Conversations with Your Child: How to Talk with Your Child at Every Age and Form Lifelong Bonds

By J. Lambroschino

J. Lambroschino offers you an inviting, informative, and clear how-to manual to parent a child of any age. From infancy to young adulthood, children learn to connect through talking. It starts with sounds, like crying. Your infant follows your eyes and lips as you speak and copies what you do. With amazement, you perceive the child's first words

• Language: English
• Publisher: Justine Lambroschino LICSW
• Release date: Jun 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986211619

Book preview

Introduction

The Gift, Your Presence:

Listening, Talking, Connecting

"Making the decision to have a child – it's momentous.

It is to decide forever to have your heart go

walking around outside your body."

—Elizabeth Stone

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efore parents become parents, they reflect on how their life will be once their child arrives. Some imagine a precious cherub climbing up on their laps and begging for a story. Others picture their child growing up to be a scholar, or a singer, or a star on the playing fields. All imagined family scenes include love and connection.

As the family evolves, the foundation for connection is communication. Home is a child’s first world. It is where children form skills to navigate life. Learning to communicate in the home is the beginning of learning to communicate with the world. The key to successful parenting is engaging in regular ongoing conversations with your children, during each stage of their life. As parents and children listen to each other and make a true connection, the potential for growth is limitless.

My hope is that if you are a parent choosing to read this book, you are seeking to create a home where living is not a guessing game or a struggle. Parenting can be accomplished in ways that do not leave parents exhausted, children unacknowledged, and home an unhappy place. Instead, parenting can be a joyful activity that continues to connect parent and child, heart to heart, throughout their lifetime together.

Because of the busyness of daily living, parents often find themselves overwhelmed. As a result, they may fail to carve out talking time with their child, losing out on the joy of witnessing their child’s development. They may be successful in chatting superficially but not in hearing the important issues in their child’s life. Conversations may become a one-way outburst of sharp demands from parent to child such as: clean up your room, finish your homework, put away that phone. Because the child is not being heard, they may give up, and by the time they reach their teen years, decide to tune out their parents and go it alone.

If you feel as if you are not communicating successfully with your child now, it can improve by using this book as a guide. Based on observations and my experience as a family therapist, conversations help to make closer relationships. It is also grounded in lessons I learned in my own childhood, as well as in my job as a mother and a grandmother.

Please note: throughout the book I refer to parents and families. Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a parent as one who begets or brings forth offspring or a person who brings up and cares for another; these are both noun definitions. As a verb, the definition of parent is: to be or act as the parent of a child/children. The state of being a parent and functioning as a parent had traditionally been a two-parent family where the dad is a male and the mom is the female, but that model has changed. Now 16% of American children live in blended families which may consist of multiple combinations of adults and children including two moms, two dads, friends, grandparents, and additional significant others. Today, 32% of children live in single parent homes. About 65% of children live in one parent homes.¹

In this book, I focus on traditional parenting which has to do with a sense of stability. Loving and guiding a child through life is a privilege. Being present for your child is a steadfast commitment in traditional parenting.

Images of a traditional family are two adults who have chosen to raise their children intentionally according to their experience, beliefs, and value system. The parents chose to have children and believe it is their responsibility to raise their children with loving guidance that puts the best circumstance and outcome for the child first.

With traditional parenting, there is family cohesiveness, honesty, respect for all people, education, manners, hard work, healthy habits, a value system to follow, and parents who are responsive and available.

Each family creates its unique traditions by using or rejecting the values from their own childhood, religious teachings, research, life experience, and personal preferences. The special traditions of each family can be examined for additions and enhancement by the family as it evolves.

No matter where you fall in the spectrum of parenting, it is my hope that you can benefit from the information provided here.

Chapter 1

Complex Dynamics: Building the First Relationship through Time and Attention

"To be a parent… It requires commitment,

and a capacity to accept inconvenience and change."

