Rules for communicating with adults that all children need to know

The upbringing process is entirely based on the child’s constant communication with his parents, his peers and others. The rules of communication with adults, learned from childhood, help many children grow up to be cultured and friendly people.

As soon as a child is born, he begins to communicate with his parents, master the first skills of communicative interaction, thanks to which he can grow up to be a comprehensively developed personality.

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Basic principles and forms of communication between children and adults

There are several fundamental principles, depending on which the full communication of a child with an adult is built:

• frequent manifestations of initiative to attract attention to one’s actions;
• active requests calling on adults to take part in his affairs;
• special sensitivity to the assessments and judgments of an adult, copying his behavior, understanding the differences between approval, praise and condemnation;
• openness and emotionality in relationships with adults;

Intensive use of speech skills in the interaction between adults and young children contributes not only to the development of the child’s speech, but also to the improvement of his mental activity, as well as the logical component of the entire communication process.

According to the concept of communication developed by the famous Soviet psychologist M.I. Lisina, which explains the mechanisms of the genesis of communicative activity characteristic of young children, two forms are distinguished in preschool age:

1. Extra-situational-cognitive, which develops during the first 4 years. It is determined by theoretical cooperation with an adult, the perception of him as a reliable source of information about the world around him.
2. Extra-situational and personal, the content of which is human society. The adult in him appears as an integral personality, subject to social and moral norms and using his knowledge and skills.

Preschool age is characterized by changes in motives, content and means of communication. The peculiarities of communication with adults during this period include non-situational forms and speech means beginning to predominate.

The thinking factor, joint activity and full verbal communication help stimulate the child’s mental development. They help him construct sentences correctly when addressing friends, parents and various people.

Congenital forms of the baby’s psyche and behavior

A baby who is only 1-2 days old is already able to distinguish chemical substances by taste. The sense of smell, one of the most ancient and important senses, begins to function immediately after birth. Elementary vision, movement and hearing have the same characteristics.

In the first two months of life, the baby exhibits the ability to reflexively turn its head to the corner of its mouth in response to touching an object, strongly squeezes its hands when touching their surface, and makes general uncoordinated movements of the arms, legs and head. He also has the ability to visually track moving objects by turning his head in their direction. In maternity hospitals, babies in the first days of life instinctively turn their faces towards the window through which daylight enters.

The baby is able to distinguish the substances that he tastes. He definitely prefers sweet liquids over others and is even able to detect the degree of sweetness. The newborn perceives odors, reacts to them by turning the head, changing the heart rate and breathing. These motor and physiological reactions are similar to those observed in adults with increased attention and special interest in something.

We must also name a group of processes that contribute to the self-preservation and development of the child’s body, and recognize them as innate. They are associated with the regulation of digestion, blood circulation, respiration, body temperature, metabolic processes, etc. Undoubtedly, sucking, protective, indicative, grasping, motor and other reflexes are innate, which are clearly expressed in the second month of life.

Not only the most important sense organs, but also the brain showed readiness to function from birth. The number of neurons in the cerebral cortex of a newborn is almost the same as in an adult, but these cells are immature, and the connections between them are weak. The maturation of the baby's brain and body and its transformation into an adult brain and body occurs within several years after birth and does not end until the child enters school. The maturation and development of the brain is directly influenced by various external influences and impressions that the child receives from the environment.

Studies have shown that in the brain of a child born within a day and a half, various electrical potentials can be recorded that arise in response to color stimuli on the organ of vision. At this moment, the brain is already able to form conditioned reflexes.

It is important for a baby to know not only the innate forms of the psyche and behavior, but also the process of natural development of the body. The development of movements in the first months of life is of particular importance.

The motor abilities of a baby from birth are organized quite complexly. It involves many mechanisms that regulate posture. A newborn often experiences increased motor activity of the limbs, which has a positive effect on the formation of complex, coordinated movements in the future.

The development of movement in a child in the first year of life occurs very quickly, and the progress made in this respect in twelve months is amazing. From a practically helpless creature with a limited set of elementary general congenital movements of the arms, legs and head, the child turns into a small person who can not only easily stand on two legs, but also move relatively freely and independently in space, and is capable of performing complex manipulative movements with his hands simultaneously with movements of the legs, is freed from locomotion (the function of ensuring movement in space) and is intended for exploring the surrounding world.

