Image by engin akyurt from Pixabay
by Carie Moore
During the recent “epic” snow storm, I learned the true meaning of “coffee talk.” If you know me, you know a few of my favorite things are tractors (farming), coffee, and pigs. As I was making my latte at home, my very mechanically minded son reminded me how important it is to instill strong communication skills in our youth.
The machine was building up steam to push the espresso through and froth the milk, when my son said, “Mom, did you know that your coffee machine is basically a steam engine?”
Questions from my son usually catch me off guard but don’t really surprise me all that much. I think the same way most of the time about random things that are just regular and ordinary so I’m glad for the extra brain work when he asks something. As soon as he said it, I knew right away what he was thinking. To encourage his thought process and to verbally express what was going on in his mind, I didn’t just agree with him but instead said, “What do you mean buddy?” To which he said, “Well look at how you fill it with water, cap it off tight with a seal so nothing can escape, and then it slowly builds up pressure and instead of moving the wheels on a tractor, it uses that steam to push the water through your coffee and through the milk thingy to bubble up your milk.” He was exactly right.
I mentioned last week a phrase I recently took up in my vocabulary, “More is caught than taught.” This is exactly one of those moments and why we need to be attentive to what are children are “catching.” Our friends who run steam engines explained the process to him a couple years ago and he caught how it all worked but he also applied it to a situation that couldn’t be more different, yet entirely the same. Things we think won’t affect our children do, and usually in very different environments or circumstances and we can’t figure out why. Probably because it was caught and then later applied to something they saw that seemed the same, yet we have no idea because we didn’t ask them to verbally express what was going on in their minds.
I want my children to be able to express orally what they are thinking mentally. Being able to talk to others, explain things, educate, and inform, are crucial in making good leaders, bosses, co-workers, friends, spouses, and advocates. They need to be able to put into words processes, order, deductive reasons, hear themselves think out loud and see where they may have an error or need better wording. Let them catch it for themselves, not try to teach them what to say or just agree with them when they are right. How many times does that happen in real life?!
We are losing the ability to verbally communicate effectively with others. Everything is email and text to which you have autocorrect for your words and grammar. Most programs can even predict and finish your sentence for you just by clicking the tab key after two words. We can butcher a word and autocorrect will automatically change it so you don’t even see if you are spelling correctly and having to change it to the right way.
Communicate with your kids and others. Let your children see you having productive conversations, even if they are disagreements. Effective communication is key to our future generation’s successes.