When to start teaching communication?
Parents should not worry if at 2-3 years old the baby is not friends with other children: family and relatives are enough for him. You should think about help when at 4-5 years old he avoids communication with peers and prefers to play alone. By the age of 6-7 years, a child must have a boyfriend or girlfriend, a circle of acquaintances with whom he would like to spend time.
A child who does not want to communicate with peers is not a sociopath, although from the outside it seems strange to others. Children simply have different levels of trust, personal qualities and other reasons that require work on the part of their parents.
Age-related communication difficulties
Each age stage of a child’s development has its own characteristics and problems of communication skills. Difficulties in communication also depend on the individual character traits and temperament of children. What are the communication problems in children at different stages of growing up:
From one and a half to three years
- In toddlerhood, the most difficult moment is considered to be the breaking of the emotional connection with the mother.
The baby cannot perceive the reality when his mother leaves him for the whole day, leaving him with strangers. The new environment in the person of the teacher and peers cannot in any way replace the maternal emotional connection, and the baby begins to be irritated by everything around him. This gives rise to problems with adaptation to a new team.
- The next difficulty in a child’s communication is establishing relationships with other children.
At this age, the child perceives peers as inanimate objects and treats them as toys. Therefore, situations may arise when the baby pulls someone's hair or pushes them. Accustomed to the principle of communication at this age “action - result”, the child should hear crying or screaming in response. In toddlerhood, it is too early to talk about the team and communication connections, since children play separately from their peers and listen to adults. Therefore, the task of the teacher and parents is to involve the child in joint games with other children and develop communication. Closer to three years, the child begins to compare himself with others and draw his own conclusions. He wants to stand out and receive the praise of others, otherwise the baby gets the impression that he is not like everyone else and becomes withdrawn or aggressive.
Tips: The responsibility of parents during this period is to prepare for visiting kindergarten. Early preparation for new conditions - dressing independently, learning to use cutlery, etc. will help you overcome difficulties effectively. If, upon joining the group, the child feels that he has many skills no worse than others, this will make the task of adaptation many times easier. In addition, educators of such children often set an example for others, and this fosters self-confidence and strengthens independence. In order for separation from mother to be painless, it is necessary to leave the baby with his grandmother or nanny more often. The main point should be the baby’s confidence that mom will definitely return. It is important to tell your child about the routine and activities several months before visiting kindergarten. You should not deceive your child by promising him that you will return very soon, etc. The child must know for sure that his mother will come for him, for example, after a nap. In other words, the child needs truthful psychological preparation for the situations in which he will actually find himself.
Three to four years
This is a period of gaining important experience in communicating with peers. It is believed that this stage is the most difficult for the baby. In relationships with other children, children's egoism comes to the fore. At this age, the first friendships appear, although they can be unstable: today - one friend, tomorrow - another.
Tips: Parents should explain to the child the basic rules of communication, make it clear to the child that peers also have certain needs and desires. You can come up with role-playing games with your child, considering different models of behavior in a team. During the game, you can teach your child that in communication you need not only to take, but also to give, thereby correcting the manifestation of childish egoism.
Four to five years
Communication moves to a new level when the child becomes inseparable from the team. The word “we” is used more often. Leaders appear in the children's team who become more important to the children around them than adults. During this period, it is important for a child not to stand out, but to be in the general team, to act like everyone else.
Tips: All parental instructions regarding “you need to have your head on your shoulders” are useless. The child must learn to analyze his own and others’ actions and actions. Teach him to draw conclusions, to have his own opinion, thus forming adequate self-esteem. You should not find out from the child who is the organizer of certain troubles in the children's team; children do not forgive betrayal. It is better to work with your child, teaching him to express his opinion boldly and independently.
From five to seven years
There is a process of finding your place in the team. Having a sufficient opinion about himself and his needs, the child tries to find his niche. He needs to go through a certain path in which he must show the team what place he will take in accordance with his needs, skills and abilities. Children of this age find friends in a group. Usually these are several peers with whom the child has more close contact. Friendship is mainly based on interests. But already at this stage the sprouts of real friendship are being laid.
