Communication breakdown can be a pain for children

It’s easy to allow children to stumble in the development of their language skills, but if we make the effort, we can change the balance of power and set them up for life
7th April 2017, 1:00am
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Communication breakdown can be a pain for children

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/communication-breakdown-can-be-pain-children

I have lost count of the number of times I have attempted to teach a child who has told me their belly hurts. As a primary teacher, it was usually the case that they were actually telling me they were hungry. But interpreting a child’s description of pain is notoriously difficult. They could have been telling me that they had a cough, a rumbling appendix or even constipation, but were frightened of going to the toilet.

Deciphering what a child really means when they come to tell you all manner of important pronouncements is a challenge to us all. Often with young children and those with communication difficulties and/or challenges, we rely on a whole host of signs to help us get to the bottom of what it is they are trying to say. Facial expression, tone of voice, body language and gesture, even the direction of their gaze, can work together to tell us what is happening.

Sometimes children can be so good at making themselves understood that it is startlingly easy to let them get away with a “me go toilet” and a pained expression rather than a grammatically correct request. In our anxiety to ensure that there are no unexpected messes, we overlook the need to model correct English or insist on it next time.

A ‘deeper’ difficulty with language

Because we know our children well, because we are attuned to them, it is easy to miss the morphological errors that indicate a deeper difficulty with language, rather than the effects of youth or having English as an additional language. We allow “thingy” to stand in place of all manner of nouns because we think we understand what they are trying to say. A hearing problem, or even dyslexia, can go undetected for years.

When we give children the means to communicate, we change the balance of power

Don’t leave them at this early stage of language development. Aside from the relief of finding out that the unsettled child is actually afraid or anxious, or that the bellyache means that a visit to the toilet or doctor is necessary, when we give children the means to communicate, we change the balance of power.

We give that child, and the adult they will become, the means to leave their childhood behind. For them, as well as making the future brighter - a place where they can get a job, find a partner, tell the doctor what is wrong when they don’t feel well and do all the things we adults take for granted - we also make it safer.


Nancy Gedge is a consultant teacher for the Driver Youth Trust, which works with schools and teachers on SEND. She is the Tes SEND specialist and author of Inclusion for Primary School Teachers. She tweets @nancygedge

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