feelings and thinking are still immature and dreamy but it doesn’t always sound that way! They are brilliant imitators and can appear convincingly grown up and reasonable, and formidable in an argument! It is a struggle to remember that they need protection from the big explanation of adult concepts and reasoning. They are still laying down their foundational experiences. Rushing ahead into articulated emotions and intellectual concepts at this point pulls them out of this essential phase where fantasy and reality are necessarily mixed and experimented with. They are still living mostly in imagination and picture thinking.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk to young children! It means that when we do talk to them we need to be aware of what part of their brains we are ‘talking’ to. It is the experiential brain. The ‘body’ brain. The ‘action’ part. The ‘doer’.
The young child understands experience perfectly. Therefore we need to speak primarily through our loving, considered actions. When we do talk to them it needs to be appropriate to their level of development, remembering that every aspect of our speech is being imitated and ‘hard-wired’ by the child’s brain as 'normal’.
Tips On How to Talk to Preschool Children.
Can my child hear me speak? Am I slow, clear, focused and ‘real’, or rushed, reactionary and distracted? When things get difficult, do I drop the tone of my voice to calm the situation, or do I talk faster and louder, or shout in a way that adds to the tension?
Can my child hear him/herself speak? Or is there too much background noise of radio, phones and screens, or adults constantly talking at or over the child?
Can my child digest what she/he hears? Do I allow a pause after an exchange of words so the information can ‘sink in?’ Do I create a quiet ‘down time’ for digestion after a busy or noisy experience?
Do I model how to be a good listener? Do I let the child finish or do I butt in? Am I honest and straightforward when I cannot be available to talk or do I carry on talking without listening or with annoyance?
Do I listen for what my child is really asking for? Not necessarily what she wants, but what she needs.
Do I listen to my child too much? Do I focus too intensely, engage him and ‘draw him out’ too much? Am I ‘waking up’ the thinking and self-awareness too early? Children's talking needs to bubble up and fade away freely as it needs.
Am I allowing my child to drift and dream on her experiences? Do I let her figure things out at her own pace? Speed and over-stimulation damage the learning process. When the child is accelerated to ‘wake up’ too soon then valuable periods of body learning can be lost as energy for body development is directed to the intellect.
Am I letting my pre-schooler discover things without instructions or direction? e.g. do I let him paint freely and quietly with blue and yellow until the green appears and surprises him? The colours are teaching the child without words.
Do I let my child observe and ‘drink in’ a new experience in silence? Do I let a phenomenon speak its own language directly to my child or do I interfere with that moment of wonder and give too many comments or concepts? Can I allow her to be fully absorbed with a butterfly on a flower, letting the butterfly teach her non-verbally all about itself. There is plenty of time for intellectually extending the children once formal learning begins at school.
Do I let my child slowly evolve her own concepts over days, months and years? Or do I berate her, tell her she’s silly, make fun of her, constantly correct her or treat her ideas as ‘cute?’
Do I strive for balance, innocence and wonder in our conversations? Or do I seize upon his thoughts or theories and ‘fix’ them, dismiss them, or on the other hand, glorify or grow them to much? Young children need to be free to ponder and theorise without getting stuck.
Do I take care not to force my child to remember or represent an idea or experience before he is ready? e.g. “Tell me what you did at kindergarten?” “Tell Daddy what we did today,” “Tell Grandma what you got for your birthday,” “Tell your teacher where we are going this weekend.” These questions not only pressure the child before the memory awakens but they also move the child out of the present moment where they naturally live. They will offer to share memories when they are ready.
Do I let my child’s days be timeless as much as possible? There is plenty of time when the child is older for the burden and pressure of time awareness. It is critically important to provide children with a strong, consistent rhythm. This relaxes them and opens them to learning. But the pressure to be ‘clock’ aware creates tension and takes them out of the present.
Do I let my shy, cautious, or self-conscious child talk spontaneously when she is ready? Or do I pressure her to answer? What does her body language tell me when I try to force her to speak? Does she recoil?
Do I help my talkative child to slow down, listen, and have pockets of quiet? Or do I encourage his talkativeness to the point where he loses his awareness of his surroundings? ‘Bright’ and ‘quick’ children sometimes need help to slow down and just ‘be’ in the here and now.
Do I reflect back to my child what she is saying, simply, in her words, and help to validate her feelings without turning it into a drama? e.g. “ok, so what you’re saying is you’d really like a turn” or “I see, you really didn’t like that”.
Do I think about, or sleep on, what I’m going to say if I feel uncertain? Always feel empowered to buy yourself time. When you say ‘I’ll think about it’ you are modelling to the child that adults consider things carefully first. It is best to make decisions away from the children so we have a clear head and are never pressured.
Do I introduce and/or support ideas that are inside the child’s reality? Monsters and superheroes are not! Children’s imaginations begin to develop from about 2-3 years old and their capacity for fantasy grows bigger after 4. They need to be allowed to fantasize at their own level and pace. They imagine out of the world around them and whatever you give them. It is parents who create fear of monsters by introducing such ideas and feeding them.
1-3 years: simple narrative stories, nothing scary, just everyday stuff with a peaceful, happy mood. e.g. about feeding the ducks.
3-5 years: simple nature and fantasy, small difficulties to sort out, but nothing scary and all good in the end.
5-7 years: more complex fantasy and magical/fairy stories with human effort and happy endings.
Screen images are not necessary or helpful to the development of the pre-school child’s mind. They introduce content that is overwhelming, creating imbalance, fears and obsessions in the young child’s mind. Healthy speech and behaviour are best learned from direct contact with real and responsive human beings.
Do I speak truthfully to my child? Or do I tend to use joking, teasing, silliness or empty threats? These can cause a child to be uncertain about trust, poorly anchored in reality, exaggerated in behaviour or prone to silliness that can damage their learning experiences and relationships.
Do I intervene when my child is being mean, unkind or unfair to another? This is when parents should comment, placing clear boundaries on what is ok and not ok, and modelling the way to tolerance, respect and understanding for others. Parents need to ‘hold the fort’ until the child is mature and responsive enough to make better choices in the social realm.
Do I help my child relax and just be a child?
Copyright, Mary Willow, 2015.