Communication Skills Health Article

Visual communication

People communicate with eyes as well as ears. Communication occurs with cues of body language and facial expression. Eye contact is a communication connector. Making eye contact helps confirm attention and interest between the individuals communicating.

Some people are visual learners. They learn best when they can see or read instructions, demonstrations, diagrams, or information. Using various methods of presenting and shaping information increases understanding. Photographs, videotapes, dolls, computer programs, charts, and graphs can as effectively communicate information as written or spoken words can.

Tone of voice

Because infants' conception of verbal language is limited, their impressions are based on tone and quality of voice. Infants are able to discriminate parental voices from those of strangers and are more responsive to familiar voices. Soft, smooth voice quality is more comforting and soothing to infants than loud, startling, harsh voices. Infants can sense their caregiver's emotional state by the person's tone of voice. Awareness of infant's sensitivity to these messages is gained by watching their body language. They are relaxed when they hear a calm, happy caregiver and tense and rigid when they hear an angry, frustrated, or frightened one.

Verbal communication extends beyond words. Audible sounds transfer meaning. In addition, tone or attitude communicates sometimes a different meaning than the words used. Effective communicators do not send mixed messages. They say what they mean without sarcasm or equivocation.

Body language

Open body stance and positioning invite communication and interaction, whereas a closed body stance and positioning impedes communication. Using an open body posture improves communication with children. Both parents and children learn to read each other's body language.

Timing

Recognizing the right time to communicate is a skill. A distraught child whose parents have left for work is not ready to hear a story. The time will be more productive and the information better received if the child has a chance to make an emotional transition.

Common problems

Parents should strive to make words and intended meanings match when communication with their children. Children who are given mixed messages are confused and uncertain. Sometimes parents unwittingly attempt to control their children with double or mixed messages; doing so is unhealthy for their relationship to one another.

There are various kinds of spoken language problems, delays, and disabilities. In general, experts distinguish between those children who are slow in developing spoken language (language delay) and those who have difficulty achieving a milestone of spoken language (language disorders). Language disorders include stuttering; articulation disorders, such as substituting one sound for another (tandy for candy); omitting a sound (canny for candy); or distorting a sound (shlip for slip). Voice disorders include inappropriate pitch, volume, or quality. The causes for language problems have been linked to hearing, nerve, and muscle disorders; head injury; viral diseases; mental retardation; drug abuse; and cleft lips or palate.

Parental concerns

In the past, most parents, pediatricians, and educators recommended giving a child time to outgrow a difficulty with spoken language. From the late 1990s, research had shown that early speech and language disorders could lead to later difficulties in learning to read, write, and spell. Thus, many professionals recommended evaluation by a speech-language pathologist for toddlers who displayed language delay. However, not all speech-language specialists agree on early evaluation and therapy. Researchers have found that about two-thirds of children who were not talking at age two showed continued delays until age three, and one half were still behind the typical language development schedule at age four. But by kindergarten, only one-fourth of those children had not caught up with their peers.

See also Language development.

BOOKS

DeVito, Joseph A. Human Communication. Old Tappan, NJ: Allyn & Bacon Inc., 2005.

Nixon, Caroline. Primary Communication Box: Reading Activities and Puzzles for Younger Learners. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Segrin, Chris, et al. Family Communication. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.

Aliene S. Linwood, RN, DPA, FACHE