Listen to different intonations of the same text!
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Recently I made a beautiful discovery: I was able to clearly describe which intonations of parents children respond to and obey, and which ones they do not react to, pass by their ears. More precisely, the first part of the discovery is that it turned out to be precisely the intonation of the parental address, and nothing else. And the second part of the discovery is that these effective intonations can be quite clearly described and, based on this description, mastered, learned.
That is, if you say the right words with the right intonation (which I will tell), the children will do what they are asked. And if you say the same correct words in the same relationship with a different intonation, more familiar among mothers, the children will twist their faces and will not do anything. Everything turned out to be quite simple, and if you still haven’t been able to do this, you can master these effective intonations in a few days. And your kids will listen to you.
Hooray! Wow! Holiday!
It is clear that here we are not talking about critical situations when the relationship between children and parents is completely destroyed and the children are in conscious protest. We are talking about normal situations in normal families, when children, if you address them effectively, will do what they were asked, and if you ask inattentively or incorrectly, they will not. This often happens: children usually obey dads, but they love mom, but they don’t obey.
I held a webinar with my students at the University of Practical Psychology, from one student, the mother of an eleven-year-old son, a request was made: what to do with her son, if he often loses faith in himself when doing homework, he loses faith in himself and says that with will not be able to handle these tasks. At the same time, he is an intelligent guy, he studies at the physics and mathematics school and studies well, but he often gives in to difficult tasks like this. What to do? As one of the options, I proposed to follow his format: pay attention to the form of his behavior. My experience tells me that if the child corrects the unfortunate face for a normal face, straightens his slumped shoulders and replaces the text of the unfortunate victim with “I can handle it! I’m smart, I can do it! My parents are with me, together we will cope with any difficulties! ”, Then the situation can be resolved. I showed how I would say this to my son, after which my student, Nadezhda, repeated my words almost verbatim. She said everything reasonably and everything is fine, but as soon as I heard her, I understood right away — the children will not react to her words, to the words she uttered in such a way, they will not obey. After the webinar, I listened to the recording a couple of times and understood the difference.
I give you to listen to this recording (at the beginning of the article on the right — a video fragment from this webinar).
Did you hear the difference? Yes, and to what extent do you agree that Nadezhda’s intonations sound less demanding? And if so, what is the difference? What is the secret of effective intonation?
The simplest answer is that effective phrases have a DOWN intonation ending. Such intonations are perceived as HARD and are more often considered a masculine style.
And phrases that end in UP sound soft, feminine. They create a feeling of comfort, they give the interlocutor a sense of understanding and complicity, they help to keep the conversation going — but from the point of view of discipline they are not effective. When it is necessary to organize a child, it is better not to use them. They can be included in a conversation if you need to attract attention (huh? That’s just an ascending intonation), but if you need to get your order to be carried out, you need to use a descending intonation.
Another student of mine, Elena Noskova, added important additional details to this main secret. Namely:
- these are short phrases, «cue»
- between each semantic phrase — a pause
- the emphasis in each semantic phrase goes to the «key» word
- accent on voiced consonants (b, r, f, c, h, d, e, m, n, c)
- words are pronounced clearly and firmly, we remove the “stretching” of vowels. The «melodiousness» of vowels is a characteristic feature of soft intonations…
So, when we want to greet and warm someone up, we will speak more melodiously and use an intonation finish up, right? And when we need to put things in order, now we know how we will act differently. We will!
Video from Yana Shchastya: interview with professor of psychology N.I. Kozlov
Topics of conversation: What kind of woman do you need to be in order to successfully marry? How many times do men get married? Why are there so few normal men? Childfree. Parenting. What is love? A story that couldn’t be better. Paying for the opportunity to be close to a beautiful woman.