Kids Say the Darndest Things

This is our final entry on chapter 9, and it was written by Sarah M. Happy reading!     

One of the greatest things that you can do for a child is to provide an environment where a child’s body and mind can be stimulated. Within that environment it is the parents’ and the teacher’s responsibility to have high quality communication skills and be prepared with a handful of open-ended questions to keep the child’s brain and body growing at a moderate pace. Not only does it get children thinking, but it is also a way for the adult and the child to make a strong relationship with one another. When communicating with the children in your classroom, it is fine to create silly questions that bring silly remarks. The more fun a child has in their environment, the stronger the relationship and the stronger the willingness to want to learn new things will be. Mary Gordon, author of Roots of Empathy, helped her readers to understand the strategy and reasoning behind asking children open-ended questions and building a loving relationship through good communication skills.

    

I agree and support Gordon’s viewpoint that adults should make a child’s learning experience more interesting by asking them open-ended questions in a positive and respectful way. Gordon explains that communication between children and adults “enhances the authenticity of the communication as the genuine thoughts and ideas of the adult are shared in a mutual, playful, respectful way with the child” (p.130). A teacher who not only understands how to ask open-ended questions, but can also mold the questions so that they are entertaining to a child is ideal. Asking questions in this way can be a better way to get them to learn than by just having them do an activity without any actual true understanding of the subject.

    

The true underlying problem with adults these days is that they often times forget how to play. Teachers have it embedded in their head in college courses that children learn about their environment through play, but the real question is do teachers “know” how to play themselves? If adults have an idea of how to play with their children then they will have more patience and more empathy when it comes to communication. Gordon quoted Brazelton and Greenspan when she said “Empathy is taught not by telling children to be nice to others or try to understand others, but parents’ having the patience to listen to children and children’s feeling understood”  (p. 131). Basically, the more you show that you care and respect what the child has to say, the more excited they are going to be about learning new things because they are going to want to share their new ideas with you.

    

After reading Gordon’s thoughts and opinions on communication with young children I began to realize how much I loved and respected everything she had to say. It also began to bring up some fun childhood memories. My favorite years of my education were when I was in preschool. Of course playing was a lot of fun, but what I really liked was the fact that my teachers made time to listen to my thoughts and ideas. One particular time I can remember my preschool teacher taking the time to listen to me was when I set my favorite bear down on a table in the classroom. I had set it down so that I could give my teacher my full attention during storytelling time. My teacher didn’t notice because she was really upset because many of the children were picking their noses and wiping it on their friends. When my mom came, I got up and realized my favorite bear was not on the table anymore! Despite being as stressed and frustrated as she probably was, my teacher dropped what she was doing, bent down to my level, and truly listened to a 10-minute story about how I got this bear. She listened as I told her the bear’s name, what the bear liked to do, and finally how I had lost it. Looking back on it, that teacher had a lot of patience. I loved to talk as a child and adults would usually tune me out after a minute or two, but she listened to every word and looked me right in the eyes the entire time. After I had finished my 10-minute story, she ripped the entire classroom apart and found my bear. My good friend Ashley had put it there and I had forgotten she had done that for me.

    

Taking the time to listen to your children and respond to their questions is a great way to build a strong bond that will last a lifetime. There are many theories that can be easily seen within chapter nine but one in particular sticks out to me and that is the idea of attachment theory. John Bowlby explains that having a strong relationship with your parent who is sensitive to your thoughts and feelings, and responds to what you have to say, will help a child become a more successful and loving adult. I think that Gordon would agree with Bowlby and his ideas.

     

After finishing the last few sentences of the chapter, I had this feeling come over me, and everything that I had felt in my heart about children was just reinforced. It made me feel so good inside that I understand the underlying importance of what should be done to ensure that a child has their greatest years and memories of learning in my classroom. The best advice that I can give to preschool and kindergarten teachers is that if you want to teach your students how to succeed in life, then you have to allow them to teach you how to play. After all, it’s their world and you’re just there as a coach.