This handout on communicating with children is posted on my webpage.

Communicating with Children

It is designed for younger age children (ages 3-5 years old) but the principles can be adapted for older children, particularly the communication strategies of reflective listening, using open-ended “what” and “how” questions, and encouraging the child into independent problem solving.

The relationship systems of attachment and psychological connection are designed to register the intention of other people through a set of brain cells called mirror neurons (see the online PBS Nova program on Mirror Neurons).  The relationship systems of the child’s brain are registering the parent’s intention, what’s motivating the parent to respond in that way.

One of the most powerful relationship intentions is the “intent to be-with.”  This is a wonderfully positive intention to just be-with the other person because that person is inherently valuable to us, because we love that person.  This wonderfully positive intention to simply be-with with the other person is communicated in the strategies described in the Communicating with Children handout.

In the gentle strategies of SOUL (silence, observation, understanding, listening) we communicate the child’s inherent value to us through our desire to simply be-with the child.

Self-talk and parallel talk are ways of being with the child without the pressure to do something, or accomplish something (an intent to task), but just simply to be together sharing in the same activity.

Repeating back what the child says (reflective listening) communicates that what the child said was valuable and that we listened to and heard the child.  This is an “intent to understand” the child’s world from the child’s perspective.

These two motivating intentions are the two most valuable and deeply wonderful relationship-building intentions:

The intent to be-with the child because the child is inherently wonderful and valuable, and

The intent to understand the child’s world from the child’s perspective because the child is inherently wonderful and valuable.

These motivating intentions are in contrast to the two maturation-building intentions:

The intent to task because accomplishing the task is more important than what the child may feel at the moment, and

The intent to change which is that the child must alter his or her behavior in order to coordinate the child’s behavior with the social needs of others.

Both of these maturation building intentions require that the child suppress his or her own feelings and motivations to the broader social requirements needed to accomplish a task or coordinate with other people’s motivations and needs.  The maturation building intentions of a parental intent to task and intent to change support the child’s developing maturation (the ability of the child to suppress his or her own needs of the moment to achieve an overarching goal or cooperate socially with others).

When parents communicate to children from the maturation-building intentions of an intent to task and intent to change they tend to offer advice, direction, and criticism of the child’s actions from a desire to help the child do better.

When parents communicate to children from the relationship-building intentions of an intent to be-with and intent to understand they provide their children with communications that the child is inherently wonderful, valuable, and deeply loved.

Sometimes in the day-to-day stresses of life it is easy for parents to get caught up in communicating an intent to task and intent to change, and it’s easy to slip away from the relationship-building intentions of simply being with the child and seeking to understand the child’s world from the child’s point of view.

The gentle communication strategies of silence, observation, understanding, and listening; of self-talk and parallel talk; of reflective listening, open-ended questions, and encouraging the child, all build important self-worth and inner self-esteem networks that are vital to healthy emotional and psychological development.

What we’re seeking is balance – a balance between healthy social maturation and the development of inherent self-worth and self-esteem; a alternating blend of intent to task and change in some situations with an intent to be-with and intent to understand the child’s world from the child’s perspective in other situations.

The outward communication strategies are born from our inner intentions.  Communication with children is born from an intent to be-with the child and from an intent to understand the child’s world from the child’s perspective.  Our intention then informs our response to the child using the strategies of silence, observation, understanding, listening, self-talk and parallel talk, reflective listening, open-ended questions, and encouraging the child.

The key is our intention.

Craig Childress, Psy.D.
Clinical Psychologist, PSY 18867