Tuesday's Thought

One of the things that children have to do when they first come to school is to learn to communicate beyond that special language they have had with their parents at home. The intrinsic knowledge that exists between mother and child, and sometimes father and child stays at home when a child enters school. Nobody can do that like the parent.

Being able to communicate well is the highest level of being human. It is what we do that other creatures can't. We speak, we ask questions, we reply. Animals can growl and hiss and spit and bite and kick and get their point across, but humans can organize their thoughts and speak about what is important to them. I have yet to listen to a cat reflect on anything.

So teaching a child to act on being fully human is important. The first step is listening. You can't listen if you are speaking. So, getting children to be quiet in a group is a big challenge. "It is time for you to listen, and we listen with our ears not our mouths. So we need to stop talking and listen." Many children have a great difficult with this. The question is why.

Listening to someone else means that "I" have to take a step back and lose being the center of attention. I am no longer the focus when "I" listen. The selfish child thinks, "I may lose myself if I listen to another person, and that would not be a good thing. So, I will never listen, and while they are talking, I will make as much noise as I can, simply because I want to be the center of all things."

This is typical of three year old behavior. The child has not let go of the image of self as a small god, and a god who needs to be reckoned with. In a normal child, this dissipates by age four.

By age four, children have mostly learned that we share air space, and sometimes the child gets to talk and sometimes the adult gets to talk. So no longer fearing that he will lose himself, the child begins to listen, and he discovers that he likes what he hears. He's learning because he has learned to listen. He is growing up.

The next step to solid communication is learning to ask questions. This happens in late four and at five. It is utterly amazing to me how hard learning to ask a question is. It is a task few people ever acquire. Many people grow old without ever inquiring out loud to another person about the things they see, hear or experience around them. They will tell, tell, tell, but they will never ask. It is no wonder so many relationships fade, die or crash because the inability to ask someone - even someone who is close to us- a genuine and concerned question is so difficult, so Herculean, that actual asking must be tantamount to death.

"I saw a wonderful movie last night."
"I saw one about..." and the communication is grabbed like a football and the play is lost because the initiator is left in the dust while the ball carrier runs away.

Better:
"I saw a wonderful movie last night."
"Oh, what did you see?"
"I saw High Noon."
"What was it about?"
"It was about..."
"I like that kind of movie. I happened to see a movie last night as well.
"Oh, what was it?"
"I saw..."

This is called conversational exchange. It is begun by one person and through the curious question, an exchange is made. In the first dialogue, it is not conversation at all. It is "show and tell."

"I made talapia for the first time last night."
"I made gumbo. It was really good. I used..."

Better:
"I made talapia for the first time last night."
"How did it turn out?"
"It was really good. I was surprised by..."
"I know what you mean. Whenever I make something new, like...."

One conversation is communication and the other is a launching pad into ignorance because nobody learns. One person initiates a conversation, and the other reports his own story. That kind of "palaver" is learned in childhood, and it's taught by parents who never ask a question. There is a not so rare social ill that says: "I don't have to ask questions because questions make me look foolish." So the child who models his behavior after the not so rare social ill poops in his pants because he might look foolish asking where the bathroom is.

Asking a question never makes a child or an adult look foolish. Not asking questions makes the child look like a three year old and the adult look like an idiot. Asking questions is the second step in basic communication skills. Learning to ask a simple question allows a child to enter into a social order that will serve him all his life. He doesn't have to wander all over the high school aimlessly because he can ask someone, "Hey, where's the coach's office?"

One of the problems with children who are reluctant to learn to ask questions is that they are always in the dark. "I didn't know" becomes the standard excuse. "I didn't think you wanted me to" or "I didn't know what you wanted me to do" are also phrases of excuse that somehow allow the unspoken question to be validated. The proper response from the loving adult is, "If you don't ask, you won't know. Next time ask."

Perhaps the problem is a deeper one. Caring about one another should produce a steady stream of questions. It's only natural to want to know about someone you care about. Imagine going to a doctor who tells you that your child will need surgery and you never ask "what or why?"

The further up the social ladder one travels, the more elaborate the questions become: "Say, I heard that you are traveling to -------. I've never been there, but I'd sure like to go. Can you tell me..." Or, "I've been reading such and such a book, and I'm interested in ________. I understand that you know _______."

There are certain given questions a child will learn when he is learning to write essays that will allow him to converse with adults. The questions are about who, what, when, where and why. By learning to ask questions that cover who, what, when, where, and why, a child will begin to grasp real knowledge and climb the social ladder. But it doesn't begin on it's own, and it can only be half taught in school. The home is the place where children either learn to communicate, or they don't.

Talk to your child and ask him questions - not why until after he is six. But ask him questions and then listen to his response. Help the youngest child respond. Shaking heads and saying, "yeah" will not count. The response to any question should be a full sentence. And don't, whatever you do, walk out half way through his response. People who cut off other people, interrupt, finish other people's sentences, change the subject, or point to extraneous objects mid remark are not only rude, they are ignorant. What we are saying when we do this is, "You're not important enough to listen to, so I'm not." Communication is the high point of life. So let's begin to work on that with our children. Stop, look and listen. It's always a good idea, and then ask, who, what, when, where and why.