Foundations of human communication

Foundations of human communication

Let’s accept the following definition of communication: Every communication is a message between a sender and a receiver. Children and parents can be both senders (persons who want to communicate something) or receivers (persons who receive a message).

• You cannot not communicate. Even when we are silent and avoid eye contact with other persons we send a message: “Leave me alone, I want to be on my own!“ Moreover, babies and toddlers can and want to communicate with us. They do it in a nonverbal way and thus it is often more difficult to understand for their parents. Likewise, very young children try to express their feelings, needs and will. To ensure a successful and satisfying communication process with our children, it is important that we try hard to decode and understand their nonverbal communication efforts.
• There are symmetrical and complementary communicative situations. Symmetrical implies a communication between equal partners: friends, brothers and sisters or colleagues; complementary communication is based on unequal relationships, such as between teachers and students, employers and employees, parents and children. These relationships are defined by power structures whereby a person in a position of power may exert pressure over another person. Naturally, it is easier to communicate from a position of power, such as our parent-position. But care must be taken that we do not abuse this power as otherwise communication may yield poor results and with negative consequences for the relationship with our children. Children are always in a subordinate position when communicating with their parents. They cannot get out of it.
• The punctuation of the communicative process: The sender and the receiver structure the communication flow differently and thus interpret their own behavior during the communicative process as merely a reaction to the other’s behavior (every partner believes that the other one is the cause of a specific behavior). To punctuate a communication means to interpret an ongoing sequence of events by labeling one event as the cause and the subsequent event as the response (if one thing happens, something else always occurs).