—Unknown

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arenting a child is a serious long-term commitment to another human being and therefore, it is a both frightening and exciting experience. Becoming a parent requires a major adjustment in thinking and lifestyle. Parents provide a child’s first experience in relating to others, preparing them for all relationships that follow. Mom and Dad give their time and effort to help their child be a functional person and to create a relationship of mutual love and respect. Children require and are nourished by the care of their parents; parents require and are nourished by the opportunity to raise their child.

While talking with parents of this generation through the years, I have sensed a deep-seated lack of confidence. These parents are coping with a culture overstimulated by clever marketing that suggests it is not only their right to have everything offered in the marketplace, but also their duty to be consumers to drive the economy. This is a concept often repeated on television shows designed to sell products sending the message that parents must give more than the previous generation.

A child’s love for its parents is not related to material possessions. It is instinctual. Babies are born totally dependent beings; those who care for them, usually the parents, are adored by children from birth. As children grow, they are motivated and energized by their parents’ love and attention. The goal of this parenting style is based in relationships of love and trust between parent and child that provides consistent communication in all situations.

Here are some basic skills that can help build that first relationship with your child. These include:

Acknowledgment: developing your children’s self-concept

Knowledge and skills: making home a place to learn

Positive emotions: being known

Four kinds of conversation: understanding the differences

First steps: starting the conversation

Acknowledgment:

developing your children’s self-concept

Children first learn about themselves through their parents’ acknowledgment. From this recognition, they develop their self-concept by believing, I am who these caregivers say I am. They learn by observing how their parents respond to them, including not only choice of words, but also vocal tones and facial expressions. Children watch and display the behavior of their parents, taking in emotional cues.

In the home, parents spend time with their children, talk with them, know them, and these children begin to know themselves. Parents say their name(s), admire their features, and praise their growth, learning, and accomplishments, from taking a first step, to eating with a spoon and learning to ride a bike. The home becomes a safe oasis for working out situations and for creating a warm, interactive family life, one that brings stability, trust, and love. The relationship grows from a place of inequality to equality as the child develops from helpless dependence as an infant to powerful independence as an adult.

When acknowledgment is lacking, children can become insecure. Children who receive little or no feedback from the parent are left with an inner emptiness. They may ask, Who am I? and they might conclude, I am nothing, or I don’t know myself because no one tells me anything about me. Or when acknowledgement is distant or unclear, they will assume, Something might be wrong with me.

These feelings, resulting from unintended neglect, can lead to a child’s negative self-image as they strive to create an identity and find their footing in a lonely world. It is important to recognize children as individual people with their own identities and lives.

Making an ongoing commitment to affirming dialogue with your child can help build the family relationship, serve as an example for his learning to converse beyond the family setting, and help him expand his ability to make future relationships. In fact, the word conversation comes from the Old French word of the same spelling, meaning manner of conducting oneself in the world.

Knowledge and skills: making home a place to learn

The job of the parent is complex and always changing as the child grows; as a result, good parents may experience doubt and confusion. They are exposed to television shows that portray different styles of parenting. Then there are experts offering advice and the media suggesting what is in and hip. At the same time, parents must work to keep children safe from worldly temptations and growing incidences of abduction and molestation.

The fundamental physical needs of the child must be met for many years, and many additional living skills must be taught. For example, children need to learn how to interact with others, use language, follow basic manners, respect healthy boundaries around oneself and others, accept no for an answer, share, and understand what is a wrong thing to do, and why.

One or both parents orchestrate this learning, using the daily situations in the home as the learning site and daily events to provide opportunities for experiencing multi-level learning. The levels include:

1.      Basic knowledge and skills such as the names of objects in the house

2.      Emotional skills, such as coping with the loss of a pet or grandparent and of managing conflict with parents or siblings.

3.      Social skills and manners, such as how to greet a guest and adapt to schedules for bedtime, school attendance, and parents’ work.

As adults, parents interpret the happenings and teach their children. Children learn by observation and words; it is good to invest in an old-fashioned dictionary and use it for conversations about words.

