Active listening: A tool to unlock and maintain communication with our children

In a verbal communication, there is a speaker and a listener. 

In active listening, the person receiving information is not a passive listener but an active one. In other words, he acts in order to understand exactly what the speaker told him. 

Many times, when communicating, we may misunderstand what the other person means. Therefore, by clarifying whether what we understood is what the speaker meant, we can ensure that we got the right message. 

So when practicing active listening, the listener tries to ascertain whether they understood correctly. How does one do this? Telling the speaker what they understood, in their own words, so that the speaker can confirm it. 

By repeating in their own words what they think they heard, the listener should not provide any opinion, position, analysis or reasoning of their own. They repeat only what they understood the speaker to mean, and nothing else. 

Let’s look at an example: 

• Child (excitedly): Dad, today my teacher told me that I make really nice shapes with the markers! 
• Dad: I see you’re excited that your teacher told you you’re making nice shapes huh? 
• Child: Yes, I was very happy when he told me. 

The dad correctly understood the child’s joy and excitement at receiving a positive comment from his teacher and confirmed it. 

• Kid: the coach didn’t put me on the basketball team… 
• Dad: You were a little disappointed that the coach didn’t pick you for the basketball team huh? 
• Child: Yes! As if others are better than me. Although some play really well.. 
• Dad: Are there any good basketball players on the team? 
• Child: Yes, maybe even better than me. But no one can reach me in volley! 
• Dad: It sounds like you like volleyball more. 
• Child: Yes, I actually like it better than basketball. And there, no one can match me! Maybe I can get into that group. 
• Dad: It seems like you’d rather be on the volleyball team than the basketball team. So I wish you that. 

The dad sensed his daughter’s frustration and repeated it without judgment and suggestions of how she could make the basketball team. 

If dad had chosen a more typical reaction like, for example, ‘But why didn’t he put you on the basketball team! I’ll go talk to him tomorrow!’ the child may never have realized that she was actually more interested in volleyball. Analyzing her feelings, through the conversation with her dad, she also understood that she is more interested in the volleyball team. 

The dad didn’t have to solve the problem for his child, but he helped her solve it on her own. He listened to her frustration, opened the dialogue and encouraged his daughter to talk more about the issue that concerned her. 

Often, when our children communicate with us, they do so to express some emotion. 

Many people think they can avoid an emotion by suppressing it, putting it aside, forgetting about it, or ignoring it. 

However, the exact opposite is true. People are freed and liberated from troubling feelings when they are encouraged to express them openly. 

Active listening supports this free expression. It not only helps children express what they feel but also to understand it. And after they have expressed their negative feelings, they magically disappear! 

Even if the child had not managed to join the volleyball team, the child would have raised the issue that concerned her in front of her dad and would have processed its emotional impact. 

‘I was disappointed that I didn’t make the basketball team but some kids are playing better, so rightly so I didn’t make it.’ 

This will help the child accept their feelings and move on without traumatizing them. 

Active listening has several positive properties: 

• It helps children be unafraid of their negative emotions. When the parent shows them through active listening that they accept their feelings, the child learns to accept their feelings as well. 

• It promotes “warm” parent-child relationships. When the parent can place themselves in their child’s shoes by trying to understand them, the child develops positive feelings towards the parent. 
• It makes it easier for children to solve their problems. Problem solving is made easier when a person can openly communicate and describe the problem to someone who is ready to listen than if they just process it on their own. 
• It makes children more receptive to listening to their parents’ ‘position’ and opinions. Children are more likely to see things from the parents’ point of view when the parents have tried to see things from the children’s point of view first. This does not mean the children are being manipulated by the parents. 
• It places the responsibility for solving a child’s problem on the child, taking it out of the parent’s hands. When parents use active listening with their children, children begin to think for themselves about their own problems. They begin to analyze their problems, resulting in a constructive solution of their own making. In a similar way they will be able to act in every similar situation in their life. 

For these reasons, active listening is most effective when children express to us a problem, a concern, an emotion. 

But we can use this technique even before the child expresses a concern, asking them if something is bothering them – especially if we observe that they may be worried.