People-watching sure can teach you a lot. On my recent break, I spent a fair amount of time observing how other guests treated the hotel staff. Some were polite, but removed, others clearly saw beyond the role to the human doing the job, and some were just downright rude. I found myself wondering if there was a parallel here with how they treated children and young people.

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Here is the second in this series of articles based on conversations with children, and first published in Teach Early Years magazine. In each piece, I’ll focus on one prominent theme. For this one, it’s DISTRACTIONS!

My thanks to editor Jacob Stow for allowing reproduction, and if you want to know more, details of this and their other magazines and resources are available at: https://www.teachwire.net

• • What lesson would you like grown-ups to learn about how to talk to children?
• “Not to get lost in looking at their phones and then five minutes later say, ‘What?’"         G (female)

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Last week I touched upon the importance of using personal memories to enable empathetic communications with our children. I’d like to talk more here about it’s power and how we can help children develop recall skills.

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I recently read someone saying that they were late all the time, but that they didn’t mind that, because it meant that whoever they were meeting was already there.

It made me re-think my own ideas about lateness.

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So here in the UK we’ve had a lot of snow this week.

It’s one of those events that is always notable. As such, it has the power to call to mind all the previous times in our memories that it has snowed. It’s easier for us to access our own childhoods through these less than common events, than through the day to day occurrences.

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