Teach Your Child To Listen

Like other knowledge during childhood, teaching a child to listen to others can be a difficult task; however, it should not be deferred as other instructions are deferred. From a young age, every human being should receive thorough “training” on it.

Why is it important to listen to others?

Listening to others is showing signs of good manners. Anyone who knows how to listen shows signs of being an attentive, approachable, sociable person … Listening to the other is an indication of respect for that person and that what they are saying really matters.

Good communication between human beings establishes better interpersonal relationships and improves coexistence even when everyone has different characters and ways of thinking.

When you listen to others you learn, exchange ideas and know how they think. Those who listen to others feed on the experiences of others and are less likely to make mistakes.

If your child learns to listen every time he enters school, he will have a better concentration in class and he will assimilate the instructions he receives in a better way.

How to teach the child to listen?

The first thing is to lead by example. If you do not put this discipline into practice at home and with the other members of the family, how are you going to expect your child to learn it? And with what morals are you going to do it? Remember that children, even the oldest ones, imitate adults and can be a faithful copy of the habits and routines that they have, both the bad and the good.

If you are a good listener, if you know how to wait for others to finish speaking and you pay attention to their talks, your child will see his best instructor in you and it will be easier for him to apply what you have been able to teach him in terms of oral communication.

It is imperative that you listen to it. This is a meaningful exercise for you to learn that when some speak, others are silent and lend subject to conversation. In addition, it raises your self-esteem. The child who feels listened to, who sees how his family is silent and pays attention to what he says, knows that he is important within the group and feels like a valued person.

Avoid making interruptions in the talks, both with your child and with the other adults in the house. All opinions are important and you have to know how to wait when two or more interlocutors exchange ideas. That you must instill it.

When they talk, look him in the eye and do not look away to do something else, less, interrupt him to stop to do something else. Wait your turn to speak and let him know that he must wait his turn too. It is essential to convey in practice how the dialogue between two people should be. He must also feel firsthand how good one feels when they know they are heard.

Do not put off any call you want to make. If you talk to him and your son does not attend you, it is good that you call his attention at that very moment and ask him to look at you and listen.

Also teach them that a good way to check if our interlocutor is listening to us, or to let them know that we are listening carefully, is to share the dialogue: comment on their idea or convey an opinion on it. Asking and answering questions, nodding your head, responding to their moods by frowning, smiling, astonishing us… according to the emotions that you are conveying with your speech.

Finally, for your child to want to listen to you, first, you must talk to him about a topic that interests him and with a language that he understands. Otherwise, very soon he will stop paying attention to you and in the very beginning your goal of turning him into an exponent of good communication will have perished.

If you speak to him in words that he knows and when you address him, either to get his attention, convey a game idea, ask him for a favor …, you stand in front of him, look at him, hold his little hands, gently hold his face or Whatever else works for you, you are sowing the first seeds of what could become a good harvest.