Investigation of Children’s Communication Skills Based on Mothers’ Opinions

Abstract

Communication is an indispensable element for the individual to exist in society. The individual has his first communication experiences in the family. The communication an individual establishes with his or her parents in early childhood shapes his or her entire life. The positive and effective communication process established in the family enables the child to acquire positive communication skills. At this point, the mother, who is the person with whom the child first and intensively communicates, is in an important position and directly affects the development of the child’s communication skills. The aim of this research is to examine children’s communication skills based on mothers’ opinions. For this purpose, the phenomenological pattern, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. The study group of the research consists of 8 mothers whose children’s age is between 43-70 months. ‘Personal information form’ and ‘semi-structured interview form’ were used as data collection tools. Content analysis was used to analyze the data obtained. The opinions of the mothers are included with direct quotes. As a result of the research; It was determined that children mostly communicate with their mothers about games and toys. It has been observed that children mostly determine the duration of child-mother communication. It was determined that the most frequently contacted family member was the mother. It has been found that the child’s tone of voice increases when he/she gets angry, encounters a problem or gets excited. On the other hand; It has been observed that children use body language in their communication with their mothers, speak by making eye contact, and easily convey their problem situations to their mothers. It was determined that the majority of children used polite words. Additionally, it was found that in the presence of other individuals in mother-child communication, all but one of the children showed behavioral changes.