Some Tips Aimed at Improving Relationships and Communication With Young People

The following is a list of some ideas and general principles that can be applied when communicating with young people:

• All young people can learn, but not in the same way or at the same time.
• All young people can benefit from a caring adult taking the time to be helpful.
• All young people need to have positive experiences in school. Grades are not the only measure of success at school.
• All young people need to develop thinking skills, not just problem solving and remembering facts.

The basic rules of communication with young people can be summarized as follows:

1. Attend the speaker: - Give nonverbal clues you are listening, solicit continued input through verbal acknowledgement, and make contact. If you are doing other things while you are listening, then you are not really listening. This is the message you transmit to a person. Listening is the basis of good communication.
2. Paraphrase the speaker: - Report in your own words what you have heard from the speaker. This reduces the likelihood of misunderstanding and shows the person that you have been listening.
3. . Reflect the speaker’s feelings: - This is quite a difficult skill to master but really simple once the basic premise is understood. Success here requires you to be able to paraphrase content and then go to the next step by adding a feeling statement on the basis of what you have understood. I.e. If Mary says “I do not want to go home I hate my brother” a paraphrase would be “you hate your brother” If you want to turn this into a reflection of feeling statement add something like this “ When you talk about not wanting to go home because you hate your brother I get a real sense of fear”.
4. Summarise the conversation: - A brief summary of a conversation allows you to make sure that you have understood all the most relevant points being made by the young person. It is also another chance to eliminate misunderstandings.
5. In you role as a teacher, use self disclosure only for the benefit of the young person: - Self disclosure refers to talking about self, reporting personal experiences, sharing opinions and offering personal perceptions. In helping relationships with young people self disclosure should benefit the young person. I.e. if a young person tells you they are lonely you may say “when I went to school I was so lonely sometimes I would cry”.
6. Interpret behavior: - You must interpret or synthesize clues through personal filters. Then judgments can be made and opinions formed. Remember though to be careful do not confuse opinion with fact. This leads to conflict. But communication with young people requires you to gauge more than just the spoken word.
7. Probe sparingly: - Try to ask open ended questions with young people when probing. Avoid those types of questions that simply allow a yes or no answer. A question like “What happened to you today?” is likely to gain much more information than did you have a good day?”
8. Give constructive feedback: - The goal is not confrontation. You should try to give constructive feed back. Build on the positives do not just criticize. Do not give feedback in unsolicited circumstances unless it is your role to do so.