I have talked before about how every conversation is really three conversations: what was said, what was meant, and what was heard. Recently I stumbled on another way to explain this phenomena to young children.
Note: Any references to clients, as always, are fictionalized.
One of Zoom’s many cool features is live closed captioning. While not perfect, the automatically generated captions can help Deaf or HOH folks understand what is being said in a video meeting, and they can help those with auditory processing issues follow along. They do not turn on automatically, and some might find them distracting, so they are certainly not mandatory if no one requires them.
Sometimes, kids will request closed captioning in a Zoom meeting, often not realizing what the function is. They then notice that the subtitles do not always accurately hear what we are trying to say and shows incorrect words.
Some kids get frustrated when the captions are wrong, though usually their response is amusement. “That’s not what you said! That makes no sense!”
Ask: When is a time you heard something that didn’t make sense? Did you find out later that you misunderstood? Or conversely, when is a time someone thought you were not making sense because they misunderstood you?
Even though the automatically generated captions exist to help people, they still get things wrong sometimes. Misunderstandings happen, and that’s okay! We can work through them.