Tips: The child already knows what qualities and traits are needed in a team. The task of parents is not to impose their ideas, but to help the child develop the necessary qualities. Systematically discuss situations with your child in a children's group, answer questions, teach him to think and draw conclusions.
From seven to eleven years
A child comes to a new team with certain communication skills. The significant person at this stage is the first teacher, so at first all the children’s attention is focused on his personality. In communication with classmates, the child analyzes his qualities and abilities a lot and strives for self-expression. He expects the main assessment of his individuality from adults.
Tips: It is necessary to help the child get to know the people around him, their views on life and events, teach him to understand what others are thinking about, what their needs are. Parents are required to have a more trusting relationship with their children, continued communication, and spending leisure time together. If before this age communication between children developed mainly spontaneously, now parents and teachers must teach how to communicate and make friends correctly.
Eleven to sixteen years old
The age of blossoming communication. In numerous communications, a teenager seeks and forms life principles. Difficulties may arise in the process of self-awareness and determining the place of one’s own “I”. There is a need to take care of choosing a future profession. Interest in the opposite sex appears, first love. Often these problems are difficult for a teenager to solve.
Tips: It is important to understand that this is no longer a small child, but an adult with his own views. Since age involves many connections in different social groups, parents should pay great attention to the choice of their child. Do not prohibit communication with certain children, but delicately explain the positive and negative aspects of such communication. If parent-child contact has not been lost before this age, parents can trust the child’s choice. Only attention, love, care, and dialogue on an equal basis can resolve the emerging problems of adolescence.
Expanding children's social circle, developing the ability to express their feelings, creating situations where communication is necessary - with the help of these methods you can successfully overcome difficulties and help the child move to a new stage of communicative development.
An important role in this difficult work belongs to parents and teachers. The attentive, caring, sensitive attitude of parents, the professional participation of specialists contribute to the fact that the children's team lives and develops as a single healthy whole.
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What prevents a child from communicating with peers?
It’s hard not to notice the moment when a spark lights up in a child’s eyes and it’s clear that he wants to approach his peers, join a game or conversation, but seems to remember something and fades away. It is at this moment that you need to look for the reason and understand what prevented the child from starting communication:
- Complexes. Sometimes a child does not communicate with peers because it seems to him that they are not interested in him. This happens if parents work a lot and do not have the opportunity to be with their child. The baby spends a lot of time playing independently, he becomes content with himself, and new acquaintances are stressful: he is afraid that he will not be accepted or misunderstood.
- Self-doubt can be natural shyness that needs to be overcome, or it can be the result of an unpleasant incident. Children quickly forget bad things, but individual offensive words can settle deep in the subconscious and prevent them from trusting people. There are cases when only under hypnosis in adulthood a person learned about his childhood traumas.
- The difference is in temperament. Some prefer to play noisily, while others choose to play thoughtfully and quietly, creating their own world. It is easier for the first children to find friends, but for the second children, they need “like-minded people” with whom they can spend hours sculpting Easter cakes or building a house out of branches.
- Conditions for communication have not been created. Frequent moves, few or constantly different children in the yard, frequent changes of sections, classes, constant employment. To learn to communicate, you need consistency and a comfortable environment around.
- Life position of parents, grandparents. When a mother speaks negatively about neighbors or their children, and a grandmother suggests that no one can be trusted because there are bad people around, the child begins to be afraid. Children trust their parents, so they will try to keep their distance from new acquaintances.
Consultation for parents “Child’s communication with peers.” material on the topic
Consultation for parents “Child’s communication with peers”
At preschool age, other children—peers—enter a child’s life firmly and forever. A complex and sometimes dramatic picture of relationships unfolds between preschoolers. They make friends, quarrel, make peace, get offended, get jealous, help each other, and sometimes do minor “dirty tricks.” All these relationships are acutely experienced and carry a lot of different emotions. Emotional tension and conflict in the sphere of children's relationships are much higher than in the sphere of communication with adults. Parents are sometimes unaware of the wide range of feelings and relationships that their children experience, and, naturally, do not attach much importance to children's friendships, quarrels, and insults.
