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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Disciplining toddlers: when temper tantrums get out of hand.

When we feel like our connection to our child has broken down because they won’t listen to a word we are saying then it most probably has. The problem is that when our children are out of control then we are most probably beyond our realms of understanding what is going on and react with loss of control ourselves. This creates a truly vicious cycle. We end up exhausted, frustrated and extremely short fused but guess what, so does our child!

The truth is, this cycle did not begin with the child being out of control and throwing temper tantrums but started way before that. Having said that we need to take into consideration that a child’s development is characterized by tantrums at the age around two. According to the child’s temperament their frustration levels vary immensely and as their level of understanding just cannot grasp any abstract concepts or explanations, tantrums are one way to deal with them.

So when do tantrums require attention and point into a communication breakdown? The answer is usually when we as parents cannot deal or handle toddler temper tantrums any longer. When we start losing control as a parent. Why? Because then we teach our children exactly the set of behaviours that we actually are trying to stop in our children. But children learn the best around this age by modeling.

The child trusts you and you start screaming and shouting and showing your own signs of being out of control, what are you telling your child is an acceptable behaviour to do when frustrated?

The trick to this parenting dilemma is to resource oneself, learn about the world of a two year old and beyond and give them guidance, safe boundaries and choice to explore their world. What they truly need to learn is to trust your guidance and to make their own choices (within our set boundaries).

I never like the phrase ‘disciplining kids’ because discipline implies punishment for gaining control or enforcement of obedience. Dictionaries don’t generally mention the world relationship in its definition. Yet, what we are working on is a relationship because that is, I assume, the reason why we had our children in the first place. What joy would there be in parenting otherwise?

However, if we are working to building trust and our children trust us as their guardians then this trust implies that they accept our authority as a parent. But they can only trust and accept our authority if they can be certain that we show the ability to understand their world and communicate age appropriately. They must be sure that we are there to guide and to enlarge their understanding of the world, others and themselves.

So who are we ultimately disciplining? Our toddlers or ourselves? There are many books and resources for parents to be found on how to deal with toddler temper tantrums and one day we will have many more recommendations on this site. But I truly believe that understanding how to learn the art of age appropriate communication with your child is a very important step.

Chris Thompson has developed an instant downloadable audio program about how to communicate to your child entitled  Talking to Toddlers: Dealing with the terrible twos and beyond. This might be your beginning in learning about how to communicate to your toddler and being heard accordingly. It has an absolute solid psychological base and is full of ideas, examples and explanations of how your child is comprehending what is communicated and how you can increase the quality of your relationship just by changing your communication style.

Chris also offers a 100% money back guarantee so there is really nothing to lose only to win. And if you can see through all the sales talk, you will actually find a lot of value in his product.

All the best on your journey,
Halka

How to discipline your child video: 

Toddler Discipline: The Power of Firm Love. This article gives you some more insights into set rules and structures of parenting with ‘firm love’.

Disciplining Toddlers is all about creating a safe playground for your toddler to grow physically and emotionally. The trick to a good and trustworthy relationship is consistency. And yet, this is the hardest thing to do. 

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