Communication and Child Care Essay Example

am interacting with my potential parents, the parents of the children that I am already responsible for, or the children in my care for that matter? There have been many times over the years that parents have come to me with concerns about their children.

There have been situations that are going on at home, and parents need me to be on board with what they are trying to do. A good example of this is potty training. I know that it may not seem like something big, but communication is a huge part if this. I need to listen to my parents and see what it is that they are trying to do with their children. While they are talking ot me, if I am acting like I am disinterested, bored or like I really don’t even want to be listening to them, that creates a negative atmosphere, where the lines of communication tend to shut down.

Also if I keep cutting off the conversation to add in my opinion, or refuse to listen to others ideas, thinking that my way is the only way, the other party never feels like they are being heard in the conversation. Barriers like this can also foster hard feelings, making a good relationship almost impossible. Now I have been talking about how all of these barriers affect adults, but it is the same with the children. I need to be able to listen to the kids just as much, if not even more than the parents.

If I am putting up listening barriers with my daycare kids than I am going to miss all of the opportunities to see and

hear what they might be trying to tell me. Another learning outcome that I have chosen is, understanding how perceptions, emotions, and nonverbal expression affect interpersonal relationships. There are so many different ways that these affect our communication. “Nonverbal communication is a silent infiltrator, having broad influence over our social environment. It provides us with a mode for conveying messages without the use of verbal language.

It may enhance or detract from a verbal communication. It regulates relationships by affecting the likelihood of introduction and continued interaction. We are able to infer emotion through nonverbal communication and influence other`s perception of our competence, power and vulnerability. It also plays a role in the perception of the actual message we are trying to convey. It affects our lives in a mirriad of ways from childhood throughout adulthood, and as long as we intend to communicate with others. ” (Dunn, Missouri State University).

First let me begin with perception, because it seems to be something that affects an interpersonal relationships right from the very first moment of a conversation. For example, if I have a client that calls me, and would like to come to my home to meet me and discuss their child coming to my childcare, we have a small conversation on the phone where we both get some information on the other person. Let’s just say that she tells me that she is a single mother. Now depending on the type of relationships that I have had with other single parents, this may affect how I perceive this woman and her son.

I don’t believe that this fair to do either. I am ashamed to say that

this was a real situation. I had a single parent and her son in my childcare, and it was horrible. There seemed to be no discipline, and the child acted out without any consequences from the mother. So when I received the phone call from this new mom, I really thought that it was going to be a bad experience and I might not take the child. Well needless to say, I not only care for the child, but the mother and I have become close friends.

My perception was wrong, and could have lost me a wonderful relationship. Non-verbal communication is one of the biggest ways that we communicate with each other. We are constantly sending messages and conveying emotions with our facial expressions, how we stand, how we use our hands ect… “The way you listen, look, move, and react tell the other person whether or not you care and how well you’re listening. The nonverbal signals you send either produce a sense of interest, trust, and desire for connection—or they generate disinterest, distrust, and confusion. Segal, The Power of Non-verbal Communication and Body Language)

In any given situation I can be talking to another person and saying all of the right words, but if I am not giving off good non verbal cues, than mixed signals could make a relationship all that much harder to form. This goes hand in hand with emotions as well. My emotions are not something that I can wholly control and they are going to crop up in my everyday interpersonal relationships. This can either make communicating easier or harder, depending on the situation.

If a parent comes to me

and they are telling me a funny tale about their child and I seem to be depressed or anxious, it is going to make them uncomfortable and possibly untrusting. Even though I may not truly have total control of my emotions, in order for me to communicate effectively, I have to be able to manage them. The same goes for facial expressions. Have you e ever been talking to another person and they just have a sour look on their face, or an expression that does not match the tone of the conversation? How does that made you feel?

When we are interacting with others it is so important that our faces not show every inner struggle or emotion that we are having. There have been times that I have had a horrible day, have gotten some bad news or something has broken down and I know that it can read all over my face. It changes the way that the parents interact with me, but it also is something that the children are so good at reading too. No matter how nice the tone of my voice may be, my face can still show anger, distress, sadness, and even confusion.

All of this can confuse the kids and leave them feeling unsettled, which in the end, truly does affect our entire day together. When I am dealing with my job, I need to be able to make everyone that is in my care feel safe and comfortable. To do this, I need to be able to communicate not just with words, but with all of my non-verbal skills. This is the only way that I can

be successful. Self-concept and communication climates are another very important aspect of communication. Our self-concept is the mirror that we view ourselves in and the beliefs that we have about ourselves as an individual.

The way that we are able to communicate with everyone around us is reflected in all of this. This is very important in all relationships. If we have negative feelings about who we are it is going to be transmitted across in all we do, creating a very negative communication climate. For example, if I have a very poor self concept and one of my parents is trying to explain something to me about their child, say a behavior that the little one is repeating, and needs to be stopped.

I can create a very negative climate by taking the parents advice as being critical of my techniques, instead of seeing it as support and the two of us working as a team. Also, I could just basically ignore the parent, or worse talk to them in a demeaning way telling them that I have tried their method and it is not successful. Basically making them feel as if what they have to say does not have any merit. Thus creating a very negative atmosphere and making a very important relationship a lot harder than it has to be. In my line of work my relationship with the parent and the child is so delicate.