During infancy, children rapidly develop motor skills, especially complex, sensory-coordinated movements of the arms and legs. These movements subsequently play a very important role in the development of the child’s cognitive and intellectual abilities. It is through the movements of the arms and legs that the child receives a significant amount of information about the world; It is through the movements of the arms and legs that the eye learns to see like a human being. Complex hand movements are included in the primary forms of thinking and become its integral part, which ensures the improvement of human mental activity.

Children's rules for communicating with adults

One of the very first rules that parents teach their child is the rules of greeting. Having mastered the basics of etiquette in preschool age, children will not experience communication difficulties in the future.

They will remember that:

1. Greet people with the following phrases: “Good morning!”, “Good afternoon” or “Good evening!”. Regardless of the time of day, you can say to a person: “Hello!” Friends and close relatives are usually told: “Hello!”
2. If the people you need to greet are at a considerable distance, you should not shout, jump up or wave your arms. You should just nod politely when their eyes meet.
3. The greeting should be polite and accompanied by a sincere smile. Words spoken casually or in a dry tone can offend a person.
4. You cannot lower your eyes while greeting. Depending on the circumstances, the greeting can be accompanied by a slight bow, handshake, or nod.
5. If a friend comes towards you accompanied by a stranger, then both should be greeted.
6. When a person enters a room in which there is a group of people he knows, he should not greet everyone, he should greet everyone immediately.
7. When meeting, the one who is older should give his hand first. But the younger ones should be the first to greet the older ones, just as men should greet women.
8. When greeting a man, he always stands up. The exception is sick and elderly people.

Particular attention is paid to studying the rules of communication with adults during lunch, studying the norms of behavior at the table.

The child must know that:

1. Laughing, talking and rocking in a chair while eating is prohibited.
2. You need to eat silently; slurping is unacceptable.
3. Large pieces are difficult to chew; they are cut with a knife while holding them with a fork. If the child is small, he cannot do without the help of his mother.
4. Be sure to use napkins at the table - wipe your fingers and lips with them as needed.
5. You should always thank those people who prepared the food and served it on the table. A polite “Thank you” will be accepted with joy.

Children need to understand how dangerous it is to talk while eating. When even a small piece of food is in the mouth, the child can inhale it.

Up to 1 year

Young children are very serious about communication. Verbal interaction with mom becomes more harmonious. In fact, this takes up a significant amount of their resources. But for now this is quite uncontrollable communication. The child mirrors us. He tries to repeat sounds and facial expressions, he becomes more active when he sees attention paid to him.

It is in the first year that attachment is formed - emotional communication in which the child receives satisfaction of his needs for care, attention, love, and security. Attachment is a necessary condition for the normal development of a child.

In the first year of life, a child’s communication is mainly situational and personal. That is, the specific interaction of a child with another person. And the most important thing in such communication for a child is emotions. Can an older child create those same positive emotions? If so, then such communication will be very cool both to develop the baby and to help children begin to build their relationships.

3-7 years

In the period from 3 to 7 years, the child very actively masters different methods of communication. And if up to 5 years of age these are the first steps, then from 5 years of age the accumulation of experience begins. The child learns to interact with other people. And his experience, how well he manages to communicate, greatly influences his ideas about himself!

At about 5 years of age, communication with others becomes qualitatively different again. Now it is important for a child not only to be accepted and understood. It is very important to him who exactly he communicates with. Communication becomes personal. The most important thing is that the child now craves mutual understanding, empathy, and the experience of similar emotions and states.

Remember the wonderful cartoon “Kitten Woof”, where the kitten Woof and the puppy Sharik were afraid of a thunderstorm together. This is just a very typical example for communication between children aged 5 years and older.

What is especially valuable in this period. The child is finally ready to understand the motives of another person. Right now it is important to him how his playing partner feels, whether he was upset or happy, why he acted this way or that way. It is at this age that we need to help the child not only name what happened (we quarreled, Masha was offended, Kolya got angry), but help the child understand the reason: why did we quarrel? What was Masha offended by? What made Kolya angry?

And this kind of work to understand the reasons for certain situations is the most important at this age stage.

How to do this:

• ask clarifying questions;
• offer to imagine what he himself would do in the place of another person.

And gradually we are adding the second most important component to it. It’s not enough to understand the reason, you need to understand what could have been done...

