The Art of Talking with Children
The Art of Talking with Children

The Art of Talking with Children

Children need quality conversations with their parents – and often don’t get them.

In the midst of busy careers and the flurry of activity that family life entails, many parents find little time to engage in deep and meaningful conversations with their children. Discussions with children often center on logistical details and minutiae, such as homework and sports schedules, and parents tend to fixate on short-term goals. But when parents make time for deeper conversations, they can create lasting bonds with their children and lay the foundations for their children’s long-term success and lifelong learning. 

Children today suffer high levels of worry and stress, and they demonstrate greater fragility, perfectionism and feelings of isolation than did previous generations. Nearly one-third of today’s children suffer from an anxiety disorder by the time they’re teenagers. Many immerse themselves in hypercompetitive digital chatter, which fuels toxic self-criticism.

“We have a lot of communication – if you look at the constant barrage of news, texting and tweets – but far less that is profound, that connects us deeply or feels meaningful.”

Parents should show children they’re worth listening to and help them feel understood by encouraging them to express themselves fully. Children who have quality conversations with their parents develop the skills they need to thrive throughout their lives, such as self-reliance, confidence, empathy, creativity, open-mindedness, the ability to connect with others and emotional resilience.

Through “rich talk,” parents can connect with their children and support their healthy development.

“Rich talk” means quality conversations that allow parents to connect with, learn about, encourage and support their children. Rich talk involves a back-and-forth dialogue, not merely the parent lecturing or educating the child. And rich talk is adaptive, in that the parent responds to the child’s needs and wants. In rich talk, the child drives the dialogue. Parents often stifle opportunities for rich talk at home by pushing their own interests and goals upon children rather than listening to them. By cultivating the ability to engage in rich talk, you’ll be able to inspire your children and support their healthy development.

“From infancy on, kids thirst to communicate, nearly as profoundly as they hunger for food.”

Teachers often lack the skills or the time to engage in rich talk with children. They sometimes focus overly on achievement and lack the patience to give children time and space to process their thoughts and feelings. And when children aren’t allowed to do this processing, their stress builds.

During rich talk, parents can guide their children’s learning journey by prompting them to reflect on what they already know and offering support and information as their children build their understanding. By prompting children to reflect on how their understanding of a topic has changed, rich talk helps them develop metacognition. Parents can assist children’s development of metacognition by being open about their own learning processes. Let your children know when you don’t know all the answers. These conversations help children embrace curiosity and conceptualize mistakes as part of a learning process. 

To help your children develop curiosity, creativity and a growth mind-set, use conversations to guide their thinking.

Children can start to form a fixed mind-set – limiting beliefs about their potential – at only three and a half years of age. A child might, for example, make statements such as, “I’m just bad at Legos.” But parents can help their children cultivate a growth mind-set: the belief that they can learn and grow from their mistakes. 

To help children develop curiosity, creativity and a growth mind-set, practice the “three E’s”:

  1. Expand – Ask expansive questions that allow your children to share their perception of their imaginative world in their own words. For example, say, “Tell me more,” rather than labeling a child’s interests by saying, for example, “Nice airplane.”
  2. Explore – To prompt your children to think more creatively, talk with them about people they’ve never met and places they’ve never been, or about the past or future. In addition to encouraging imagination, exploration of this type builds a child’s vocabulary and language skills.
  3. Evaluate – Help children develop critical thinking by encouraging them to reflect on their thoughts, strategies and ideas. For example, if a child crashed her toy truck and broke its wheel, you might ask her to reflect on why the wheel broke and how you might fix it together.

To build children’s empathy, nurture their emotional self-awareness.

To strengthen children’s emotional awareness – and, in turn, their empathy – encourage them to name and reflect on their emotions. When children experience difficult emotional reactions to triggering situations, guide them toward compassionate responses by prompting them to evaluate their actions. Let them know that difficult emotions are part of life. Frame surprising or confusing feelings as changeable and neutral – like the weather. Take a collaborative approach, letting the child know you’ll work through difficult emotions together.

Don’t pay attention only to children’s words. Note other cues, such as anxious body language, that can reveal information about their emotional state. Encourage children to share their feelings by saying, for example, “You look upset.” Such a question acts as a door opener, providing open-ended opportunities for the child to articulate emotions. Curb any impulse to express judgment about children’s emotions, and never shame them for what they feel. Never project what you think children should be feeling onto them. Recognize that a child is a separate person from you, with her or his own feelings. When you remain open and simply listen, you validate the child’s own emotional reactions.

“Quality conversation fills a child’s empathy tank, offering daily opportunities to reflect on their own thinking and feeling, and to explore the thoughts and feelings of others.”

