One Habit to Avoid for Better Communication
Welcome again to our new subscribers out there.
I’m slowly but surely answering the emails that many of you have requested some help with…
Today’s topic…
How Avoiding this one little habit will help improve your child’s social and communication skills
Often children with autism can be very passive communicators and may only talk when they are spoken to or when they are very motivated to communicate something.
Sometimes when I’m carrying out assessments, parents tell me that their child is capable of stringing a few words together into a sentence, yet often the child will not utter a single word for the entire session which is very sad! This is because the child does not know how to share their wonderful thoughts with others yet.
One way that you can dramatically improve your child’s ability to actively share their thoughts and ideas with you is by reducing the amount of questions that you ask them. Sounds simple I know. But sometimes we have such a natural desire to constantly ask our child questions because we know that they understand many things and we want to try and ’squeeze’ as much information out of them as possible!
Here are 3 reasons why you should avoid doing this…
- It constantly puts your child into a passive position in the interaction, and they get used to the pattern of just responding all the time, rather than initiating.
- It incorrectly teaches them about how we use our language. They begin to believe that they should ask many questions of others during a conversation. But in reality, we spend the majority of our interaction with others simply ’sharing’ our ideas such as what we will be doing on the weekend and what we have been up to over the past week. Constantly asking someone question after question is typically not an appropriate way to interact.
- Often you might ask your child questions simply to test them… but this is not actually the purpose of a question. Generally, the reason we ask a question is to get an answer to something that we do not know (e.g: What would you like for dinner? What is the matter?). Can you imagine how awful it would be to constantly be asked questions to test your knowledge? It would be enough to turn your child off interacting with you because it’s simply no fun!
When communicating with your child you must remember…
- to keep questioning to a minimum and only ask them a question when you genuinely want to know the answer.
- to ‘model’ the behaviours that you would like them to improve. For example, if you would like your child to use their language to share more of their thoughts, then you simply need to do more commenting and sharing of your thoughts.
For example
- If you are looking at a book with a picture of a duck, instead of pointing to the duck and asking your child “What’s that?“, model what you would like them to say e.g. “Quack, quack” or “The duck is silly” (depending on your child’s level of comprehension).
- Or instead of saying “Why is the girl sad?” you could just say “Oh no the girl fell off her bike“.
- Or instead of asking your child “What did you do at school today?” (which most kids hate!) share something that you think would be funny or interesting to them about what you did in your day.
- Finally, remember that your child’s desire to listen to language can be poor at times, so it’s important that you make your language fun so that your child becomes very motivated to listen to you.
For more training in this necessary area of development you will find my audio HOW TO HELP YOUR CHILD LISTEN AND LEARN very beneficial.
Click here to take a closer look at this.
Till next time, stay well and wishing all Mum’s out there a very happy Mother’s Day over the weekend 
Have a great day.
Monique Simpson
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Hi Monique,
My son Yusuf just pointing if he needs something. He only say the specific words like ‘milk’ when he wants to drink and ‘bath’ or ‘water’ when he wants to take bath and play water. He will pull my hand if he wants something to turn on the computer, gameboy,etc. He able to help me take a new dryper for his little sister or when I say ‘pls put your bottle on the table’ – then he will do it. So unlikely to get him saying somethings, but actually he can say the word, remember the sing song – I hope and still helping him to do more.
Happy mothers day to you too!
Sorry, I miss to fill the name for the fisrt comment.
Statistically males use much less words than their female counterparts. It is interesting that most children with autism are MALES. So, to begin with in their nature is less of an innate drive to share, communicate…especially feelings! Those of us who are married know this too well. Even with my husband I have learned that created the right environment can really motivate him to want to share. It’s the same with my son with autism. You really hit the nail on the head Monique! I didn’t realize that I was doing something right, so thanks for the confirmation! The great point Monique shared with us is the importance of modeling for them what we want from them. We may not think that a child with autism is concerned about how we think or feel about something, but modeling good communication skills is so key! With my boys (I have five)from time to time I will have a tea party. We practice good communication skills during these quality times. They learn to wait and listen to others and each gets a chance to share. My son with autism joins us. Another thing that we do is have dates. Each of my boys gets to go out with mommy alone for a date. We focus on manners and good conversation skills during these special times. My husband has implemented *daddy talks* in the mornings. I think it’s crucial that dads also reach out socially to the children, especially those with autism.
For a long time we found ourselves constantly asking our son question after question, not any more and i think he is happier for that reason. Even though he is non-verbal at the moment he loves listening, each day i take some time with him and i tell him all about my day, and what we will be doing for the rest of the day, and he likes that. Its a great way to not only communicate but to connect with your child. He may not actually care about what i am saying i think he is just happy that there isnt any expectation on his part, just to listen.
Happy mothers day!!!!
Thanks for the great advice Monique.
We too are guilty of asking too many questions of our daughter to get her to respond and communicate with us. As a sample, questions like “How was school today?”, “What did you do at lunchtime?”, “Who did you play with?” just to attempt to find out something about her day directly from the ssource herself.
As you can imagine, we often don’t get the type of response we are after even though we know she’s capable of providing it.
When left to her own devices (i.e. when we’re not pushing her for the information), she stop what she’s doing, wanders over to one of us and relays thoughts, events, actions, recollections of moments throughout the day. Sentences like “Painting with today” and “Played outside at lunchtime with ” and it fills us with complete joy to hear it!
From now on, the trivial questions stop and the modelling commences! I can’t wait to get home and tell her what I did on my lunch break today instead!
We greatly appreciate the tips – keep them coming!
Hi,
Thanks for your advice. We will surely change our ways of communicating with our son. Its an extremely useful post.
Hi Monique,
Thanx for this amazing piece of advice…this was something that did not occur to me.well,i never bombarded him with questions ,but whenever i did,it was to teach him why?…because.but will definitely try modelling my experiences to him…thanks a ton.
Happy mothers day to u too!
Hi Monique
I have been receiving your free advice via email and reading your blogs, I tell you I’ve read them all and found them very informative, interesting and I’ve learned so much. Your concept of understanding your child makes a lot of sense.
This topic has really hit home, like your other readers, we have been making the same mistakes, we are always bombarding our son with questions in the quest to get some interaction.
This is quite possibly why my son does not respond to his speech therapist who for 30 minutes per week asks him repetitively ‘whats that?’ ‘where is?’ my son responds by staring at her for 15 minutes and tantrums for the next 15 minutes. So I pay $60 for 30 minutes and achieved nothing. He has been with her for 18 mths without really much progress.
So my husband and I have carried on this way of interacting with him, but now I can’t wait to try out your advice and talk to him instead of putting him under pressure to perform all the time.
Keep up the great work and keep them coming.
Thank you