Tuesday, May 02, 2006

From Zero to a Hero part II

I want to share some tips about communicating with children. As a grown up, sometimes its a little bit hard to " connect " with them since adult and children have different developmental stage. But as an adult or grown up people we have feel to life as kids or child , so if we can positioned ourself a bit "lower" it will be easier to communicate with them.

1. Body Position

When you talk with kids with lower height than you, you must bow down your body and look at his/her face. Better if you crouch or sit down to listen to them, so their neck not to tired to look up. If you pretend to stand and only looking down, it will be not good, besides they will be tired to look up, also they will think you didnt respect them.

Do not cross your hand ( in front of chest ) or hand on hips. As I read in body language book, it means you are defensive ( dont want to be friendly ) or angry. This is not good to create relationship.

2. Give reaction

When you are listening, make sure that you give reaction. Do not just looking or it will be worse if you listen and doing another job. The reaction can be with gestures, like nod your head, or smile. Or you can just make simple noise like "ehm" "yes" "ok". Or you can repeat their story, meaning that you listen to them. If they talk about going to zoo, you can repeat with "so, you are going to zoo ".

3 Dont interupt

Dont interupt when they talks. Or if you want to interuppted you must say sorry with reason. Example when you must explaining something, then a kids want to talk, you can say "sorry I must explain the lesson, but i promise to talk to you after this ( or after the class we can talk ) ".

4 Kid's Topic

If you want to start a conversation with kids or child. Use a topic that also known by them, or popular kid's topic. Don't talk about what you like, if you like rugby or fashion, then they dont know it, so dont talk about these one. Its easy to broaden your knowledge about this, you don't have to see kids channel on TV everyday, but you can just see the program clip or advertising. I dont know about Digimon or Sponge Bob, but I know it from the clips on TV or from TV program on newspaper.

And asking them about this is good. You can ask " what games played by kids on your school " " how to play it "

5. Respect

This is the most important. You must respect them as a same human, not as a small funny creature or even a pet. Dont talk dirty because they have same brain that can process that someday. When you can talk about light conversation with them, it is a good way that someday they will talk about hard problem with you ( about their family problem or school problem ).

Comments:
Thank you for sharing your tips with us.I believe you can learn so much from a child
 
yes i learn much from them. And we can also learn much more again. We cant underestimate them , and must remember that someday they will become an adult too. And I hope they will become a great influencing person.
 
Yes, I think it is a great article.
" You must respect them as a same human, not as a small funny creature or even a pet. "
I agree with you 100%. Actually, by giving respect we get respect. I like your writing but I think that you should give more time to grammar and spelling.
 
thanks raz, Rose has told me about that too. I think i should learn more about English
 
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