About The Details

If you followed on from yesterday’s blog, regarding the child’s toy and based on the information provided, there are hundreds of options available to you from the communication methods given. The use of the word ‘arms’ in the child’s description, does not indicate humanoid alternatives as the only option. A child seldom refers to an animals limbs, as legs, but more often as arms, so it may still have been an animal the child was describing. So any clearer on the toy? And yellow? While there are a wide range of colours that are yellow. Generally children are fairly honest when it comes to colour. So you can trust the yellow as being yellow. In fact ask a child to describe a tree, and they first word many throw up is ‘Green’. Let’s face it, most trees are green at some point. The ‘fuzzy’ on top? Furry? Hairy? Coarse fluff? The choices for this are far less clear. Even ‘squishy’? What can that be? Does it mean water-logged? Easily squashed? Understanding adjectives from a child's viewpoint, and understanding the child's limited vocabulary, can add enormous variations to interpreting their answers and information.

So this effort to communicate with a child at the child’s pace, added to the time issue, makes communicating effectively with children, exceptionally difficult. Therefore, it is easier to rush the child’s response, and not to ‘listen’ completely to it. This can, and does lead to misunderstandings and can seriously jeopardise a child's confidence in communication. It can be that simple. Many years ago I used to work with puppets, both marionettes and hand puppets. I used to runs workshops and training skills events about making and operating puppets. The reason I bring this up was to do with communication. After many shows and workshops I was asked to do a workshop with a group of profoundly deaf children (yes, they were deaf, not hearing impaired, and they knew it). Not a problem I thought. I understood there would be assistance from the children’s teachers and aides.

The children watched the revised show I presented (cutting much of the dialogue and add libs I used to do naturally) The translator worked very hard presenting the lines of the different characters. Particularly as I did not travel with a hard copy version, with the script in my head, having been learnt prior to touring. I had not thought this would be necessary. I was not touring internationally with the show and it was in an English speaking country (whoops, there I go, politically incorrect again…) In a country where English was the dominant’ language (seriously, doesn’t the politically correct version, even sound more political?) The children laughed at the various antics of the characters, the visible interaction, laughing at the obvious comedy lines the translator signed for them. But there was a limit. In some parts the children did not have the necessary vocabulary to understand some of the story, some of the signs they did not get. But between the actions and the visuals and the ‘gist’ of the story the performance went well. Then came the workshop with the children.

(Continued tomorrow)