Talking to Kids

I ran across this article today about Mr. Rogers being incredibly intentional about the words he spoke to his young audience in his televised show. (If you are not familiar with Mr. Roger's Neighborhood you can watch clips on YouTube.) Mr. Rogers knew that small children take the words that adults say very literally. He also knew that children often take their own thoughts and perceptions very seriously. The article I linked to above lists the nine-step process that Rogers and his staff used to make sure that their scrips were just right for talking to kids. If you have a young child or you regularly work with kids, this is well worth a read.

Although you and I cannot filter every word we say to the young children in our lives through a nine-step process, this article got me thinking about how we can be more mindful of what we say to children and others. Mr. Rogers continued to educate himself and get help from experts. He was open to the input and perspectives of others so that he could reach children more effectively.

In the information age we live in, it would be easy to set a goal of reading one online article per week about communicating with children, or parenting teens, or raising stepchildren. My challenge to you is to pick an area where you want to improve and then set a phone reminder to pop up weekly to remind you to read your article. (I just set my reminder to read an article a week about helping reluctant readers.)

Do you have an area on which you plan to focus?