How to Teach Your Child Good Listening Skills

Listening is an important skill for your child to learn, not just for the sake of education, but for genuine, authentic relationships and career success. People love good listeners. Good friends are good listeners. Excellent employees are good at listening to superiors and co-workers.

To be a good listener, you must take an active participating role in the conversation and pay genuine attention to what the other person is saying.

Teach your child to listen well and you will teach them an incredibly important life skill!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Don't try to take control of the conversation or make the conversation
   all about you. Let control of the conversation come naturally. Make it
   balanced with all involved giving equal time and input into the
   dialogue.

2. Let your eyes stray from the speaker only momentarily. Not looking the
   speaker in the eyes is a strong indicator that you are not engaged in
   the conversation.

3. Empathize with the speaker's feelings. Confirm and validate what they
   are saying, whether you agree with them or not.

4. Don't interrupt others in mid-sentence. Let them complete their
   thought before interjecting your response.

5. No one likes a "one-upper." Always trying to tell a better, more
   interesting story gets tiresome. Four important words here: It's not
   about you!

6. Ask questions that dig deeper and engage the speaker to fully disclose
   everything they are trying to communicate to you.

7. Refuse to be critical and argumentative. This leads to an exhausting
   and frustrating experience. Let your conversation stretch you and
   challenge you so that you will be refreshed when it is over, not drained.

Tips & Warnings

• "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." - James 1:19