Here we can suggest playing out the situation like a small theatrical performance. No, you don’t need a scene, it’s enough to depict how all the characters will speak and behave.

What most often prevents children at this age from communicating?

• Poorly developed coherent speech. When a child cannot clearly explain his desires and interests in the game. When it is not possible to reach an agreement precisely because the child cannot formulate his thoughts and feelings.
• Lack of awareness. When a child simply does not understand what he actually wants. That is, most often it looks like this: I don’t like this game, I don’t want to communicate like that. But exactly how he wants... the child does not know.

We must help both children. This is our area of ​​responsibility: to help the child develop sufficiently.

Can 5-7 year olds play on their own? Yes, sure. But this does not negate our assistance to them in situations where they themselves cannot understand the reasons or find a solution that will suit all interested parties.

And one more important nuance. Children 5-7 years old give preference in communication to their peers. They are the most attractive and effective partners now. Therefore, a child may refuse to play with a child of a different age.

1-2 years

But pay attention, in the first year of life the child is a passive participant. From the age of 1, a child has 3 priority areas in development:

• mother (or the person who cares for him);
• study of the surrounding world;
• movement.

What changes in communication are taking place:

• The child becomes a more active participant. He already knows how to initiate communication himself, knows how to hold attention, and attract attention. But he certainly continues to watch adults. Adults are an example, a model of how to communicate.
• Now, in addition to situational-personal communication, another type of communication is being added: situational-business communication. This is a completely new interaction - communication, which leads to cognition, to the development of space, manipulation, etc. This is where it’s great to include an older child. Because crawling, throwing, rolling - all this is interesting for the baby to do. But most importantly, it teaches him a new way of interacting with his sibling. Of course, playing together with older brothers and sisters does not in any way cancel out interaction with mom, dad and other close adults.
• At this age, children react very poorly to prohibitions. But at the same time they follow simple and clear instructions very well. Therefore, when helping children play together, teach the older child to speak and show how to do it. And use the same principle in the game yourself. After all, the older child will copy him, and your communication with the child will be easier and more constructive.

Unfortunately, scientists have not conducted studies of young children's interactions with their older siblings at such an early age. But they studied the child’s interest in other children.

It is from the age of 1.5 that a child begins to need to communicate with other children. Please note - a need. That is, until this age (it is clear that this is a very approximate, approximate period) the child was a passive participant. The elder suggested interesting communication - he communicates. No - and no communication. And now he himself will show interest, strive to attract attention to himself, and react to the actions of his sibling.

But for now the baby, of course, is still just a baby. Therefore, his attempts to communicate will still be far from real communication. What could it be:

1) Study of the object and a living toy.

The baby will examine, touch, feel the older child. Look at eyes, teeth, ears, etc. The child plays the same games with adults. But we are very different from our children, even older ones. We can be patient, change it carefully, or stop playing altogether if we don’t like it. But our older children don’t know how to do this yet. Some children show jealousy towards their younger ones. Therefore, our assistance should be aimed at the following:

• we teach the baby to act carefully (stroking, looking, not touching, etc.);
• we teach the elder to carefully remove the hands of the younger;
• We ourselves correct and control such interaction, avoiding unpleasant feelings for the elder and offense for the younger.

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2) Observation and imitation.

The baby actively begins to copy the older child even when he does not direct his actions towards the baby. These may be attempts to repeat actions, gestures, copying intonations or speech (most often, children at this age cannot yet correctly repeat the words of their elder, then they will imitate speech, depicting a conversation with sounds).

How might this be interesting for a senior? Show him how the baby tries to be like him, to be the same as him. Most often, children take this as a sign of recognition, love, and good attitude. And this encourages them to communicate with the baby more, using positive emotions.

However, this is not always the case. There are children who are very jealous of such imitation. If they are old enough to articulate their feelings, this is what they say:

• “I don’t want him to repeat after me”;
• “Only I say so”;
• “Mom, don’t let him do like me.”

What does this mean? About the fact that the older child is not confident in himself, that he is loved, that he is successful and that his parents need him. And that means we need to pay attention to this problem. And only then establish relationships between children.

3) Joint emotionally charged actions.

Most likely, you have observed this more than once, when as soon as one child starts running and laughing, others join him, even if they are completely strangers. Here emotions worked like a trigger. They turned out to be an invitation to interaction.

