Observing Communication

This week we were asked to observe communication between an adult and a young child.  While in Walmart waiting an extremely line check-out line, I decided to take this opportunity to complete this week’s observation assignment.  A mother and a child who was no more than three years old was ahead of me in the check-out line.  The mother seemed very agitated because the child keep taking items off of the rack near the check-out line and throwing them in the cart.  After constantly telling the child no, and taking the thrown items out of the cart, the child began to scream and told her mother, “I want my daddy”.  The mother tried reasoning with the child to no avail, as the child continue to throw items into the cart and continued to ignore her mother’s response of No.  When the mother finally reached the cashier and began taking her items out of the cart, the child began screaming and hitting her mother in the chest.  The mother tried to hold the child’s arms while attempting to unload her cart at the same time. After several minutes of watching this scene between the mother and child, I found myself feeling sorry for the mother as another women immediately behind her offered to hold the child while she unload her cart only to refuse her help and struggled to resist the swinging child hands while unloading her cart. 

Finally after paying the cashier and pushing the cart out the door.  The mother yells at the child saying, wait until your father hears about how you’ve behaved.

In this particular scene it was hard to determine who the parent was, and who the child was.  Because the child clearly was use too getting her way.  The mother showed no type of meaningful communication with the child other than saying “no, no, no, no” to the child.  Instead of trying to communicate to the child that it’s not nice to try to hit mommy, or maybe say to child “you wouldn’t like it if mommy hit you in the chest, would you?”  Maybe, if the mother took just a few moment prior to reaching the cashier to communicate to the child that what she is doing is not good and that good little girls don’t behave that way.  Instead she showed no emotions or any attempt to communicate with the child.  Children sometimes act out to receive attention from a parent who they feel is neglecting them.

Creating Affirming Environments

Helping children accept and honor differences can create good memories and support multicultural understanding.  We can never know exactly what someone else is feeling.  But we can continually support the growth of empathy by creating a culture of kindness.  As an early childhood professional I believe it is important for us to make a point to discuss diversity and feature the heritage of students in our classroom.  With that being said, I would invite family members to come into the classroom and share their customs and traditions.  For example maybe have a Native American parent come in talk to the children about their customs from their culture and have the children help make table top Indian teepees or make pottery, while explaining to the children how a person’s culture and background can teach honor and respect for their history.  I would have a library filled with books that illustrate diversity where the children can read and explore the different parts of the world.  I would also have an arts and craft area where the children would be encourage to create collages or pictures that represent something from their culture or the different countries around the world as we explore diversity.

During story time instead of always reading a book to the children, I would have the children tell the class stories that were told to them by their grandparents, which are usually stories passed on from generation to generation. The children learned about courage and determination, and reflect on valuable lessons about tolerance, integrity, and generosity.

Children are curious and notice the difference in others, they ask questions so I believe talking openly with children about cultural, racial, and language differences is very important in creating an anti-bias learning environment.

For the infants and toddlers, I would have parents to bring in songs and lullabies in their home language and play these at nap or quiet time.  I would also invite parents to read stories in other languages and tell the children the meaning in English.

I’d also like to have an area that displays different careers, talents and hobbies that represent the many different cultures and backgrounds and possible invite parents and people from the community that can come in and represent the different careers.