I need to be seen as approachable, trustworthy, strong, sensitive, fun, caring and so many other things. If I doubt myself if I am constantly thinking that I am not good enough, there is no way that I can

create anything positive with everyone around me, and make people feel the level of confidence in me that I need them to. Also, with the daycare children, they need a positive communication climate so that they are not afraid to come to me. I need to be approachable with them, always be encouraging so that they know they can come to me with any questions of problems that they may have.

In a positive climate I can make them feel safe and let them know that I will be there for them when they need me. Being sincere, open minded, willing to work out problems, and being empathetic are just a few way in which I can do this. So often I need to remember that what I am putting out there, communication wise, is the feedback that I am going to come back to me. Before I had taken this class, I don’t know if I ever fully understood the impact that my feeling towards myself had on my communication climate with others.

Now that I have taken the time to really research this, I know that I am going to be different and make more of what I do a positive environment for everyone in it. In the field that I am in and running a home day care, I feel that self-disclosure, it a topic in communication that is extremely important. There are different levels of disclosure that range from just saying hello and goodbye, to the type of interaction that you have with a doctor or a hair stylist, right down to the most personal relationships.

But there is the chance that you can

also disclose too much to a person. When it comes to dealing with my parents, my first time meeting them is nerve wracking for them, the child, and myself as well. I never really know how the meeting is going to go, and I know that I need to give personal information out about myself, but I don’t need to get as much in return. For example, I once had a meeting where a parent brought their child to my house and after about fifteen minutes, starting bashing everyone from her old child care provider to her husband and his mother.

I was given some personal information that I never needed or wanted to know about people that I have never met. This made me uncomfortable and I decided that we were not a good fit. I realize that this may make me sound shallow, but the fact that she would disclose such personal information so quickly made me feel and uneasy, and I was not sure that I could trust her. So I would never have been very open when I communicated with her, and that was not going to be fair to anyone that was involved in that relationship.

When deciding how much to disclose to another person, you need to take cues from the other person. It is a lot of give and take. When the other person in the relationship tells you something personal, it almost feels natural to reciprocate. For me, as I get to know my parents, they open up more to me. In the beginning, a parent has had to learn a lot more about me, due to the fact

that I am going to be caring for one of the most important people in their world, so my level of disclosure has to be much higher.

But as our relationship grows a parent will open up to me more and more, making our relationship stronger and allowing is to work even better as a unit to make sure that the child’s needs are best met. Yet, I do have to say, there are times that the kids have disclosed things to me that would make the parent cringe if they knew I found out. It just goes to show how much better we can get in our communication skills, the older we get. Lastly, I need to be able to recognize how words have the power to create and affect attitudes, behavior, and perception.

To me, I feel that this is so important. Words are so incredibly powerful. They have the ability to build some one up, or to break them down. They help form our perception of ourselves by using negative words when we describe our self, or using words that make us feel empowered. Words are such an important part of my day because I am working with small children. I am shaping them and how they feel about themselves and the world around them. These children and my own children are hearing my words and seeing how I view others around me, and are learning from me.

Think of all of the political campaigns that were just being run. I don’t care who the person is, you can’t help but be affected by the words that are being used to describe the person. They

help us to form an attitude, or a belief without even doing our own research, or in this case actually meeting a person our self. So just by listening to someone else’s words, we have a perception of this individual, be it true or not. A few words can change the entire tone of a conversation, or create an attitude in someone that you are talking to. I have been talking to a erson and said a few wrong words, and watched their entire attitude and behavior toward me change.

As I was talking to spme parents one day, I was talking about a particularly challenging day that I had had with my daycare kids. In the context of the conversation I used a phrase, albeit jokingly, that turned the parents right off. I was telling them about an incident in the sandbox and said. “Oh and your little monster”. Now my tone was laughing and I was just trying to be light, but I watched the parents shut down right in front of my eyes. It was my words, they took them as negative.

I should have never used the word monster because it made it seem like I was picking on their son or calling him a bully. Even though I knew what I was trying to convey, my words did not give the message that I wanted, and it resulted in a misunderstanding that could have ruined a personal and a work relationship. Even though I seem to always be pointing out the negative, words can have a very positive effect on the way we communicate. They can express emotions to others and build

a person up when they need it the most. With my kids, a positive word from me can change their entire attitude.

If they are having a bad day, just an “I love you” will do wonders. I wish that more people could realize the damage that words can do and stop and think a little before they speak. Actually, I know that I need to practice what I preach as well. Communication used to just seem like a simple concept to me before, it was something that I did just speaking to another person, but that does not even begin to scratch the surface of what it is. Communication is what we do from the minute we wake up in the morning until we say good night to others as we crawl in to bed.

From the words we say to the smiles of frowns that we give as we pass others on the street. It is how we give and get information, how we find the person that we end up with for the rest of our lives, and how we tell them how we feel about them. We learn and teach through communication and we become better people through it. It is entwined in to every facet of our lives. I have just pointed out how communication affects certain aspect of my job and my life. It is different for everyone, but one thing remains certain . Communication is essential for us as human beings and always will be.