That's My Kid Up There!

NEIL FLETT

Description

Is your child spending too much time on iPhones and iPads? Are you worried that they might grow up without the effective communication skills they will need beyond school?

That's My Kid Up There! is a parent's handbook with ten easy-to-play games and exercises that will improve your child's face-to-face communication skills. It's a book not only to be read but to be DONE with your child, with games you can play that will change their communication behaviours, increasing eye contact, developing confidence and comfort, helping with structuring class presentations and coaching in the delivery skills that will give your child the edge, at school, university, business and community.

TMKUT! is written by communication guru Neil Flett who built a global company training business and community leaders in presentation, persuasive skills, negotiating skills and public speaking. Every exercise in this handbook has been proven to work around the world.

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Relations familiales
• Famille
• Self-help

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 19 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456630737
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THAT’S MY KID UP THERE!
HOW TO TURN YOUR CHILD INTO A CONFIDENT COMMUNICATOR
 
 
By Neil Flett
 
Illustrated by Jenny McCracken
 
 
 
Dedicated to
Charlie, Tayla, Summer, Riley, Conor
and not their iPads…
Copyright 2018 Neil Flett
Neil Flett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without permission in writing from the publisher.
 
 
Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-3073-7
 
 
 
“My Vision is to enhance humanity by creating more effective communicators.”
PETER ROGEN 1968
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION:
SECTION ONE:
FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER ONE:
THE EYES HAVE IT!
GAME ONE: THE COMFORT GAME
GAME ONE: COACHING THE COMFORT GAME
GAME TWO: THE CONVERSATION GAME
CHAPTER TWO:
BECOMING EXPRESSIVE
GAME THREE: THE HANDS GAME
CHAPTER THREE:
SAY IT WITH FEELING
GAME FOUR: THE ANIMATION GAME
CHAPTER FOUR:
THE POWER OF SPEECH
GAME FIVE: THE “NOT NINE!” GAME
GAME SIX: THE EMPHASIS GAME
SECTION TWO:
SPEAKING IN PUBLIC
CHAPTER FIVE:
THE CLASS TALK
MYTH 1: SOME CHILDREN HAVE THE ABILITY AND SOME JUST DON’T
MYTH 2: THE MORE THEY DO IT, THE BETTER THEY GET
MYTH 3: IF YOU’RE NERVOUS, JUST IGNORE THE AUDIENCE
CHAPTER SIX:
THE FOUR P’S
CHAPTER SEVEN:
PREPARATION
STRUCTURE
GETTING A BIT MORE SOPHISTICATED
CHAPTER EIGHT:
THE BIG BEGINNING
CHAPTER NINE:
VISUAL AIDS
CHAPTER TEN:
DELIVERING THE TALK
GAME SEVEN: THE HACKYSACK GAME
GAME EIGHT: THE ONE-TO-ONE GAME
GAME NINE: THE NUMBERS GAME
GAME TEN: THE PRESENTATION GAME
CONCLUSION:
BONUS CHAPTER:
OVERCOMING NERVES
 
INTRODUCTION:

