Three Key Strategies to Enhance Talk with Kids: Prompt, Reflect, Play

RICH TALK NEWSLETTER: MARCH 2024

Welcome to the newsletter for The Art of Talking with Children!

Here, I offer news, updates, and research-based tips, strategies, and prompts to enhance your relationships with kids.

NEWS

Recently, I returned from Lima, Peru, where I was honored to be the keynote speaker for the 7th Seminar of Luminario, an organization working to empower Peruvian teachers to be reflective and skilled professionals. This March is their summertime, and they’re just beginning a new school year. I was thrilled to address the audience of over a hundred teachers, principals, and officials from the Ministry of Education, motivated to learn more about how deep conversation can enhance their everyday teaching and relationships with kids. Their questions were profound and their comments insightful. One of my favorites: “If talking with children is an art, we are artists—and children are artists too.”

THREE KEY STRATEGIES

This experience in Lima led me to reflect on how much we can do behind the scenes to enhance our conversations with kids. These three strategies are easy to implement, and you can use them every day:

• TRY PROMPTS: Having a few helpful prompts on your wall or whiteboard that you can rotate every week or two. Try out questions for creativity and play such as:o How might we turn ____ into ______?o What would happen if we made this ER? (Think: biggER, strongER, fastER, sleepiER, funniER)?o How might that work if we put it in a new time or place? (Think: back in history, in the future, in outer space)

• REFLECT: Before responding to an argument, try asking yourself:o Is it better to have more conversation or step away?o How much am I letting my emotions affect me?o Do we need more talk or more time for quiet? (Remember, quiet time can help you as well as kids)!o Can I ask kids to tell me what they need in another way? (Maybe each child can write what they want on a piece of paper, then show you).

• STICKERS FOR PLAY: For young kids, try putting a couple of questions near objects in their play area. These can be written or drawn. For example:o What would happen if these bears were a family?o It looks like these dinosaurs got in an argument. What should they do next?

RESEARCH

What happens when kids are taught in a language they don’t understand or speak proficiently? Not surprisingly, they often struggle to learn basic reading and writing skills. What is surprising is the scale of the problem, as Harvard doctoral student Maya Alkateb-Chami recently found in a study of 56 countries across 6 continents. As reported by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, nearly forty percent of children around the world face this challenge. What’s the problem with this “linguistic discordance,” as she calls it? Kids need a strong oral language basis in order to approach reading and writing tasks easily. Think of speaking and listening as a foundation that underlies literacy.

The solution? For one, as Alkateb-Chami advises, and as I fully agree, let’s advocate for kids to learn in a language they speak well. If they can’t, let’s welcome all the languages kids speak and encourage them to make connections between their home language and the one they’re learning in school.

RESOURCES

• To play: A game my family has been enjoying recently is Apples to Apples Junior. ?It’s called the “game of crazy comparisons.” You get a category like “Gorgeous,” “Funny,” “Curly,” or “Plain” and a group of cards with possible answers (“Taylor Swift,” “New York City,” “sea slugs,” and so on). Is a mushroom funny? Are aliens expensive? Each person rotates being the judge and deciding! Explaining your reasoning lets you have fun playing with language while building thinking and vocabulary skills.
• Feeling creative? If you get bored with the cards—for an extra creative challenge, use index cards and make up your own.
• Get involved: Check out the organization Doing Good Together, I recently gave a webinar with them and was excited to find all their great resources, including lists of targeted family-friendly volunteer opportunities by city.

Final thought: Try this motto

I hope this newsletter is helpful and inspiring! Remember: Communication is an inborn human need—and great conversation is a human right.

Please get in touch if you’d like to hear more or are interested in collaboration or speaking.

Best,

Rebecca Rolland, EdD

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About The Art of Talking with Children:

Science has shown that the best way to help our kids become independent, kind, and happy is by talking with them. And yet we often find ourselves distracted, exhausted, or at a loss as to how to have meaningful conversations.

Harvard lecturer, speech pathologist, and mother, Rebecca Rolland offers an essential, evidence-based guide to communicating more effectively with children of all ages, revealing that a great conversation has a double benefit: helping adults and kids connect better in the moment and boosting children’s learning and wellbeing for years to come.