Communicating
Communicating involves much more than understanding language, speaking, reading, and writing—it is the skill of determining what one wants to communicate and realizing how our communications will be understood by others.
Communicating well involves executive functions of the brain—for example, reflecting upon the goal of what we want to communicate and inhibiting our point of view so that we can understand the viewpoints of others.
These are not simple tasks, as workplace research conducted by Families and Work Institute reveals. When we surveyed a nationally representative group of employers, asking them to name the gaps in skills they found among new entrants to the workforce, by far the largest proportion cited spoken and written communication skills.
The following articles are about Communicating:
The Story’s the Thing
May 07, 2010
My mother was and still is an inveterate teller of tall tales, especially in conversation with children. She delights in the wide-eyed fascination of children with all things fantastic, and decided very early in her career as a mother that it was part of her job to keep the eyes of her own children and those of any children who accidentally wandered into range of hearing as wide as possible.
Accordingly, I grew up in a home in which it seemed entirely possible that there were sea creatures living in the plumbing and gnomes hiding in the closets. There were fairies and elves and imps and other magical creatures in the woods behind our house, and they lived in harmony with the animals there – the squirrels and birds that I saw every day, and the raccoons and skunks that I saw less often but knew well from the tracks in our backyard, tracks that my mother was very careful to point out and explain as evidence of the late-night forest creature moondances that occurred a few times each month. I knew that the forest creatures maintained harmony in their community through the frequent town-hall meetings that they held in a mossy stump – I knew this because my mother showed me exactly where they all sat during these meetings and held up various broken twigs and branches (used as benches) as evidence. I knew that I should never, ever pick toadstools, because if I did so I would be destroying the shelter of the littlest creatures of the forest.
I also knew that my sister and I came from a cabbage patch, and that if we unscrewed our bellybuttons, our bums would fall off. When I got old enough to start doubting these tales, I would confront my mother upon each telling: are you telling me a story?
Of course I am, my darling, she'd reply. But that doesn't mean that I'm not telling you the truth.
read moreAs baby steps become giant leaps
May 03, 2010
By Julie Marsh
My younger daughter lost her first tooth last week.
This is the same daughter who will start kindergarten in August, who’s been riding a bike without training wheels since Thanksgiving, who proudly identifies sight words and spends hours painstakingly creating works of art with any craft supplies she can find. The same daughter who was a newborn when we moved to Colorado, who screamed instead of speaking for her first three years, who consistently hit developmental milestones late and drove me to bury my copies of “What to Expect…” on the basement bookshelves.
read moreWhy I Am Concerned About Learning
April 16, 2010
by Ellen Galinsky
It’s Toddlers on the Loose! The Challenging Transition from Baby to Toddler
April 15, 2010
by Morra Aarons Mele
The leap to toddlerhood is both thrilling and upsetting for a parent. Your baby clearly has a mind of his own: you can see the wheels turning in his head 24-7. Little babies are cute but their repertoire is limited. But for a toddler, each day brings something new to learn.
As a young parent working with Ellen Galinsky on Mind in the Making, I sometimes take the life skills to heart a little too much.
For instance, I breathlessly reported to Ellen that my 14 month old was clearly making connections: when he heard a phone ring, or even the sound of my text message chiming, he put his hand to his ear to mimic the phone. I was so proud of my clearly brilliant son and his ability to make rather abstract connections for one his age: connecting the bell of an incoming text message with talking on the phone. Literally the same day I bragged to Ellen, my husband called to tell me our son had an ear infection and that’s why he was touching his ear!! The mommy guilt I felt was astounding.
But mostly, using the skills in Mind in the Making gives me more joy and patience as a mom. It’s almost as if I have a new language with which to interpret my son’s needs.
read moreCrawling Over a Cliff?
March 16, 2010
By Amy McCampbell
Last year, the Sears Tower (or, as it’s known by its new name, the Willis Tower) unveiled a glass balcony on its 103rd floor. Visitors get to creep about four feet out from the building…and 1,353 feet high above the city of Chicago.
Some of us on the Mind in the Making team were talking about and just how much it reminded us of an experiment we filmed, UC Berkeley Professor Joe Campos’ Visual Cliff. In it, a baby is placed on a large box that’s covered by a piece of clear plexi-glass. Halfway across, there’s what looks like a drop, though it’s clearly safe to cross thanks to the sturdy platform. On the opposite side of the platform is the baby’s mom, either making a smiling face (signaling to the baby that it’s okay to cross), or a fearful face (which tells the baby to stay put).
You can watch the experiment here.
The experiment is so powerful… you can really see the babies reading their parents to try to figure out what to do.
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