Techniques to help improve mutual understanding between children and adults.
Techniques to help improve mutual understanding between children and adults.
Parent meeting
Target:
familiarization with the technique of active listening, which helps improve mutual understanding in the family. Learn to communicate your feelings in a problematic, conflict situation.
Progress of the meeting.
Introduction.
When they constantly repeat that a child needs to be raised as a personality, a logical question arises - WHO will raise this very personality? Teachers? Educated specialists who were only half-trained in psychology? Or parents? The most ordinary people, not always competent in matters of education? This painful question arises every time before adults: teachers and parents, when problematic situations arise in a child at school.
A child is, first of all, a person, with his own character, thoughts, and opinions . And this, oddly enough, must be taken into account from a very early age. Make time to talk. This is how children perceive the world around them and look for their place in it, and we help them by communicating. Let's feel our love: stroke your head, hug, kiss, try to spend as much time as possible. But under no circumstances let your family and beloved children control you . It is necessary to explain in a soft but firm form that, although their opinion is taken into account, the parents will decide for now.
It is very important to establish trusting relationships with children; take an interest in the smallest details of their lives . First you will listen to stories about what happened at school. Be sure to listen and never ridicule their stories. Children are growing up. And then, at the most important moment in their lives, they will go to mom and dad for advice. But if our children get used to the fact that they will not be heard or understood at home, they will begin to solve problems themselves, often with unpleasant consequences.
A child’s systematic aggressive behavior directed at his brothers, comrades, and teachers may be caused precisely by a lack of attention from his parents.
If parents do not pay due attention to raising a child, if frequent quarrels and scandals occur in the family, this can result in a kind of childish protest. A student may begin to study poorly, fight with peers, and be rude to teachers. And not only from lack of education. The child experiences a lot of stress due to the fact that there is no peace between the parents. He cannot influence this, cope with this problem, and this results in aggression.
Aggressive, conflictual behavior of a child can also be stimulated by appropriate films and some computer games.
But even if everything is fine in the family, it happens that children often bully their friends. Perhaps such children simply have an excess of physical strength and energy. In this case, it is very good to direct the child’s irrepressible energy in the right direction. You can send it to a sports school or section. And he will have much less time and energy for violence and fights. In general, excess free time is detrimental for children at any age.
Now about the lies.
It's rare that a child always tells the truth. But it’s bad when he starts to cheat often. This is already a reason to think about the reasons for children’s lies. Why do children tell lies? Often out of fear. Parents show excessive severity and the child, fearing fear of punishment or some other parental reaction that is unpleasant for him, hides bad grades, falsifies grades, or hides fragments of a broken vase. If children begin to systematically deceive their parents, this indicates that our relationship lacks warmth and trust. The child should know that what will upset parents much more is not the offense itself, but the insincerity and dishonesty of their child. When he lies, he only makes the situation worse. But at the same time, the child should know that they will not scold him for his offense, but will help him understand the situation and solve the problem.
He needs to be explained that deception is a loss of trust, it is a loss of good relationships between people.
Let's talk a little about prohibitions and punishment.
Prohibitions will only be valid when the word of the parents is spoken with power, backed by authority.
Obedience only out of fear, under pressure, is not effective. Firstly, you will never establish contact with a child this way. Secondly, sooner or later there will come a time when children will stop obeying even out of fear of punishment. Then completely different relationships will be needed, but they have not been established. Therefore, parents will only achieve true obedience in their child when they are not strict bosses, but authorities. An authoritative parent knows how his children live, they can always discuss their joys and problems with them. If he prohibits something, then this prohibition is reasonable and justified. He gives the children an explanation of his prohibition or punishment.
But even an authoritative parent should not abuse prohibitions. When there are too many prohibitions, the child stops perceiving them. They turn into a meaningless background noise. The endless “No”, “You can’t”, “Don’t you dare” soon lose all meaning. There is such a law: if you want to say: “No,” the prohibition must be pronounced against the background of many: “Yes.” You can’t forbid a child literally everything he asks for. It is necessary to separate the main thing (what is really dangerous for him) and the secondary.