Positive emotions: being known

Positive emotions are created in the home by parents making conscious decisions and focused efforts to create them through praising, encouraging, and noticing. The most important part of traditional parenting is knowing your children: their age, grade, friends, interests, struggles, and worries. Then the parents know what the child is doing and interacts in their lives with time and attention. If a child is having a difficult time with algebra, praising them for using extra help and time to pass a test is valid. Many children want to attempt new things but are timid; encouragement to try a new skill from the parents, if they know about it, helps them take the risk. Nothing pleases children more than a parent noticing a small detail like new shoes, a haircut, or a kindness to a younger sibling. Time and attention are a form of love and it uplifts children’s self-esteem. I am suggesting what is often referred to as quality time, and that quality time is spent being present in your children’s lives and in conversation, talking together and celebrating the events of daily life.

Four kinds of conversation:

understanding the differences

We have different types of conversations with our children. To communicate most effectively with your children, it’s important for both the parents and children to know the different types of conversations and the purpose of each one. That’s why I’m sharing the following four types with you: command conversation, correction conversation, catch-up conversation, and the living conversation.

A command conversation features giving instructions to a child, such as when the parent or parents are not home or are unavailable for some reason. It promotes independence and establishes trust between the parent and children. Voice tone, body language of the parent, and making the conversation formal gives weight to the seriousness of the conversation. Typically, the age at which a parent decides the child can be left alone in the house is between 11 and 15. Parents lay out the general house rules for when they’re not at home, for example: no one is to be let into the house and homework must be finished before turning on devices, Facebook, Snapchat, or texting friends.

If younger siblings are being looked after, instructions are given for their bedtime, snacks, and the amount of video games allowed. Make sure all necessary phone numbers are written out on a posted bulletin board and in entered into cell phones, including the location of where the parents will be. Also, parents need to define what would qualify as an emergency, such as a fire, an intruder, a fight that cannot be resolved, anything a child may worry about. Here is where children learn to trust and feel safe.

Use a correction conversation when a child has breached family rules or values. It includes a structured, scheduled, well-defined process for addressing the event, the way all participants understand the happenings, possible explanations of actions, and time intervals to thoughtfully decide consequences and interpretation of events. This conversion helps the child understand why they made a wrong choice. This conversation is more intimate and loving with a serious value component. Correction is necessary, but handled with sensitivity and understanding, you can avoid harshness and judgement.

Many parents I have worked with express frustration that children don’t listen or pay attention to what they are told. I like to emphasize that repetition is a necessary skill for parents! It takes a long time for children to absorb instructions. Repetition is mandatory.

As we discuss stages of development in the upcoming pages, parents will become aware of how and when the ability for learning comes and changes over the years of the child’s growth and maturation. This is an area where parents may struggle with anger or frustration with their child, and having knowledge of the body/mind development can help.

In the catch-up conversation, parents and children stay abreast of busy schedules, appointments, rides to sports or lessons, project due dates, social events, and invitations. Most families have a large calendar where all these obligations are documented and checked often. These are perfect opportunities for catch-up conversations. It is more casual than the former two conversations, but it is very important and also provides safety. The catch-up conversation strengthens each individual family members’ autonomy and ability to take part in and manage life, an important skill!

The most important conversation of all is the living conversation. In these conversations the parent and child connection are established and nurtured. The conversation begins in the first days of an infant’s life, established by the calmly reassuring sound of the parent’s voice. As the child grows and the conversation develops, that sound will continue to create a sense of security.

You can discuss the gray areas of life and things your children might not be comfortable talking about in front of others. It could even involve their hopes and dreams and it provides you as a parent with a way to encourage them to be more confident. Living conversations set the stage for quality time between parent and child. Those moments of delight and humor weave together love, affection, and genuine caring. With a trusting foundation established, the child feels safe taking risks and sharing truthfully.

All conversations can have a foundation in the family values that the parents decide for the ethical and