No Interpersonal Communication

Hi Denise.

Could you please do an "objective" conversational response on how this person has done on their discussion on not communicating?

During this week, this person selected one hour of the day when they were with other people and they did not communicate to know one. During this hour, this person tried their best not to communicate verbally and they keep their nonverbal communication to a minimum. This person took note of the opportunities for communication they passed up, how it felt when they could not communicate, and how others reacted toward them. Once they got an initial reaction, if their behavior seems to be upsetting those around them, this person did give a brief explanation that they are conducting an exercise for a communications class, and then they went back to being non-communicative. In the discussion below, this person will share their experience and discuss what they noticed about their behavior and the behavior of others while they conducted this exercise

This is their discussion:

I had decided to experiment my challenge at work, inside a classroom with six three year olds. This was a dangerous challenge because if the children are not being constantly redirected, chaos would happen. On this particular morning, I had six children to work with which allowed for the experiment to be manageable. I had set out quite a few toys and manipulative to help keep the children entertained while I sat on the couch and observed.

As much as I tried to make this experiment work for an entire hour, it was impossible. First off, the children began arguing over what color of crayon to use on the white paper. Usually, they need a referee to help them through their issue. Instead of verbally communicating, I just took away the crayons and gave them one color to work with. I felt so bad and kind of mean because they just looked at me with confusion because I did not explain my actions. Next, another child walked in the door with her mother and instead of a warm greeting, I smiled at her and continued my experiment. Can you imagine dropping your child off at a children's center and the teacher be completely disengaged? I figured if I at least smiled at her, it would offset the behavior a little bit. Twenty minutes into the experiment, the children were hanging on my legs as I was sitting on the sofa.

At this point, they were trying to gain my attention. They were saying, "Teacher, teacher, teacher. Why are you not playing with us? Is it because you are sick? You don't feel good?" With me not giving them a response, I noticed that they were beginning to get sad and upset. The more I did not respond to them, the more they hung around me trying to get a reaction out of me.

It was about thirty minutes into the hour when I finally had to break the silence. The children started jumping onto the furniture, banging on the computer keyboard, and fighting with one another.

Because there is constant interpersonal communication between the children and me, the lack of personal directness became offensive. A lot of times, for three year olds, there is an action and reaction response of communication and when the reaction portion is nonexistent, the negative behaviors will soon follow. The looking-glass self metaphor is very effective in working with children of a young age. They are searching for approval from others and need the constant appraisal in order to validate themselves. When I do not speak to them, offer feedback, and ignore their efforts, I am telling them that they are not important without verbally communicating it and that is a very dangerous message to send them.