SKILL OF LISTENING BENEFICIAL TO KIDS AS WELL AS PARENTS.

Byline: Greg Steckler and Gerald Deskin 

Parents and children both complain that the other does not listen to them. If you want to teach your child important lessons, you need to listen in a way that they feel heard. Parents have an enormous advantage in that they are more mature and that they themselves have been a child.

Joining a child's world involves knowing their interests and concerns. How they talk to their friends and what they talk about will give you some idea of their world. By observing and listening you will notice what they can talk about easily and what is more difficult for them to discuss. You need to judge what you say by the way the child responds. If they look at you or move toward you they are listening. If they look away or move away, the topic is threatening in some way. Younger children may have difficulty talking about some subjects. As children grow older they can more easily tolerate the discomfort of difficult subjects. If your child is in the habit of sharing feelings and concerns with you, it will be easier to bring up difficult subjects.

Parents need to learn to make contact with their children. It often is difficult for a young child to sit still, listen, and talk to a parent; doing an activity that the child likes makes it easier. For example, using imaginative play or games may make it more comfortable for children to sit and talk. As children approach adolescence it seems more natural to sit and discuss what is bothering them. However, children differ a great deal in their stages of readiness. Parents need to gauge their readiness by being both patient and receptive to the messages they get from the child. Playing a game or performing some chore together with the child, or even driving somewhere gives parents a golden opportunity to both talk and listen to their child.

Talking and listening to your adolescent means you have to add to your communication skills. The task of adolescence is to grow up and become independent. This means that the adolescent is more suspicious and resistant to being told what to do. He or she wants to be in charge and not told what to do. There are many possible approaches to communicating with adolescents, but one is to talk about problems that need to be solved. Telling an adolescent what to do may not work. A more fruitful way of solving problems may include telling an adolescent about your desire to create more respect, safety, cooperation or contribution around some of their behavior, offering some suggestions and then opening the door to discussion. Of course, there will be disagreements and differences of opinion. The best way to resolve an issue with an adolescent is through a win-win situation, where both parent and adolescent gain something. Where this is not possible, parents must set limits with consequences, however, and the child at least will understand your reasoning.

Problems in getting an adolescent to listen: Adolescents often will not listen to a parent who does not live up to the standards they set for the kids. Remember, you are the model of what your child will become, or what he or she will fight against. For example, if you do not wish your child to smoke, don't smoke yourself. Parents sometimes forget how important they are to their children, and how closely children watch their behavior. When you see your child picking up your own bad habits, you then realize, sometimes too late, that your child examines very carefully what you are doing.

Suggestions for parents: 1. The more you enter your children's world, listen to them talk in a way they understand, the more you will influence their behavior. 2. Never forget that you are the model for your children. Don't engage in behavior you would not like them to copy.