Comments on: Using small talk, chat, conversation and discussion to help children and adults become better communicators: with a helping hand from D.H. Lawrence and Britta and Shirley from Community /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/ Supporting children's language, communication and learning Tue, 23 Sep 2014 13:27:30 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.3 By: Michael Jones /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4498 Tue, 16 Jul 2013 09:06:05 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4498 Hi Tim and Carol
I think you are onto something here. The ability to talk to other children/your peers as you get older, is vital for social development and happiness. How can we encourage that early on?
Michael

]]> By: Tim Dunkerley /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4497 Tue, 16 Jul 2013 07:30:36 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4497 I agree Carol. In my experience of children with significant language delay or processing difficulties I have long regarded play/interaction with peers rather than the enormous amount of adults that constellation around these children as a significant developmental step along the road.It’s often really hard and the small signs of it happening are difficult to spot and even harder to facilitate because you(as one of those adults) tend to be there in the act of facilitating. It’s a skill to be able to back off,let go or do less rather than more.it doesn’t look good when observed often as it doesn’t look like one of those Dfe example videos where what I call “over teaching” tends to be popular.
Interestingly spell check tried to write Dfe as DDR does it know something we don’t?
Tim

]]> By: Michael Jones /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4459 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 14:19:10 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4459 Hi Maggie
Thank you for your very insightful and incisive comment, which has cleared my thinking about this. What you write makes total sense. Yes, we do have to be very quick to join in conversations; especially with more than one person, which will be the experience of all children in early years settings and school. If can take a lot of practice to get it right.
I’m glad you like my definitions. Of course you can use them, but they come from my step-daughter Dani, who helped clarify the difference between chat, conversation and discussion. She is an expert at all of these things!
Great to hear from you!
Michael

]]> By: Michael Jones /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4457 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 14:12:15 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4457 Thank you Judith
Hopefully everyone will grow up with special interests that are important to them; especially if they can use them to earn a living and connect with other people.It’s when they take over your life and you feel compelled to talk about these interests other people that it becomes a social problem. That’s the fine line between a special interest and an obsession.
Luckily we share a fascination for children’s learning!
Best wishes
Michael

]]> By: Judith Twani /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4454 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 13:44:44 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4454 Hi Michael, another thought provoking reflection. I sometimes despair with my own obsession with talking about Early Years and going really quiet when anyone talks about anything else!!!
I just love this celebration of different types of talk – thank you once again for highlighting the importance of tuning into the unique child.
Judith

]]> By: Maggie Johnson /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4447 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:03:30 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4447 Yes, difficulty reading social signals could be a significant factor in selective mutism – for children who have difficulty reading social signals. Equally, many children who work through their selective mutism (SM) go on to become excellent communicators – in both verbal and non-verbal modes, and I’m not sure it could be a factor for them? Indeed they will categorically tell you – ‘I knew exactly what I wanted to say and the right time to say it, but I couldn’t get the words out or get in quick enough’. I’ve always seen SM as having a lot in common with stammering in this respect. Indeed, if difficulty reading social cues was the primary reason for silence, it would rule out a diagnosis of SM, but I completely agree that children can struggle with social cues AND suffer from SM.

I love your breakdown of different styles of verbal interaction Michael, that will be so useful! OK to include it in the second edition of the Selective Mutism Resource Manual and reference you?!

]]> By: Michael Jones /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4438 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 07:56:44 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4438 Hi Tim
You have hit the nail on the head here, in so many ways.
I agree with you about the non verbal communication coming first. Sioban Boyce has written extensively about this, and her work has influenced me a lot. Recently I have been thinking that confusion about non verbal communication, particularly reading people’s faces, could be at the heart of difficulties like selective mutism.
My colleague Amy Eleftheriades has been working with teenagers with ASD and also with confusion about social skills and language.
I was going to do a post about album covers, and amazingly I was going to use Solid Air as an example, as it was my favourite album from when I discovered it in 74 to when I got fed up with John Martyn being drunk all the time at his gigs.
You have inspired me to write something in that vein.
The issue if social skills and belonging to a group is massive for all teenagers, but can also provide the possibility of exclusion for those who are not able to fit in, or who don’t want to fit in with the norms of the group(as marked out by clothes, music tastes, language, etc.) Nothing has changed since we were teenagers, except the styles.
I will look at this and post an article that I wrote a few years ago on this subject in relation to teenagers with high sensitivity.
Your double act with your wife sounds very effective, and is my experience every day!!
Thanks for your inspiration!
Michael

]]> By: Michael Jones /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4437 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 07:45:23 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4437 Hi Laura
Thank you for your kind comment and for sharing your great blog too!
Yes, I know the Susan Cain book very well, and was delighted to see that it was a bestseller in Waterstones and WH Smith. One of my posts early this year was about Susan Cain’s ideas about being an introvert.
Best wishes
Michael

]]> By: Laura Henry /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4429 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 05:02:50 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4429 Hi Michael

This is a great blog!

Have you come across Susan Cain’s book: Quiet: The Power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking?

In addition, I wrote a blog linked to your blog: http://laurachildcare.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/doing-nothing/

]]> By: Tim Dunkerley /2013/07/using-small-talk-chat-conversation-and-discussion-to-help-children-and-adults-become-better-communicators-with-a-helping-hand-from-d-h-lawrence-and-britta-and-shirley-from-community/#comment-4411 Mon, 15 Jul 2013 00:24:20 +0000 /?p=729#comment-4411 Lovely piece Michael. I will have you know that yours is the only internet webloggery that I ever respond to.

My area of interest is autism and one of the most commonly shared autistic characteristics (and remember when you’ve met one person with autism…you’ve met one person with autism) is the difficulty /inability to read facial expression.Which is the bit of social interaction that arguably comes before you’ve gauged whether you’ve been signalled to discuss your bloatedness or not.

Ros Blackburn, a well-known speaker on (her) autism) describes having to ” do social” as like having hot needles poked in her eyes…..She doesn’t like it much.

So shy children and adults may be just that, shy. But they may be people who have extreme difficulty actually processing non verbal social building blocks and avoid social interaction for that reason.
Banter is always a word that rings alarm bells for me: I think I probaly engage in it;to a range of known and unknown (usually) men. I tend to hear myself not being myself. It might be Russell Kane who does some standup material where he deconstructs banter and acutely observes men who self-consciously “enjoy a bit”…of banter, as using the concept of banter or “bant” as a smokescreen for boorishness (at best) or offense (at worst).
Re duffle coats and paperbacks. At Sussex Uni in 1975 it was a strategic album under the arm. ironically “Solid Air” by John Martyn was generally and unspokenly (remember we are talking young men here)agreed to mark you out as a sensitive non predatory type of chap. Ironic due to John Martyn’s penchant for (alleged) drink fuelled domestic violence. The advantage with an album is that there was no risk of being rumbled as a faux speed reader.

My wife and I will be in France soon and we have developed a team approach to social interaction; playing to our strengths.I usually start the ball rolling as I have a good accent and am less shy. When I inevitably get stuck my wife backs me up with the grammar and vocabulary which she A) has more of and B) can martial more readily as she is not in the anxious frontline social zone.
It all goes to pot when we move into Northern Spain, where not many people speak English and quite a lot prefer Basque to Spanish.It all goes very non verbal then and the social engagement that it engenders has it’s own lovely flavour.
Happy Hols
Tim

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