Raising Confident Children & The Role of Communication Skills

While 8 in 10 mothers in India believe technology has made parenting easier, 70% mothers claim to have used a smartphone for rearing their kids, according to a new survey by Business Standard. As technology takes over our lives, it also trickles down to the next generation and this give way to a population that communicates three ways – verbally, non-verbally and digitally. Today’s parents are making the transition from being raised in a non-digital environment to raising children in a digital era. While social interactions are necessary for healthy upbringing, children need the right exposure to all forms of communication relevant today.

Advik is a 4-year-old who generally speaks his mind and is usually the loudest one in the room whereas, Rishabh is quiet and prefers the company of books and inanimate objects to that of people. Between the two, Advik is the one you would find frantically screaming when things don’t go his way whereas Rishabh might seem a little emotionally evolved to you under the same circumstances. While Advik expresses himself when he feels discomfort or unhappiness, Rishabh has learnt to be aware of his surroundings before expressing himself and prefers to discuss his true feelings in private. A lot of you might agree that Rishabh is more likely to be a better communicator in the longer run, but a large number of parents place their bets on children like Advik under the belief that children should not “shy away” from expressing themselves. They would even deem Rishabh underconfident and an introvert. So, what exactly are the right communication skills to teach children and what do they depend on?

Paying Attention from an Early Age

Rishabh and Advik may be completely opposite in their apparent behavior but what they have in common is that they have learnt how to communicate, at least up to this age, from the atmosphere and people within their households. Children inherit characteristics from the people responsible for raising them especially during the early years when external factors have a lesser role to play in the child’s upbringing. Behaviors that are encouraged tend to stick on and desirable communication traits may or may not build depending upon what guidance they receive at home.

At times, parents find it easier to give in to the child’s desires than to reason with them and get them to calm down. A possible downside of this is that it might only teach the child to go out and demand whatever they like in whichever tone they like. But what children do not know is that outside the house, their whims would not be entertained and any kind of unreasonable request will be treated as a nuisance. The child ends up learning the hard way that not everything and everyone is at their disposal.

Children who are taught to communicate mindfully and reasonably, on the other hand, grow up to be excellent in their communication and are more acceptable socially. It requires more time and attention from parents but it is essential to build smart communication skills. When such kids talk in a social setting, they are accepted and appreciated which gives them confidence. This confidence increases over time whereas the confidence of those who are used to getting anything they want gradually decreases as they grow up.

Open Communication within the household

When parents have honest, open communication with their children, it teaches the child confrontation skills and moral, expressive communication. This does not just depend on what conversations are encouraged within the household, but also on what role each parent plays in instilling the art of open, honest communication. Children must be prepared to step into the gender mix that exists in the world and this must start as early as possible. For 6-year-old Ananya and her 4-year-old brother Darsh, the parents have taken up cross-communication consciously to help them communicate with the opposite sex effectively and empathetically. “As a kid I only remember having long, honest conversations with my mother and hardly any open talks with my father whereas my husband only remembers having serious conversations about life and career with his father and light hearted, emotional conversations with the mother. With our kids, we want to break that barrier and give them the confidence and skills to connect with all genders. So, we take turns in having real, practical conversations as well as fun talks with both of them so that they learn to communicate with all genders without feeling any awkwardness or hesitation”, said their mother.

External Communication

How the child communicates with its external environment is a factor of innate characteristics and the way it’s taught to behave with others. Children are often weighed on the extrovert/introvert scale and what we don’t realize is that the scale has various readings between the two extremes. That is to say that even within extroversion and introversion, there are degrees. A child that is less extroverted is not an introvert and vice versa. In fact, there is a misconception that the louder, outgoing child will do better in life, when in fact, children need to be taught to speak in moderation in order to succeed. Not being too loud or too timid. Not speaking unnecessarily but being assertive when necessary. This is what improves their social acceptance as opposed to a child who speaks incessantly in any situation.

A child depending upon his disposition, might be a perceived extrovert or an introvert. Paying too much attention to this perception can also lead to a decrease in confidence. Children must be given the support to become who they are naturally inclined to become. Whether they seem quiet or outgoing, how effectively they communicate with others rather than how much is what really matters.

Digital Intervention

A new form of communication that is now almost a mandate is digital exchange of ideas. 95% of the parents we speak to are worried about the effect of too much exposure to smartphones, internet and cyber bullying, yet all of them believe that the child must learn to use and interact through digital devices in today’s world. Not only do parents use these devices to find solutions to their own problems, they also believe that these gadgets have made parenting easier as the child learns a lot on its own through these devices and it has brought a lot of knowledge and exposure to children which the parents would never have been able to provide at such a young age on their own. Children today are much more well informed at the age of five than their parents were and that is all courtesy of the internet.

While digital communication is important, what remains to be monitored however is the extent of exposure to the digital world at different stages in the child’s life. Afterall, real life interactions are what makes us human and children must learn to talk confidently with faces more than screens.

Identifying Forms of Intelligence

According to Harvard psychologists, there are nine forms of intelligence that humans possess. When it comes to confident communication, a lot of it is associated with which of the nine forms is more dominant in a child and whether or not enough effort is made to enhance it. Out of these 9 forms of intelligence, identifying which form is dominant in the child and focusing on the strengths that the child exhibits due to the dominant intelligence is key in building confidence. Every human has a natural disposition. The way to ensure that a child reaches great heights is when parenting is aligned to the child’s disposition. This combined with guided perseverance, is what creates Schumachers and Mick Jaggers out of regular children!

Conclusion

Being a parent who supports the ups and downs that the child faces during interactions and experiences is what helps them communicate better with the outside world. If the child can open up to you about his/her mental state, it gives them the ability to communicate clearly and confidently. If they are discouraged from being open and honest and only encouraged to be the ideal child, it might break them one day. Building a transparent communication channel is what can ensure a happy, positive and confident child. Combined with the right focus on the child’s natural inclinations and giving him the right tools to strengthen his apparent skills with the help of technology, a child’s communication skills and confidence can grow manifold.