Do not allow hysterics, otherwise it will become a habit and then it will be very difficult to stop them . Children need to explain everything, talk to them like adults. It is possible, even necessary, to punish sometimes, but not to beat, but to choose the punishment individually: putting him in a corner, not buying candy or a promised phone number, showing that you are offended. There are many other options. But don't let serious offenses go unpunished.
There are certain motives behind any problematic behavior of a student. Moreover, the same behavior can be caused by different motives. For example, aggressive behavior can be caused by both the desire for leadership and compensation for increased anxiety. Consequently, educational methods will be individual in each case. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to find out the motives of the child’s behavior and problems. We can help a child if he feels and understands that teachers and parents understand his problems and accept him for who he is. Only then will the child be open to communication and willing to change his negative behavior.
If we make a problem out of any trifle, then the children will get used to the fact that we won’t please us anyway, and at the moment when a real problem arises, they simply won’t believe and won’t understand that this time the matter is serious.
There is a problem. What's next?
Let's take a serious problem, at least the same bad grades
. The problem is clear. And in order to solve it, we need to understand what exactly we want to achieve. In other words, we need to set a task. The task must satisfy two requirements: it must be specific and feasible. Often, to solve a large problem, it is useful to break it down into a number of small ones. The tasks can be very different, but it is most natural to divide them into simple and complex tasks. Simple tasks are those that do not require the teenager's cooperation. In this sense, correcting bad grades is a difficult task, because you need to work on it as a team with your child.
The ability to communicate is very important for solving any kind of problem and is one of the most valuable life skills. However, the success of any communication is determined primarily by mutual understanding. Many personal problems arise due to a lack of mutual understanding between people. Disagreements and quarrels are intensified and complicated by our inability to see the world not only with our eyes, but also with our minds and hearts. When there is no mutual understanding, there can be no trust. It should be emphasized that true communication involves the exchange of not only words, thoughts, information, but also feelings, emotions, and experiences.
Are there any practical techniques that can be used in everyday life to improve family relationships and achieve mutual understanding?
We will get acquainted with one of these techniques, and it is called active listening.
Listening is a skill that every person needs. We often misinterpret this term. After all, maintaining silence with difficulty and waiting for your turn to speak in response to your interlocutor’s speech does not at all mean the ability to listen. How and when should you actively listen?
This should be done in all situations when the child is upset, has failed, is in pain, is ashamed - i.e. when he has emotional problems.
As an example, consider a common situation:
For example, a son comes home after school, throws his briefcase and shouts: “I won’t go to this school again!”
How to react correctly? What to say? How to remain calm, especially if at this moment you yourself are tired, irritated, absorbed in your problems? What most often comes to mind are the usual, automatic responses, from which we can compile an impressive list of our mistakes.
These are orders, commands, threats (“What do you mean “I won’t go”?! Do you want to remain ignorant? Become a janitor? If you don’t study, you won’t get a penny from me!”), moral teachings (leading to the so-called “psychological deafness”, when the child simply stops hearing you), criticism, reprimands (“Everyone’s children are like children, but mine... And who are you like? What have you done there again?!”), as well as questions, investigations, proposals for ready-made solutions , ridicule, accusations (“It’s your own fault! Don’t argue with the teacher! Loser!”).
And this is not a complete list of our wrong reactions.
Perhaps we do this with the best intentions, wanting to explain, teach, appeal to conscience, point out mistakes and shortcomings... But in fact, we are throwing out our negative emotions. And, of course, our behavior does not contribute to establishing better contact and resolving the problem. Rather, irritation and resentment on both sides increase even more.
How to avoid this? Using active listening techniques.
Let's look at it using the same example.
Son (throwing away his briefcase, angrily): “I won’t go to this school again!”
