Communicating with Children – When toddlers don’t listen
The Art of communicating with Toddlers
Often parents except too much from their toddlers when it comes to communication. So often I have seen parents trying to do their very best in explaining and talking to their toddlers only to witness that the end result is frustration on both sides and possibly a temper tantrum in the child. The toddler cannot understand the intricate language of an adult person. The well meant explanation of an adult is plainly too overwhelming for a toddler to comprehend. Understanding your child’s communication ability is an art and depends on your child’s developmental stage. What is effective communication?
Communication is about conveying, imparting and exchanging information, it is about connection to another. Effective communication is all about the expression of oneself or information in a way that one feels understood. Please note that feeling understood is a key component here for both parties. What ever we tell our toddler, he/she needs to feel that we understand where they are at in their intellectual and emotional development. Our communication, thus, must begin at your child’s level of understanding. Learning about the way they perceive the world at any stage in their growing lives and how their mind functions is very helpful.
Communication takes also place on many levels. As a matter of fact, the spoken word has the least impact on any communication. Researchers at the University of California concluded that communication effectiveness relies up to fully 93% on nonverbal cues. And another study looked at communication and the impact on performance and concluded that it was determined 7% by the words used, 38% by tonal quality of the voice and fully 55% by again nonverbal communication. Ask yourself, are you congruent across all those communication channels when you talk to your child?
Usually, we begin by being congruent. But when the child does not seem to understand, our frustration grows and we begin to communicate various messages at once to our toddler. The message that will impact your child most is your emotional state communicated with fully 93% of your being. And as your frustration grows, you are still trying to get the 7% words across, usually at this stage our words are getting a little bit louder because that is what we want our child, ultimately, to grasp and understand.
What we are truly achieving here has nothing to do with our initial motivation. What we are teaching our child is way beyond the situation at hand. We are teaching our child how to express oneself and how to deal with frustration and the feelings that are confusing to us. We are modeling how we would like our child to behave and handle the situation. So, next time when your child has a temper tantrum, ask yourself: How am I dealing with the distress of my child? What am I teaching him/her?
Effective communication, which implies a win-win scenario, requires that we stay in control and keep our calm, however hard this might feel at this stage. But staying present to the moment and allowing the child to go through his/her frustration without ‘losing the plot’ ourselves is a true art of parenting. Too often, we either give up or we start shouting louder and louder. What we are doing in this case is noticing our own frustration with the situation at hand. Children have tantrums because of their inability to handle their frustrations, bringing our own confusion into it does not help the child nor ourselves.
Communication with a toddler is never just an exchange of words, it is a teaching tool. We teach our children how we want them to communicate. How we want them to meet the world and connect to another human being. We teach them how to express their needs and wants. In each communication we are teaching them strategies how to navigate through life. After all, if mum or dad express their needs and wants that way, then it must be ok for me to do the same.
As a parent we need to learn to allow for the child to have his/her tantrums. There is nothing wrong with showing frustration, especially at such a tender age of a toddler. We might not like it because it makes us feel like we are not in control. Recognising and acknowledging our own frustrations in it is the first step for a better communication. Only then can we take a step back and truly deal with the situation at hand.
I saw a mum hitting her two year old because he was hitting another child. The child gets frustrated and starts hitting to express his feelings. Mum gets frustrated and hits the child for expressing his feelings by hitting others. The child has no chance to learn any different way because he needs somebody to show him, but all mum is doing is acting out the same frustration in the same way. The child becomes even more confused. “How come this is what you do and teach but when I do the same is so wrong?”
In order to break that cycle, we truly need to catch our own frustration first before we can deal with our child. When we find our own strength and vulnerability in the situation then we can stand emotionally present and strong for our child. As I mentioned already in the Food for thoughts on temper tantrum article: in the child parent relationship lies the greatest opportunity for everyone to grow emotionally. And growing can only happen through communication, when we learn to understand the other and feeling understood ourselves. A two year old has his/her own capacity for communication and it is our task to find out what this capacity is and how children think. And no one teaches us that when we become a parent.
There are no toddlers who don’t listen, there are only toddlers who do not have the resources to deal with their inner world. Every child loves being in communication but no one teaches us how to invite the child in. Toddlers listen when they feel understood and this requires us as parents to step outside of our own world and step into the world of our child.
Dr. Harvey Karp’s resources “The Happiest Toddler on the Block” is truly a wonderful way to enter your child’s world and start learning how communication is being understood by your child and how children think. It comes as a DVD which is truly recommended as you will be able to see and hear how Dr. Karp talks to toddlers.
Dr. Karp does this in such a light and entertaining way, yet, his teachings are solid and deeply grounded in psychological research. Watch the short video at the bottom of our toddler temper tantrum page if you want to learn more.
Another resource that will add to your toolbox when dealing with your child’s frustrations is “Talking to Toddlers: Dealing with the terrible two and beyond” by Chris Thompson. Chris has developed an instant downloadable audio program about how to communicate to your child where he draws his knowledge from NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). Even thought I don’t always like the examples he is giving, there is a lot of knowledge conveyed in his cds and you can listen to it on the go which can be very handy.
I have also included Francine Epstein’s book “Trusting you are loved” in this recommendation. Listen to Francine as she speaks about the importance of listening and the experience of being heard.
I am truly wishing you happy parenting. And please do leave a comment with your thoughts on this site, so I can write more about what you truly want to hear. And most of all, be gentle to yourself when things don’t go the way you expect. Parenting is a fine art of life and it requires us to step back and breath. You are certainly not alone where ever you might be on your journey.
Warmly,
Halka
FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE
Coping With the Caveman in the Crib Tara Parker-Pope writes in the New York Times about Dr. Harvey Karp and his books on toddler and babies. “If there is such a person as a baby whisperer, it is the pediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp” she wrote.
How to Get Your Toddler to Listen is an article by a mom who started focusing on her own ability to communicate. What she found is that more often than not her toddler did not hear her because she did not convey the right message.
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