Meanwhile, the experience of first relationships with peers is the foundation on which the further development of the child’s personality is built. This first experience largely determines the nature of a person’s attitude towards himself, towards others, and towards the world as a whole. It doesn't always work out well. Many children, already in preschool age, develop and consolidate a negative attitude towards others, which can have very sad long-term consequences. Identifying problematic forms of a child’s relationship with peers in a timely manner and helping to overcome them is the most important task of parents. To do this, it is necessary to know the age-related characteristics of children’s communication and the normal course of development of communication with peers.
How do kids communicate?
The communication of preschoolers is completely different from their communication with adults. They talk differently, look at each other, behave differently.
Features of communication between preschoolers and peers
- Vivid emotional intensity
- Non-standard and unregulated (no specific forms of behavior)
- The predominance of proactive actions over reactive ones (the inability to continue and develop a dialogue that breaks up due to the partner’s response)
By the age of six or seven, friendliness towards peers and the ability to help each other significantly increases. Of course, the competitive nature remains in children’s communication. However, along with this, in the communication of older preschoolers, the ability to see in a partner not only his situational manifestations, but also some psychological aspects of his existence - his desires, preferences, moods. Preschoolers no longer only talk about themselves, but also ask their peers questions: what he wants to do, what he likes, where he has been, what he has seen, etc. Their communication becomes non-situational.
By the end of preschool age, stable selective attachments arise between children, and the first shoots of friendship appear. a peer becomes for a child not only a means of self-affirmation and a subject of comparison with oneself, not only a preferred partner, but also a self-valued personality, important and interesting, regardless of one’s achievements and subjects.
Problematic forms of relationships with peers
- Aggressive children. Among these factors, the characteristics of family upbringing, patterns of aggressive behavior that the child observes on television or from peers, the level of emotional stress and frustration, etc. are usually highlighted. However, it is obvious that all these factors cause aggressive behavior not in all children, but only for a certain part. In the same family, under similar upbringing conditions, children grow up with different degrees of aggressiveness. Research and long-term observations show that aggression developed in childhood remains a stable trait and persists throughout a person’s later life. Already in preschool age, certain internal prerequisites develop that contribute to the manifestation of aggressiveness. Children prone to violence differ significantly from their peace-loving peers not only in their external behavior, but also in their psychological characteristics.
The main distinguishing feature of aggressive children is their attitude towards their peers. The other child acts for them as an opponent, as a competitor, as an obstacle that needs to be eliminated.
- Touchy children. In all these cases, the child feels rejected and disadvantaged. In a state of resentment, the child does not show direct or indirect physical aggression (he does not fight, does not attack the offender, does not take revenge on him). The manifestation of resentment is characterized by an emphasized demonstration of one’s “offense.” Increased sensitivity is based on the child’s intensely painful attitude towards himself and self-evaluation, which gives rise to an acute and insatiable need for recognition and respect. The child needs continuous confirmation of his own value, significance, and “being loved.”
- Shy children. Shy children are distinguished by the child's increased sensitivity to an adult's assessment (both real and expected). All shy children are characterized by an acute experience of a negative assessment from an adult, which often paralyzes both the child’s practical activities and communication. On the one hand, the child has high self-esteem and considers himself the best, but on the other hand, he doubts the positive attitude of other people, especially strangers, towards him.
- Demonstration children. The main motive for the child’s actions is the positive assessment of others, with the help of which he satisfies his own need for self-affirmation. Demonstrative children are distinguished by the desire to attract attention to themselves in any possible way. However, in cases where relationships with a teacher or group do not work out, demonstrative children use negative behavioral tactics: they show aggression, complain, provoke scandals and quarrels.