 
My granddaughter Summer rang me on her mother’s iPhone.
I answered and for the next two minutes we had a conversation, with her talking nonsense and me pleading with her to hand the telephone back to her mother.
“Give the phone to Mummy, darling…”
“Summer, give phone to Mummy.”
“Where’s Mummy, Summer? Give her the phone…”
“Summer, yes, it’s Poppa…”
“Can Poppa talk to Mummy, please?”
She was 14 months old.
I rang her mother on the landline and asked what was happening. Summer had picked up the iPhone and scrolled through the contacts, photo by photo, until she saw her Poppa. Then she pressed the button and rang me.
Welcome to the new world of communication, an era in which the way we speak to each other is changing so radically that none of us can keep up. We fought against it, we swore we would not succumb, but now we have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, just for starters. We check our emails a dozen times a day and the very way we speak is being affected.
The communication revolution is changing our children and grandchildren in ways we could never have imagined – good in many cases, but also in ways that sometimes terrify us!
  Our neighbors have four-year-old twins who can program the DVD player to record programs. A workmate has children who leave their friends after school and then SMS them until 10 at night. Children forego the joy of playing outside for the fascination of the small screen. TV bombards them with imagery and useless information. Ten-year-olds use Twitter. Pre-teens have dozens of friends on Facebook. Kids of five can Google, but 19-year-olds can’t spell! Young adults can text at blinding speed, but can’t write a business letter. Running writing is under threat as the keyboard takes over. They can download a video, but cannot put a CV together. School children used to sit on the bus, chat to each other, read a book or stare out the window. Now they text friends, scroll through Facebook. Drivers risk killing themselves and others to respond to a text. Parents take the family to a restaurant and hand the children iPads. Interesting debates among friends, are now solved instantly by Googling. Parents despair as language is butchered and the endless pause has replaced clear diction. Social media is a triumph of quantity over quality. And worse, schoolyard bullies have found a platform to harass individuals without the consequences of a face-to-face confrontation.
This is the Instagram generation. More comfortable facing a screen than another human. And we have every right to fear that we might be rearing a child who is computer literate, an electronic communicator, but more and more reluctant to talk face-to-face...
Equally alarming is the fact that our culture is now being altered to one in which our children cannot sit quietly with a book, instead needing to be bombarded with action, whether from an iPad or from the television, or both at the same time.
Engaging conversation and persuasiveness are being outweighed by the convenience of electronic media, with an overload of often poor-quality information. A technology that is claimed to connect us, is at one level divisive. The byte is replacing in-depth argument, quality face-to-face communication is decreasing and email/text is increasing – not just significantly but exponentially. Everybody has an opinion and if they don’t, they forward someone else’s.
These are not the rantings of one old journalist and communication trainer. Science agrees:
The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA):
UCLA scientists found that sixth-graders who went five days without even glancing at a smartphone, television or other digital screen did substantially better at reading human emotions than sixth-graders from the same school who continued to spend hours each day looking at their electronic devices.
“Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues — losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people — is one of the costs. The displacement of in-person social interaction by screen interaction seems to be reducing social skills.”
On the other side of the ledger, and in defence of electronic media, my daughters, in their forties, have held friendships since school, in no small part due to social media. They post seemingly endless photographs of their families and share them with people they may not have seen face-to-face for ten years. That can’t be a bad thing.
But as someone who has spent 50 years as a journalist, public relations expert and executive coach in face-to-face communication, I wonder where the onslaught of social media, email and texting will stop. I’ve been around long enough to know that these amazingly convenient communication tools will not go away, unless replaced with something even more powerful and convenient.
And as someone who has coached leaders across all industries, governments and communities, I know that when crystal-clear communication is critical, the world turns to face-to-face. We don’t negotiate billion-dollar deals by iPhone, at least not yet. Presidents and prime ministers use Twitter to feed the traditional media, but elections are not won by social media, but by endless months of shaking hands, addressing community groups, face-to-face encounters with voters, and performances on radio and television.
Why? Because nothing is as convincing or as persuasive, as face-to-face. Nothing connects people like face-to-face. No communication carries the impact of face-to-face.
If we are letting generations grow up reliant on everything but the ability to communicate strongly in person, then how well equipped will they be for the world?
If our children’s skills are at risk then the future of face-to-face communication skills are in danger. I fear that children growing up in a world of iPads and social media will struggle to ever become capable of expressing themselves one-on-one, or to an audience in a way that is convincing, persuasive, charismatic and clear. The ability to stand before an audience and put forward an argument is something that grows less common day by day. This rapidly-occurring change will flow over into day-to-day relationships to the detriment of society in general.
These face-to-face skills are critical for our children and grandchildren. Without them they will rely to an even greater extent on one and two-dimensional communication, typing words into an electronic device, losing the added – and powerful – extensions of the words, i.e. expressions, volume, gestures, movement and emphasis.
Unless we as parents and grandparents, teachers and politicians continue to push the development of these critical aspects of communication, our children will find that they will not be invited to the big negotiations in life, the essential presentations, the important business deals that are all so reliant on face-to-face. They will become less competent at talking to one another and more and more reliant on electronic communication. Hand-in-hand with the breakdown in face-to-face communication, personal relationships will suffer.
If left unchecked, who knows how future families, future businesses will be affected? Will the family dinner table chat go electronic? Will parents email their kids from one room to the next? Have you already done that? Will troubled kids turn to Facebook before family? It’s happening now, but how far will it go?
It’s time to fight back, not for our own sakes, but for that of future generations.
The singular objective of this book is to provide you, as a parent or teacher, with proven tools to turn children into more effective communicators.
It’s written to help you promote the face-to-face skills your children need to protect their future as communicators, and give them a huge advantage over others as they move into adulthood.
This book contains simple, practical advice, games, exercises and structures that you can teach your children so they will grow into more confident communicators, persuasive, clear, convincing and inspiring – all attribut