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Building Bridges through Words

by Laura Mickley
January/February 2014
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Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/building-bridges-through-words/5021516/

Words are powerful, influential, even transcendent. Our words can encourage growth and inspire development. The words we use with children and families can build strong relationships or erect barricades. New relationships tenuously rely upon our words. In order to be effective, we need to carefully consider the words we use and how we use them.

When Jodi Foster accepted an Oscar for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, she thanked her mother for telling her that “all of my finger paintings were ­Picassos.” Perhaps Jodi would still have achieved success had she been admonished to “stay inside the lines” or told “that doesn’t look like a cow,” but she was clearly thankful and cognizant of the power of positive words and motivation. In her acceptance speech she acknowledged her mother’s words in influencing her artistic motivation and development.

How do our words affect children’s development? Physical, social-emotional, cognitive, and language development are all affected. Making the connection between your words and language development might be most ­obvious; it’s clear that labeling objects fosters language development. But it doesn’t stop there. Helping children to identify and label emotions encourages language progress as well as social-­emotional development.

Social-Emotional Development

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