At Sunset Bay Academy we think of ourselves as a residential treatment center for teens where we encourage troubled families going through rough times to get our professional help. Therefore, we pioneer seven principles for effective verbal intervention to help you and your family. It is common that every family has its own flaws, but the thing is that what really matters is whether you decide to do something to get better and talk about the issues.
We, as a great academy could be also considered as an alternative school for troubled youth. The ethical part of our programs rely on some principles for effective communication. These are the following principles that we think important for you to follow in case of having a misbehaved kid or the communication is in trouble:
- Remain calm about the situation: this way it will not get worse, and it might get easier to communicate calmly.
- Isolate: sometimes what the child with behavior problems need is isolation to give him time to calm down.
- Be careful with body language: it is really important to stay far away from the agitated child and avoid making expressions that might be interpreted as threatening.
- Keep things simple: it is important to have control and not lose it while you are about to convey a message, so just be clear and direct.
- Resort to reflective questions: make sure the other individual is understanding what you are saying by making him put your statements in his own words. Doing so opens a space for questions and answers to clarify.
- Take a moment of silence: this is an effective way to verbally intervene in the discussion. Silence helps you and the other individual to process or restructure ideas and express them in a healthy way.
- Be careful with paraverbals (tone, volume, rate and rhythm of a speech): try to avoid double meaning messages in order to make the communication as clear and calm as possible.
These seven principles for effective verbal communication provide great results if they are frequently practiced in real life situations related to children and the way they behave. We highly recommend using any or all of these in order to improve the poor communication between children and parents. Whenever a discussion situation arises, use the help provided by these principles. We encourage you to be part of the Sunset Bay Academy testimonials.
