Professional relationships with children Essay

Describe how to establish respectful, professional relationships with adults. The support which you will need to give other adults will be on several levels which can be remembered with the acronym PIPE. Practical: you may be working with others who are unfamiliar with the classroom or school surroundings who need help or advice finding equipment or resources. Informative: you may need to give support to people who may not have information about a particular situation, or you may be asked to prepare or write reports on specific students. Professional: you may need to support or help others with things such as planning or you may be asked if others can observe you while working with students. Emotional: it is important to support others through day-to-day events by keeping a sense of humour. The main elements to building relationships with children and adults in any situation are if others are comfortable in your company as they will be more likely to communicate effectively. If people don’t get along or feel uneasy around each other they tend to avoid each other whenever possible and so relationships don’t develop. Positive relationships don’t happen by chance they need to be thought about and ways to develop them need to be considered. The importance of adult relationships as role models for Children and Young People. When working as a professional adult with children and young people you need to remember that you should be a positive role model for the students. This means you have to show them how to relate to and communicate with others at all times through your interactions and relationships with other adults and students, it is also important that they see you behaving professionally and appropriately while in school. You build relationships with other people in school on a daily basis in numerous ways. Children and young people will always respond to positive communication and relationships from adults, this will help them want to be in school and learn more. In some cases parents  may not always agree with the school’s ethos, this shouldn’t be seen as a negative thing, this should be seen as an opportunity for the school and parents to talk and discuss what they believe is est for the student/s. Task 2 – Know how to communicate with children, young people and adults. How communication with children and young people differs across different age ranges and stages of development. Communication can be broken down into 4 different sub categories: Verbal, non-verbal, formal and informal. Depending on age children and young people will require different levels of attention when communicating. Younger children may need more reassurance especially if they have only just started school, which may result in them need more physical contact. As children grow up and become more mature they may need more help when talking through issues or reflecting on their thoughts. You need to remember to adapt vocabulary used and consider repeating what you have said when speaking with younger children to make sure they understand what you have talked about. You need to act more sensitively towards children who have communication difficulties, such as partial hearing, as they will need to take their time and feel comfortable when speaking. Some children may not be nervous when speaking so you will need to change the way in which you communicate to make sure that it suits their individual needs. If they have a speech disorder like a stammer or tourettes which can make it difficult for them, you need to allow them to take their time and not rush them. It is also important to try and not fill in words for them or guess what they are trying to say as this could add to their nervousness and may make their speech disorder worse or make them lose confidence in themselves. Additional training is a good thing to consider to help you be able to communicate effectively with the students. In some cases when children have special educational needs you may have to have additional equipment in order to communicate with each other such as hearing aids and microphones. The main differences between communicating with adults and communicating with children and young people. There can be many similarities when communicating with adults, children and young people, such as always remembering to maintain eye contact, responding to what they have said and treating them with respect. However when communicating with children and young people you also need to think about the relationship with their parent/carer and what that means in a school context. No matter how well you get on with the person you must always remember that they need to see you in a professional way and that your relationship with them will always need to be that way when in school. Whenever you communicate with children and young people you need to make sure your very clear in what you say. They rely on teachers to communicate clearly to them what is expected of them, so that they can communicate well for themselves. You should not use over complicated language which could confuse them or long lists of instructions which can make things difficult for them to grasp. As adults, you need to show children and young people how to get along and communicate with each other positively. You also need to show behaviour that you expect from them. If you can show the students that you value and respect others around you they are more likely to show the same behaviour towards adults and other students. Children copy the adult behaviour around them from an early age regardless of if its positive or negative behaviour being exhibited. By showing respect for each other when communicating with adults or children this will help young children learn and grow up with positive communication skills.