Family Matters

Ronit and I think often about communication styles as a useful model for improving human relationships and developing kids. As a family, we are lucky to have all the communication styles (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic and Digital) represented in different combinations in the members of our family.

Our youngest daughter Noff is a visual girl. She LOVES colors, drawing, dressing up, makeup (see the fingernails in the photo and the red bandanna), taking photos (from both sides of the camera) and gets all excited about bright and glittery things. She is so visual that she knows where everything is without having to go looking for it.

One day, we were all upstairs folding the laundry and I needed a flashlight. I posed a question to nobody in particular, "Where is the flashlight?"

"It's in the kitchen, in the second drawer, Daddy", said Noff right away.

So down the stairs I went to look for it, but the drawer was so cluttered with things and the flashlight so small that I called out, "Are you sure, Noff?"

"Yes, Daddy, just lift the sandwich bags and you'll see it behind the clippers", she replied confidently from upstairs, as if the drawer was right in front of her.

Sure enough, the flashlight was exactly where she said, and she is only 7 years old.

But just like most people, Noff also likes music. In our family, where her auditory brother does not keep quiet for a second and spews movie quotes and songs all day, she also wants to keep up with him and sing along.

Using the written lyrics could be one way of learning the words of the songs, but being so young, words are still not very easy and reading them quickly can be a challenge, especially when you are trying to sing in tune at the same time.

So Noff came up with her own (brilliant) way of remembering the words of one particular song. The words she wanted to remember were:

... love, love, love, love

Listen to the music for the moment people, dance and sing

So she drew herself a little note to help herself remember the words. This is what it looked like:

As you can see, there are 4 hearts for "love", followed (clockwise) by an ear for "listen", some musical notes for "music", a dancer's outfit for "dance" and a face with some musical notes for "sing".

Just in case you want to remember the words of "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz, please look at Noff's note and play the video below.

If you are really serious about all the lyrics, the link below will open up in a new window:

Lyrics for I'm Yours by Jason Mraz

Enjoy!
Gal

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