Communication Evaluation

I had my eleven year old son and my husband evaluate me as a communicator.  I would have liked to have one colleague do this, but since it is summer, I was not able to get together with any of them.  Bummer!  I would also be interested in how my students would rate me!

I decided to choose my son because he’s old enough to understand the questions and I thought he would provide a different view on my communication.  He is almost twelve and going into the 6^th grade this fall.  We have been experiencing A LOT of pre-teen problems at my house lately.  Consequently, yelling and grounding have been a common occurrence this summer.  I was so surprised when his results were spot on with mine.  My husband’s results were right there, too.  I guess my evaluation of my communication style is right, at least within my family. 

I really enjoyed reading about how self-esteem and self-concept influence the communication process.  I found it interesting that people with low self-esteem often need to show affection in public (O’Hair & Weimann, 2009).  PDA is a problem with some of my students.  I never thought about it being a result of low self-esteem.  I will now make an effort to address this problem more sensitively.  O’Hair and Weimann (2009) also address that people can influence others’ self-fulfilling prophecies either positively or negatively.  This is something educators do on a daily basis and we need to make sure that we are always a positive influence. 


References:

O’Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2009). Real communication: An introduction. New York:     Bedford/St. Martin’s.