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Training Children for Active Listening
By Andrew Loh
Good communication is essential to create better personal relationship as well as harmony. Without good communication, you can never expect cordial relationship between people. A major part of better communication between people is active listening. Active listening helps you in many ways. When you listen to other people with attentiveness, you can avoid a perceived gap in the communication. Active listening is very critical among children as well. With active listening, your children can become very intelligent and sharp. These two qualities will help your children do well in their classroom. Active listening is very important in two domains – it can help your children develop very strong personal relationship with other children and teachers, and it can assist your children in scoring better marks in their classrooms.
However, what is active listening? Is it merely listening to what others are talking to you? Alternatively, is there anything other than just listening to other people? Experts believe that there is more to active listening than just listening to others. Active listening is not merely staring at others when they are talking. It also means absorbing the meaning of what is being conversed by others. Furthermore, active listening involves exploring the real meaning by comprehending what is being spoken without jumping into conclusions.
Children have a primary or rudimentary skill or ability to understand and comprehend the real meaning of conversations. They may not readily understand the real meaning of conversations. Active listening does not come normally to your children and they may have to master this skill over time. Because of the fickle minded nature of children, they often find it very difficult to absorb the real meaning of dialogues spoken by others, especially their teachers. In many instances, children fail in listening to others because of their inability to understand what is spoken to them. It is also possible that your children are just passive listeners with an inability to understand others. Whatever the case, it is possible to train your children to listen to other in an active manner.
In nature, humans have a peculiar habit that may affect their personal relationship with others. To succeed in life, your children should follow these basic guidelines:
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Be willing and ready to listen others and understand what they are saying.
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Understand the real meaning of conversations and help other people to know about your opinions and feelings.
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Make sure that they focus their attention on the people who is talking not on themselves.
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Ensure that they will come up with the right type of answers or solutions
Active listening helps your children in many ways like:
Ease emotional flooding: When your children become passive listeners, their internal feelings can drown their personality. Feelings can overtake their thought processes. With blocked out thought process, they can be the prisoners of their own thoughts. This tendency will be detrimental to their personality. Developing active listening will help your children relieve emotional flooding and free up the logical and intuitive side of the brain to get back to listening to the other party.
Help children to detect or identify problems: When a person talks to your children, he or she may have a number of things to tell them. If your children are not listening to what they are saying, they may face some unique problems. This is so true when their teachers are teaching them their lessons. When you teach your children how to listen to others in a proactive manner, you are actually helping them detect and identify any problems. When you train your children how to listen actively, you are also helping them solve their problems on their own, that eventually assists them to enhance creativity, self-confidence and problem solving abilities.
Active listening is very critical to your children's mental development, Active listening helps them sharpen their brainpower and streamline thinking power. Active listening is also quite essential to understand the real meaning of class lessons and lectures. Active listening is a positive quality as it helps your children learn positive manners and demeanor. It also teaches them how to be respectful to other people. Parents may need to teach their children the importance of active listening because of its importance in shaping their career and future. Listening to and understanding the words spoken by others are mandatory social needs. When your children listen and understand the words spoken by others, they will be learning the power of empathy towards them. Continue to read Teaching Children the Power of Active Listening
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