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Has it ever crossed your mind about when your little one will finally start following your directions? Is responding positively to your directions something that you wish to encourage in your baby? And is there an easy way to make a better listener out of her? What is the way forward so that you can have a positive influence on her communication skills?
Parents tend to spend a lot of their time talking and giving directions to their little ones. But have you thought of the number of non-verbal ways that are also available to us and using them we can probably communicate better with our babies?
“Dr. Albert Mehrabian, author of Silent Messages, performed several studies on nonverbal language. He found that body language accounts for 93% of a message.”
I am a mother of two adorable children and am also an expert speech-language pathologist. Delving deeper into this subject, I’ve had the chance to analyse situations in a number of ways. Let me take a leaf out my personal life that will give a little more insight into this.
My one and half year old baby girl, I’ve seen responds much better to my non-verbal “messages”. This happens more when I transform my actions in a manner that makes me more receptive to her.
Just a few weeks ago, I thought it was time to get my daughter to be potty trained. Tons of instructions, did not work. I offered chocolates, stickers; whatever that she’d like as a bribe so that I could just make her sit on the potty. Alas, nothing worked.
I was literally tired of cleaning up after her wayward droppings all over the apartment. Hence, the time had come for me to change so that I could convince her to co-operate with me. The transformation on my part was to change my communication from giving directions to non-verbal mannerisms and connect with her on completely her level.
So what did I do!
Bending down, reaching my daughter’s eye level, getting slightly closer and softening the tone of my voice. With a lot of love and tenderness, I asked her to look at me and smiled.
That was the moment when I made that positive connection with her. I communicated my request to her. This change in my communication mannerism gave out an encouraging and positive vibe to her. She accompanied me to the restroom and tried to go again.
A very miniscule breakthrough like this has far reaching effects. In the days to come, my little baby girl tried using the potty more and more.
This incident encouraged me to use similar non-verbal communication methods more during my interactions with my baby girl. And I definitely think that this has made me a better parent for sure.