Your Child, Their Sport, Our Chat.
This week’s blog posting is from a special guest based in the UK, Gráinne Yeatman. Gráinne is a specialist speech and language therapist and dives into the world of communication with children. She talks about the power of sport and how children can use sport to grow and understand their emotions. She gives us adults tips on how we can support our children in communicating these emotions with us.
If this is an area where you may need support, Gráinne’s contact information is below!
Gráinne Yeatman
Specialist Speech and Language Therapist
Develop My Child Ltd.
Cell:
+44 7792 832 993
Email:
SLTGYEATMAN@GMAIL.COM
“The emotions we experience whether we are winning or losing are a big challenge for our little people.”
My name is Grainne Yeatman and for just over twenty years I’ve been a Speech and Language Therapist or a Pathologist as we are called in the US. I’d like to share two simple yet effective ways you can use sport as an opportunity to develop your child’s communication skills. It requires no special skills or equipment and can fit seamlessly into your everyday interaction, yet it develops priceless life skills.
As parents we realize the importance of taking the children to sports classes to learn the complex motor patterns and skills involved in playing sport. However what we take for granted is the complex skills required in communication and we assume that our children will pick these skills up automatically.
When we take our children to sports classes we get an opportunity to teach them some key communication skills. For example, good sportsmanship and coping with the complex emotions we experience when we play sport. The emotions we experience whether we are winning or losing are a big challenge for our little people.
Here are two ways that we can help our children:
1) Recognizing and labelling emotions
Teaching our children to recognize and label the emotions they feel is key to self regulation and building emotional resilience. Dealing with these huge and complex emotions can be tricky and our job is not to prevent our children from having complex emotions but to support them to deal with them.
From frustration, to nerves, to excitement, to coping with the mix of feelings when we win or lose, is a big thing. The first step to handling these emotions is recognizing and labelling them. Talking to children about how they are feeling, giving these feeling a name (as in excited / frustrated, not John or Mary) and identifying how that emotion feels in their body is important. Labeling those emotions and acknowledging they are hard to deal with, is our job. “Wow you did a great job I could see how nervous you were by the tension in your body and the way your fists were clenched but you did it even though it felt scary. I’m so proud of you.”
If we can’t recognize and label our emotions we can’t deal with them effectively and they get stuck in a big ball we are unable to work through. Often all negative emotions, disappointment, anxiety, fear, nervousness become interpreted as anger. Children can be put off sport because they don’t like the way it makes them feel and they don’t know how to process the feelings participating in sport evokes.
2) Developing the art of small talk
Taking the time to talk to our children in the car or when we are hanging around at sporting activities is also very valuable. Yes I know it’s hard to put your phone down and taking the opportunity to catch up on emails or finish the online grocery shop or just chill and browse social media is also a draw! But this time is precious.
We assume children learn the art of conversation without formal teaching however they can learn and refine these skills much faster if we spend time talking with them, teaching them and giving them an opportunity to practice skills of small talk is a good use of our time.
Making small talk, just those incidental, often brief conversations we have during the day is a really important life skill. If you can strike up a conversation with the people around you it helps to make you and them feel more at ease and comfortable in your company. (We’ve all sat next to someone in awkward silence and we know how uncomfortable that feels!) It’s also a foundation of developing friendships.
Small talk is invaluable wherever you go and whatever you do, from scouts to swim club, the playground, the work place, meeting the in-laws or going to tea (or in the US a BBQ) at your friend’s house because it helps to build relationships with those around us. And the real secret is that relationships are the key to everything.
So next time you take your child to soccer, baseball, football, put your phone down and ask them about their day. Take the time and make the effort to ask them about their day, their class, what the coach asked you to do, and why. How it made them feel when they were successful or when it went wrong. Even day to day, just the simple ask about the pottery they did in art class they told you about yesterday. Try explaining to them, when someone tells you something and you remember and take the time to ask them how it went the next time you see them, it shows them you care and they are important to you.
This is also an opportunity to talk about their emotions and yours, good and bad, acknowledge that sometimes emotions get too big for us, and let them know you’re there for them to help them handle them.
As a parent of young children myself, whether you work in the home or in a workplace, I know we are spending most of our time in “do” mode with an endless to-do-list, feeling the need to make productive use of every spare second, but give yourself permission to just “be” when you’re on the soccer run. Why?
Because the Speech and Language Pathologist said so!
