What children want from us ?

 

Hear me, don’t stop me when I’m talking.

Communication between two people is the foundation of any relationship, and when it comes to children communication is the most important factor.

What is communication ??

The act of sharing or exchanging information, ideas, or feelings. 

It is a two-way mode, usually when the conversation is between parent and child, mostly the ratio is 80:20 - 

80% PARENT and 20% CHILD.

This needs to be modified or to be more precise, the proportion should be reversed.

80% child - 20% parent. 

If we develop a habit to listen more to what our children say, we will be able to understand our children better.

Children want to be heard out, without any questions, advice, or judgements.

What we do is - when a child is sharing something, we interrupt in between start questioning, giving advice, making judgments, and hastily jumping on to conclusions.

In this haste, we forget to understand the child's actual essence of sharing. This attitude is actually killing the interest of child and stops him from sharing His/Her feelings.

The child doesn't need to listen to your part at this moment, the child wants to share.

Accept me, Don’t Expect a lot from me

Accept more, Expect less.

We as parents really expect a lot from our children.

Our expectations mostly do not match up with our child's capacity and capabilities.

When I mention the word capacity and capability - I don't mean to underestimate a child's potential at all.

My effort is to just meet the parent's awareness of reality.

For example - At home, we see a child dancing beautifully in front of the television or whenever the child hears any music.

As a parent I feel - " Oh my god my child dances so beautifully, He/She is talented ".

Now I enroll my child in a dancing class, What changes here is EXPECTATIONS.

I want the child to learn techniques of dance, which could lead to performance pressure on a child. This is what I called expecting more.

The child who was dancing at home was a free bird and enhance we could see the child happy and at the best of his form but as soon as we enrolled the child the fun factor turned into performance pressure.

There is no harm in enrolling at all - the harm is when we become result oriented. 

Talk with me, Don’t talk to me.

Two important words to understand

With and To - 

With means in the company of someone.

To means in the direction.

In simple terms, WITH means, you are together in something, and TO means, it is one decided and to the opposite person.

Read this twice to understand the depth.

It's very important to understand this when we communicate with children, we feel we are talking with them but most of the time we are talking to them.

Communication is a solvent of all problems.