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Reflection About Communication With Children

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In my life, I have always felt that I was exceptional at communicating with others. I found it very easy to understand what people were trying to convey and express while also being able to share my thoughts with them in a clear and concise manner. This led to me having a lot of success in building relationships with people at work and in my social life; but what about with children? It never occurred to me that I would need to take a completely different approach with children and I had to learn those skills quickly when I was asked to step up as the head coach for my son’s youth football team. Although it was challenging, coaching youth football afforded me the opportunity to learn how to communicate with children more effectively. Initially, I tried to communicate with the children in the same manner that I do with everyone else, but I quickly learned how inefficient that approach was. The first lesson I learned was to explain every detail to the players, rather than assume they had a base knowledge of the subject. On our team, we had players with a wide variety of experience in playing football: players in their first year of playing to players that had been playing for as many as four years. In my first couple of practices not all of the kids understood what I was saying to them and what they needed to do to meet my expectations. I would say things like “hit the hole” and “secure the ball” without explaining what that meant. Only the kids with prior experience playing

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