Self-affirmation, demonstration of one’s merits or hiding one’s shortcomings remains the main motive of behavior, while other people in themselves are not at all interesting to the child.
This does not mean at all that conflict-free children do not quarrel, do not get offended and do not argue with others. All this, of course, is present in a child’s life. However, in conflict-free children, unlike conflict children, it is not the main and main thing. It does not shut out the other child and does not make the protection, affirmation and evaluation of one’s Self a special and only life task. It is this attitude that ensures both internal emotional well-being and recognition from other people.
Recommendations for parents with problem children.
Children with problem behavior will not be helped by explanations of how to behave, positive examples, and even more so punishments for incorrect attitude towards peers turn out to be ineffective for preschoolers (as well as for adults). The fact is that the attitude towards others expresses the deepest personal qualities of a person, which cannot be arbitrarily changed at the request of the parents.
The parenting strategy should involve the rejection of competition and, therefore, evaluation.
education of humane relations should be based on the following principles.
1. Non-judgmental. Any assessment (even positive) contributes to fixation on one’s own qualities, strengths and weaknesses. This is what determines the restriction of a child’s statements to his peers. Minimizing value judgments and using expressive facial or gestural means of communication can promote non-judgmental interaction.
2. Refusal of real objects and toys. As practice shows, the appearance of any object in the game distracts children from direct interaction. Children begin to communicate “about” something, and communication itself becomes not a goal, but a means of interaction.
3. Lack of competitiveness in games. Since fixation on one’s own qualities and merits gives rise to intense demonstrativeness, competitiveness and an orientation towards the evaluation of others, it is better to exclude games and activities that provoke children to display these reactions.
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Communication problems
And yet, children choose virtual communication for a reason: many of them do not have the skills to interact with each other, avoid peers, and avoid collective activities. Before you start working on developing communication skills, you need to understand the causes of the problem.
Shyness
Many of us were raised with the knowledge that modesty makes a person beautiful. However, modesty and shyness should not be confused.
Shyness is a trait that characterizes a person as timid and shy. A shy child is indecisive, timid, fearful. This character trait prevents the child from living a normal life. The child is afraid to answer at the blackboard, even if he has learned his lessons, to speak with another person, or to enter into a group game. Why? Because he is afraid of doing something wrong, because of which they will laugh at him. Shyness is akin to complexes. Even if the child is praised, he will be extremely embarrassed and want to hide from general attention. The reason is deep self-doubt.
Introversion
Everyone knows that depending on their psychological characteristics, people are divided into introverts and extroverts. Most people are extroverts - they need communication and interaction. Introverts, on the contrary, feel uncomfortable around others and studiously avoid any interaction. Their inner world is reliably hidden from outsiders. It’s not very comfortable and interesting to be with such people. This is why people avoid introverts. However, introverts themselves experience the greatest difficulty among other people: they are scared, uncomfortable, anxious. An introvert is comfortable alone or in very limited company of people. They are completely confident in themselves and their abilities, but simply do not need others.
Family
An important factor influencing a child’s sociability is intrafamily relationships. The child expresses himself primarily in the family. If at home they listen to him, value his opinion, and encourage his initiative, then when communicating with his peers he will strive for similar treatment. If no one in the family is interested in his opinion, they don’t listen to him and don’t try to understand him, then relationships with his peers will not be built.
Children avoid those who behave aggressively and resolve conflicts by fighting and using hurtful words. This is a common behavior of children who themselves are afraid of something. This behavior is also formed at home: people “on TV” behave this way in the family. And one more reason for this behavior: the child does not know how to get out of an unpleasant situation and does not know how to manage his emotions.
Sometimes a child has not developed basic communication skills: he does not know how to listen, interrupts, is rude when he is reprimanded, and so on. Accustomed to making concessions at home, he is unable to restrain himself in a group setting, but such an interlocutor is unlikely to please the kids.