Children can communicate this way with adults, but from the age of 1.5 years this also works in relation to other children. Moreover, when the baby wants to communicate with other children, he himself begins to act according to this pattern. For example, jumping and screaming, making loud noises, scaring, fighting... This is all an invitation to communicate. His experience says that others respond to this!

How can we use this age characteristic of a child?

Firstly, offer the older one various normal, appropriate games of this kind: running around screaming, jumping and squealing, clapping and grunting... in general, everything that both the older and the younger child will like.

Secondly, if we notice that the baby begins to provoke the older child into such a game, but it is unsuccessful (negative interaction, the game interferes with the older child, etc.), then quickly regulate the process. Or switch it to yourself: “Sasha is busy now, let’s go for a run.” And, of course, immediately start running.

Or replace a negative manifestation with something acceptable. Don't fight, but bang on pots. Do not throw sand at each other, but throw it into a bucket, etc.

It is important to understand that communication at this age is not regular, not constant, it very much depends on the situation, mood and many other factors. That is, we are not always able to organize it in such a way that everyone is happy. This means they must be ready to play the role of a buffer and take on the baby and communication with him, and not expect that children will be able to interact normally with each other.

Communication with children 7-12 years old

What happens next, after 7 years and up to 12?

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These skills are being improved. The main role here is played by communication with peers during study. The teacher and how learning is structured now play a huge role. By the way, this is not just about school. Trainer and training, teacher at a music or art school...

Any training is very important now. And it has a serious impact not only on the development of the child as an individual, but also affects his ability to communicate and is transferred to communication in the family. Yes, we must admit that now the family is forced to take into account to a large extent the influence of the environment on the child.

What points are especially important at this age, what should we pay attention to:

• how to attract the attention of your interlocutor, how to address another person;
• show the need to understand the position of the interlocutor;
• teach techniques for seeking agreement and making decisions.

At this age, the child reconsiders his attitude towards communication. If before this, at the age of 5-7, he was happy to communicate with someone who was simply often nearby, with whom he regularly spent time together, now he already chooses according to a different principle. Now, at 8-12 years old, the most important partners for him are those who help him, respond to requests and share interests.

Therefore, it is possible to involve a child in communication with a baby at this age if the baby is at least partially included in the interests of the elder.

Example. If the eldest son of 8 years old enthusiastically plays with robots, then the baby should also be involved in these games, and then the eldest will be happy to initiate him into the intricacies of the world of robots.

Another example. If a 9-year-old girl watches a cartoon about ponies, then you should try to include the baby in games about ponies. And it doesn’t matter that he won’t understand this cartoon now, but to play with the horses... why not.

From 2 years

Children's communication is activated simply because the baby has already gained the necessary experience. He already knows how to play various story games, he has already developed speech, the need for communication, and the ability to communicate is slowly gaining.

But most importantly, he imitates others well. This is the most favorable time for building independent games between children. The younger one is ready to play with the older one, repeat what is shown to him, etc. But, of course, this does not mean that everything will work out for them right away. Vice versa! Right now, the role of an adult is very important. Right now they are especially actively learning to interact with each other. And this process goes on for more than one day, or even one year. Psychologists identify a period of up to 4 years.

What is the most difficult thing at this time, what we need to pay attention to, what we need to teach children:

• address each other by name or by the role the child plays;
• resolve conflicts, look for a way out of difficult situations;
• take turns;
• sympathize with each other;
• treat each other kindly;
• see your partner’s advantages, his strengths.

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And one more important point that we cannot forget about. For children under 5 years of age, the main component in communication is emotions. They are the ones that matter most to the child. That is, if communication causes strong emotional experiences, not necessarily positive, the child will strive for it again and again. If communication is unemotional, then it is of little significance and of little interest to the child.

But the need for emotions does not mean that the child himself knows how to manage them! Vice versa! Until the age of 5, children are predominantly impulsive, spontaneous, and completely unstable in their emotions. And if it's fun together, it makes a great game. But if the emotions do not coincide, if the interests of all players in the game were not met, frustrations and experiences can be very violent.

And here, without a regulating adult, a good game will not work. It is very important for us to learn to intervene in a situation in a timely manner, to prevent it from escalating into aggression or a fight, and to teach children to cope with both contradictions in the game and their own experiences.