Communication is the message we send to other people.
As C. Meggit,T. Kamen, T.Bruce, J. Grenier say 'Communication is the transmission of thoughts, feelings or information'. (2011), Children and young pepople's workforce, Dynamic Learning. There is different ways to send that message - via body language, tone, speech, signals, writing.
The people needs to communicate to express their feeling, to share knowledge and information, to build relationships, to seek clarifications, to give help, to ask for help/advice and many more.
There is different groups of people which they need different type of communication. The babies and young children utilise mostly body language, facial expressions and eyes, while they learning the code of their particular home or community language. Babies spend their days looking at people’s faces and listening to them talk. Babies love watching how our face reacts to something she’s done.
Researchers say this helps babies understand the world and form relationships. When the baby deliberately catches your eye, you can look right back into her eyes. And keep maintaining that eye contact until she looks away. When she makes noises, you can encourage her.
Smiling, nodding and encouraging baby’s abilities (‘What did you say?’, ‘Aren’t you talking well!’) all help baby to keep communicating.
Children base their views of themselves and the world on their daily experiences. One of the most important experiences adults can provide for children is to talk with and listen to them. Through these daily interactions, children and adults can develop relationships that help children to learn about themselves and the world. As a practitioners we have the responsibility to create and maintain positive and healthy relationships with them. One of the most practical and mutually rewarding ways to achieve this goal is through positive communication.
Toddlers communicate with a combination of gestures, one word sentences, two word sentences, positive and negative emotional expressions and body movements.
When we talk to parents/carers we have to be organized and professional.
They need to feel confident that we can do the job well. This means that if they ask questions about our subject matter and our teaching methods we should be able to answer them confidently and professionally.
In order to work effectively with children, young people and their families, and so that we can plan for and meet their needs, it is essential to establish good relationships with a range of people. Practitioners who have good communication skills are likely to have strong relationships with children, parents and other adults. This is because relationships are influenced by the facial expression,body language, and ways in which others listen and talk to you, that is the way they communicate.
In Oxford Dictionary the word 'effective' means 'successful in producing a desired or intended result' (2011)
For effective and successful communication we need to consider some factors:
The tone of our voice does it suit the situation or topic? A louder direct communication maybe required if trying to get the attention of children. However this not be suitable for a child which is upset, because he bumped his head in a cupboard. This would need a quieter and understanding tone to reassure them.
The speed in which we are talking is also a factor. Depends with who we are talking, we have to be very careful. When we talking to children we have to get down to their level and talk to them at slow speed, this way they are more likely to understand, more than if we walking round above them talking as though we would talk to adults.
The body language and the gestures help people to understand and to be understood while communicating. For example folded arms can indicate we are being defensive or not open to suggestions. Also rolling of eyes and huffing can seem rude and disrespectful.
We always need to evaluate a number of factors before starting a