Rich talk can also help children understand and manage their temperament – their typical emotional state, reactivity, energy levels and ability to regulate themselves. Temperament isn’t static; it evolves based on children’s interactions with other people and their environment. Talk with children to help them understand their behavior and reactions and to help them develop coping strategies for challenges their temperament might create for them in their day-to-day lives.

Work with, not against, a child’s temperament. For example, if you have a loud daughter, don’t constantly try to silence her. Instead, find healthy outlets for her boldness. Help your children develop self-compassion for the ways in which they differ from their peers.

To support children’s independence and confidence, help them overcome cognitive distortions.

During rich talk, you can help your children embrace challenges and develop confidence and independence. First, help them get clarity. Prompt children to recall their challenging experiences, and give them objective feedback, separating the facts from their feelings. For example, your child might tell you her coach said she’d never be a good soccer player. When you discuss their conversation, you might learn – and help the child see – that the coach had simply told her to work on her technique.

“What we say matters, but confidence ultimately has to do with the way kids talk to themselves.”

Second, inspire your children to set goals and develop a positive self-concept. Encourage them to master new skills by setting small, age-appropriate goals. For example, if your son is learning to read, ask him how many more pages he might be able to read on his own tomorrow. When children fixate on their mistakes, help them develop a more positive self-concept by asking them to reflect on what they feel they’ve accomplished. Be open about your own struggles to achieve goals. This normalizes the idea that everyone must make an effort when facing challenges.

Third, help children measure their own success. Encourage them to self-reflect on their own growth, comparing their current strengths and skills to those they had in the past. This helps them conceptualize their progress. If they use negative language when discussing their failures, help them notice their cognitive distortions. Reframe failure as an essential part of learning and growing. Encourage them by saying there’s nothing to be embarrassed about when they stumble in the process of trying something new.

To help children form and maintain friendships, talk about them.

Children need strong, healthy friendships. Those friendships contribute to psychological and physiological benefits that extend into adulthood. For example, research shows boys who spend time with friends will tend to have lower blood pressure and healthier weights in adulthood than will those who lack strong friendships. Friendships satisfy a fundamental biological need; children feel protected and connected, and they experience calming effects on their nervous systems. Yet childhood loneliness is rising as children’s interactions increasingly center on their virtual lives. Nearly 40% of high school seniors reported feelings of loneliness in 2017, up from 26% in 2012.

“Social relationships are key to children’s health, well-being and happiness. We can’t overstate their importance.”

Parents can support their children by talking about friendship regularly and helping their kids understand how they can leverage their social strengths to build connections. Friendship talks benefit children who make friends with ease as well as those who struggle.

Often, children conform to others’ expectations and fall into “social ruts,” in which they fail to engage with others in ways that keep pace with their own growth. Help children move beyond expectations and labels to behave like the versions of themselves they most want to embody. Encourage them to engage with people and situations that will support and nurture their best selves.

To nurture children’s imagination, encourage open-ended, child-driven play.

When children engage in playful thinking and dream up new possibilities, they stretch their imaginative abilities. Talk with children about their pretend play experiences. Ask them to expand on their playful adventures; for example, ask them to describe how imaginary settings felt and sounded. Prompt them to explore their imaginary worlds more deeply by asking them, for example, what their chosen character might think, feel and do in different situations. Help them develop the self-awareness to know when to engage fully in imaginary worlds and when to pay more attention to the present moment – such as in class. 

“A playful attitude lets kids wonder instead of racing for right answers and see failure not as an embarrassment but as an opening.”

Embrace conversational habits that help you connect to children’s sense of play. Regularly ask them questions that bring out their ability to conceive of the transformation of objects. Ask, for example, “How could a bucket become a rocket ship?” Cultivate their sense of wonder by encouraging them to reflect on questions about the everyday world. Ask, for example, “Why are some rocks lighter and some heavier?” Engage in wordplay; for example, with young children, invent variations on nursery rhymes. Encourage independent, child-driven play, and show you approve of your children’s play.

Teach your children to embrace differences, not merely tolerate them. 

Children begin using gendered language and noting racial differences as early as six months of age. They display a preference for people they view as familiar and will spend more time looking at the faces of people who look like themselves. Help children recognize their implicit biases and stereotypes by asking them to talk about their ideas and assumptions. Explore with them possible reasons why they hold their beliefs, and encourage them to evaluate their assumptions. 

“Upending prejudices starts with understanding what kids know and don’t about others; recognizing assumptions, then checking them.”

Encourage children to embrace, not merely tolerate, difference in others. Try to assume the best of children, as their stereotypes can result from genuine misunderstandings. Help them become more open to difference. Your children learn from you: If they harbor stereotypes, they might be mirroring your own biases.

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