Differences When Communicating with Adults, Young People and Children

Explain the main differences when communicating with adults, young people and children: The main differences between communicating with a child, young person or adult is our tone of voice, body language, facial expressions, gestures and the vocabulary we use. We need to adapt these depending on the age, needs or ability of the person we are speaking too. If we are communicating with a small child we may do this by either playing a game, reading a story, using silly voices or playing with toys or puppets.

When communicating with a young person this is done differently as we would need to adapt our tone of voice, and the words and phrases we use as a young person has a more varied vocabulary. We need to ensure that we allow a young person to vocalise ideas and feelings as they can do this in a greater depth. We can give a young person more complex instructions and they can also appreciate jokes and word play. We can read more complex things with a young person such as poetry or factual books.

We can discuss past events allowing them to give detailed accounts with varied expression and emotions. With regards to communicating with an adult this would be done slightly differently as we would normally do this by having a conversation face to face or by telephone, going out to a social event together or by texting or maybe email. We also need to consider the differences when communicating with anyone from a different culture or social background.

This is because some words or phrases that may be acceptable to one community may not be acceptable to another. We need to always be aware who is around us to prevent us from causing offence. We need to be aware that the way we communicate may not be acceptable to everyone for example if someone was communicating using offensive language and the other person replied with the same language then this would not cause offence, but if they said this to someone who does not use offensive language then this may upset them.