By Cara Lee
Have you ever wondered how much of the everyday talk we engage in is building and strengthening connections between you and your child? As caregivers, our children are constantly watching how we and the people around them speak.
How do we talk to preschoolers? Truth be told, effective conversational skills do not come easy, even to some adults. However, effective communication is a crucial life skill that we practice every day! Teaching preschoolers how to have good conversations starts with setting aside a little time every day to connect and converse with our children.
Here are 5 simple tips:
- Be a role model
We can be a role model for conversation just by having simple conversations round the dinner table, during a commute, waiting in queue, or while doing things around the house. We can start by sharing about our day or something interesting we saw. In today’s technologically advanced world, we can also encourage them by participating in conversations with family and close friends during video calls! These opportunities allow our children to listen and articulate their thoughts!
- Ask questions
When we offer a question, we are opening an invitation to connect. Questions to show interest and genuine curiosity are a gift to our children as it promotes critical thinking and sparks imagination. Most children naturally ask questions without prompting because of their curiosity!
I realised after having had endless chats with preschoolers about anything and everything under the sun that it is so important to ask children questions so they know we want to connect with them! Our body language is also key as it can affect the emotional connection in the conversation.
Some good questions that open a space for dialogue include:
- What was the best thing that happened to you today?
- What did you have for lunch today? What ingredients do you think was used to cook the meal?
- Did you learn something new in school today? Tell me about it…
- Who did you play with today and was there something that made you laugh?
- If you had a superpower to help your friends in school, what would that be?
- Did anything today make you feel happy or sad? Tell me more…
- Take turns to speak
When one talks, the other listens. We can encourage our children to take turns, wait to speak and not interrupt. We can articulate phrases like, “Hang on a moment, Gracia is still speaking, let her finish before you speak”, “Hold on, let me finish telling you what I love to share with you.” This helps our children to catch cues, both verbal and non-verbal.
- Stay on topic and encourage eye contact
Do you recall a time when you were speaking to your child and they diverted to a different topic? This usually signals that they are uninterested or distracted in what we’ve said. We could take a moment to switch to the topic your child raised to engage them for a while. Once that conversation is over, we can bring them back to our conversation topic.
Eye contact creates powerful connections between people. When we model eye gaze while speaking, it communicates to our children that we love and care for them. Everyone has a desire to connect and when we feel cared for, we more naturally open up and share a little more each time.
Some children crave for the gift of attention in this busy and over-stimulating world, let’s gift them with our listening and conversation.
- Tell stories
Lastly, when reading to your child, we can find moments to stop and ask questions to get your child to predict what might happen next! We can also take turns to each share a sentence to spin a story together! This fires up our children’s imagination and stirs up a sense of excitement and engagement through conversations!
Though we live in a world that is so much more connected, we also see more children growing up feeling more isolated and alone. We are all created for human connection and gifting our children with our presence and conversations will go a long long way. Happy chatting!
To find out more about our preschools, visit https://littleseeds.edu.sg/.
