Effective communication is not built in a day (just like Rome was not!). It covers a great deal of things that you need to emphasize upon, ranging from kids activities online and group sessions to teaching some basic life skills to your little ones. Communicating suitably with children is crucial for their overall wellbeing, development and future relationships. Good communication covers listening and talking in numerous ways which make your kids feel loved, valued and important. Communicating with your kids will help them build better interpersonal and social communication skills in turn.

Why is effective communication important and what you can do

Responsive, gentle, warm and effective communication goes a long way towards helping children feel secure and safe in their own worlds, right from birth itself. It also helps in fostering and strengthening better relationships between children and parents. Good communication involves giving a child your complete attention while communicating with each other and encouraging the child to talk to you about their thoughts and feelings. It also involves responding and listening in sensitive ways towards all types of things including things like embarrassment, anger, fear, sadness and other positive and good things as well.

Emphasize upon body language and your tone along with your choice of words. Use your body language to express interest in what the child wishes to share with you. Consider what the child may understand and their attention span.
Here are some major tips for teaching effective communication to your children:

• Keep some time in hand for listening to each other and talking. This can be done excellently while you are all having family meals together or dinner together each day.

• Stay away from televisions, smartphones, computers and other gadgets when you are communicating with your child. This will show them that you are focused fully on their conversation, interaction and what they wish to share with you in turn.

• Discuss daily and everyday things as much as you can. If you and your kid are used to communicating quite a bit, it will make it much easier to open up and share things when tricky, complicated or bigger issues come along down the line.

• Remain open towards talking about various kinds of feelings including joy, anger, fear, frustration and anxiety. This will help the child build a proper vocabulary of feelings. It is always best to wait it out till you have both calmed down from stronger feelings such as anger, prior to talking about the same.

• Tune into the body language of your child and what he/she is trying to tell you. Attempt at responding with non-verbal cues as well. This is a great way to build effective communication with your little one.

Make sure that your child gets involved in multiple conversations. Ask him/her about his/her opinion on things. Little things like these go a long way towards building effective communication in the future. In the meantime, participate in envisioning fun kids activities at home and other online kids activities offered by Yellow Class. This will also encourage better peer to peer communication for your child.