For this Blog Assignment, we had to observe an adult and young child communicating and reflect on their interactions to see if it demonstrated the kinds of effective communication we've been learning about this week in class.
In my observation, I was at a church function and watched a woman play with her nephew after the service. The little boy (3) is very fair (albino) and his brother is much darker. The little boy said something derogatory to his older brother. And his aunt asked him if it was nice to make fun of people because of the color of their skin and he said 'yes'. She laughed and said 'no baby, it's not right to make fun of people because of the color of their skin'. Did you like it when he teased you yesterday? Didn't it make you sad? Why would you want to make someone else say?
What I noticed is that early childhood education is happening everyday and all around us and learned that children can so very easily be influenced by their environments in either a negative or positive way. The connections I made between what I noticed and the effective communication strategies presented in this week’s learning resources is that reflective listening with children plays a crucial role when working with children.
I think the aunt communicated very effectively with her nephew but she could have brought her other nephew in on the conversation and relayed the information to the two of them. I think the communication interaction that I observed may have affected the child’s feelings in a positive way and gave him a better sense of self worth and a new respect of people and their skin color.
After observing them, what I learned about myself this week with respect to how well I talk with and listen to young children is that talk a little more than I listen and the way that I could improve that is listen to them more than I talk to give them room to reflect and respond on the situation at hand. This was a very interesting assignment and I was surprised to find out that I was able to notice all of the things that I did.
