Being a Good Listener: Actively Listening to Children

A Quick Guide

A lot of parents struggle with being good listeners to children. Their ineffective listening creates feelings of being misunderstood or not heard in their children. So, they end up harboring feelings of resentment towards their parents which only grows with age. Like adults, children have the need to be understood by others. So learning to listen to them is a prerequisite to effective parenting.

Significance of actively listening to children

When you listen actively to children, they learn to express themselves in a better way and feel comforted and reassured in your presence. Young children are often at the mercy of being ordered around by adults. It’s rare that parents actually sit down and listen to their opinions on the matter. If this is done effectively, it can have a huge impact as it can foster self-esteem and self-confidence in children. So that they grow up to be healthy adults.

Actively Listening to children

The same skills of active listening as discussed in our previous article can be applied to children i.e. encouraging, paraphrasing, and active listening. A few points to keep in mind while listening to children include the following:

1. Come to their eye level

Sit down on the floor or a chair and come to their eye level while talking to your child so that they feel like they are being treated as an equal. Listening to children while standing up and looking down on them from above only highlights your authority and intimidates them.

2. Discuss heavy or emotional topics while the child is playing

Another strategy is to have a talk with your children while they are playing. Having something to do with their hands lightens the pressure of talking about heavy topics. However, ensure that the toy or activity is simple and not too stimulating. Be prepared that they may get distracted or jump to different topics. You would have to use your attending skills to get them back on track.

3. Use simple language

Your language or conversational style should include short sentences and simple words. Avoid using complex and abstract terms since they will have difficulty understanding you.

4. Adapt your questioning style

Avoid overly broad questions. Instead, shift to situation-specific questions and use both open and ended questions.

For example, instead of asking ‘What is the environment at home like?‘
Ask, Did a fight happen yesterday between your parents? Did something happen before it? What happened during it? Where were you at the time? How did that make you feel? What happened next?

Similarly, avoid close-ended leading questions. Since these can confuse children and it’s like you putting words in their mouths. Doing so will not give you their true perspective but rather your own. For example, Your mom must have started the fight. Right?

5. Use encouraging, paraphrasing, and summarizing

Use skills of encouraging, paraphrasing, and summarizing to attend to children effectively. Elementary teachers often use these to encourage kids to tell their stories fully, clarify any misunderstandings and explore their feelings and emotions. E.g. ohhh…, uhh-huh, That’s nice, That’s great, smiling, head nodding, so you are saying you didn’t like it when he called you names.

6. Be Warm and Genuine

Incorporate an attitude of warmth in your tone. Show through your eye contact, facial expression, and body language that you are genuinely interested in what your child has to say. Humor also helps shy children to loosen up.

7. Maintain a non-judgmental attitude while listening to children

This is the most important aspect of listening to children. While maintaining an attitude of non-judgment, you try to hear and accept what the child is saying without passing any judgment, opinion, or expressing your feelings or thoughts. Children are quite sensitive to being judged or evaluated. So they will easily pick out any signs of negative judgment from your facial expression, tone, and body language. If that happens, they might withdraw and not open up to you.

While it is understandable that parents have to parent their children and let them know what’s right and wrong. However, even this can be done while being non-judgmental and non-threatening. Putting down your child for making a mistake will not be useful. Rather, explain the rationale behind the mistake and why it was not right. Be accepting of their mistakes and give them a chance to make up for them by not doing it in the future.

8. Be wary of the environment while listening to children

Have a talk with your child in a warm environment that is well-lit, colorful, and peaceful. It can even have some toys or colorful activity kits etc to make it as unintimidating as possible. Cold, dim-lighted, and gray rooms may only make children uncomfortable and add to their hesitation.

Learning to listen to children can seem like a daunting task. However, its significance and impact are long-lasting. Practice these skills daily and you will eventually notice children opening up to you and being close to you.