I wonder if you have memories as a young child of being instructed to follow particular social expectations by the adults in your life. This would include things like saying ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and ‘I’m sorry’ to family friends, relatives and complete strangers – all while giving eye contact. I’m sure you would have felt uncomfortable sometimes. This expectation and pressure for young children can be awkward for all parties involved.
We now understand much more about this performance pressure and young children’s speech, language and cognitive development. For many children, this pressure can feel very stressful and reinforces the idea that language is something to perform rather than to understand and engage in more naturally.
We know that children learn a great deal through repetition, connection and meaningful contexts, as well as through modelling what they see and hear. Neural pathways for connection are built through warm and responsive interactions with supportive and caring adults. Requiring young children to say ‘hello’, ‘thank you’ or ‘sorry’ pushes the child into a performance mode. This can be very problematic for children with developing speech, speech or language delays, children who are slow to warm up and children who have English as a second language. This performance pressure can trigger stress, making it harder to access the language or skills they have.
There are also many ways of communicating nonverbally. Things like waving through a window, a smile at arrival, a high five acknowledging a connection, apologising with an action like offering a tissue or a hug, helping to fix what was knocked over, or drawing a picture – these are all meaningful ways that children communicate a ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ or ‘sorry’.
Children will learn from what they see us do, so our job as supportive adults is to model meaningful language into everyday interactions and situations. It is developmentally appropriate as pre-school children learn empathy, abstract thinking and emotional regulation. They see that words and actions have a purpose. Imitation, repetition and real experiences influence them every day.
Wendy Seidler
ELC Director – Kew campus
