What is a Communication Skill?
Conveying messages to provide more excellent knowledge is called communication skill. Effective communication is one of the essential life skills. The skills we use when presenting and obtaining different kinds of information are called communication skills. It involves speaking, listening, observing and empathising.
Importance of Communication Skills in Child’s Development
Good communication skills are essential to allow yourself and others to understand information more accurately and effectively. It is described as an essential life skill, and it is helpful to understand the difference between face to face interaction, telephone conversation and digital communication. One must acquire a good language hold in order to communicate effectively. Parents and teachers should help their kids to practice and pronounce language better. To enhance children’s pronunciation skills, they must give some language exercises like storytelling, singing, questioning, tongue twisters for kids, reading books etc. They should start teaching their kids basic communication skills at an early age.
Communication skills are essential for a child’s development for many reasons;
- It is possible children express themselves clearly and convey their feelings better when they are taught practical communication skills.
- It promotes learning and significant interchange of information with others
- Well communication will heighten children’s social IQ by helping them build healthy relationships during their interactions with others.
- A child who is good at verbal communication will also be able to produce good written communication. It helps him to perform better academically.
- Those who have communication problems may develop behavioural disorders like despair and low self-conceit.
How to Improve Your Kid’s Communication Skills at Home
Parents have a significant responsibility in developing kids’ communication skills at an early age. They should teach their kids good communication skills to make them effective communicators. Parents must do some simple exercises to help their children to become good communicators. They can play games, sing songs, share stories, do some simple math activities and science experiments. For example, Milk Fireworks experiments for kids, Volcano experiment for kids, etc., these activities will help children develop their speaking skills and improve their listening and speaking comprehension.
Steps for how to improve communication skills
- Talk regularly with your kid: kids who have communication problems will hesitate to talk. Parents should encourage their children to speak and make them join in the conversation as much as possible. This helps children to freely open up.
- Give time to your child: always give time to your child to express what they feel and wait for them to respond. It will take time for a child to tell what they want to say, so parents wait until they answer.
- Describe the day: parents must encourage their children to describe how the day went in detail. For example, what were the best and worst parts of their particular day. This will help children with recall and sequencing and also enhance the relationship between parents and their children.
- Avoid overcorrecting your child: don’t force your child to say a sound correctly. If you demand your kids to say something right, they might stop doing it. Overcorrecting is the opposite way of developing communication skills.
- Listen and reflect on what your child says: listen to your child after he has told you something and respond to it by repeating a part of what your child said. Parents must follow up with a question.
- Treat your child as a communication partner: parents need to talk to their children as they are adults. It doesn’t mean that they use adult vocabulary; it means use eye contact and value what they say.
Parents play a vital role in developing kids’ communication skills because they are the ones who communicate with them efficiently. This will help children to improve their performance academically.