Parent (after a pause, turning to face the child, looking into the eyes, repeats his child’s statement in his own words): “You don’t want to go to school anymore.”
Son (irritated): “There the teacher is clinging to me!”
Parent (after a pause, indicating the feeling experienced by the child, using the affirmative form of the statement): “Something made you angry (upset, offended) in class.”
Son (offended): “I did this test myself, but she says I copied it!”
Parent: “I understand you, it’s really hurtful.”
Son: “She’s always nagging me...”
Parent: “I think I would be upset too...”
Son: “At least you understand me... Okay, it happened that I cheated... But I will prove to everyone that I can solve problems on my own!”
As you understand, this is just one of the possible options for a long conversation. But whatever the situation, our goal is not a critical assessment of what is happening, not a search for a solution to a problem that is not our own, in general (this is your child’s problem, and he must solve it himself), but to give the child the opportunity to feel that you you understand him and try to lead him to a constructive solution to the problem, maintaining a good relationship with him. Active listening is not a way to get something from a child, but “simply” a way to establish better contact, a way to show the child that we understand him.
Of course, the child’s feelings and experiences deserve special attention from the parents, and this is the basis of trusting relationships in the family, the key to present and future mutual understanding.
Parents must remember that a child is raised not only and not so much in the process of specially conducted classes, but by the entire way of life of the family, the moral, spiritual, social atmosphere that reigns in it, the character and system of relationships between parents, parents and children. Everything matters here: how father and mother talk, what and how they talk about others, their work and co-workers, relatives and friends, what kind of order is maintained in the house, how they approach their responsibilities, and much more that makes up the life of a family.
Childhood is the time when we not only raise our children, but also build our relationships with them. And if we were not able to become mentally and spiritually close to them in childhood and adolescence, then it will be very, very difficult to do this
Communication as mutual knowledge and mutual understanding of people. The concept of social perception.
So many factors and circumstances can influence how we perceive and explain to others. The process of cognition and perception of others, whether it is the formation of a “first impression” or a deeper analysis, is fundamentally different from the perception of any other objects and phenomena. It must be analyzed exclusively in the context of those interpersonal relationships within which this process takes place.
In order to better understand how the perception of others occurs, it is necessary to focus on three main elements of this phenomenon: 1) the personality of the perceived person, the one we are looking at and whom we are trying to understand, 2) the personality of the perceiving subject, the one who is looking and cognizes, 3) the situation in which the process of cognition and perception occurs.
Very often, the subject and object of perception are not individual people, but social groups.
The nature of how other groups or individuals are perceived thus depends largely on the characteristics of the group's collective self. In turn, when the object of perception turns out to be a whole group, one must try to establish and define precisely its collective “I”.
Therefore, we can distinguish four situations of people’s perception of each other:
when an individual perceives another individual; when an individual perceives a group;
when the group perceives the individual; when the group perceives the group.
Social perception is a process that occurs when people interact with each other and includes the perception, study, understanding and evaluation of social objects by people: other people, themselves, groups or social communities. The process of social perception is a complex and branched system of forming images of social objects in the human mind as a result of such methods of people understanding each other as perception, cognition, understanding and study. Social perception is defined as the perception of a person’s external signs, comparing them with his personal characteristics, interpreting and predicting his actions and actions on this basis. Thus, in social perception there is certainly an assessment of another person, and the development, depending on this assessment and the impression made by the object, of a certain attitude in the emotional and behavioral aspects. There are basic functions of social perception, namely: knowing oneself, knowing one’s communication partner, organizing joint activities based on mutual understanding and establishing certain emotional relationships. Mutual understanding is a socio-psychological phenomenon, the center of which is empathy.
There are the following social-perceptual mechanisms, that is, the ways in which people understand, interpret and evaluate other people: 1. Perception of the external appearance and behavioral reactions of an object 2. Perception of the internal appearance of an object, that is, a set of its socio-psychological characteristics. This is carried out through the mechanisms of empathy, reflection, attribution, identification and stereotyping.
