Practice Active Listening Skills

Now you have the opportunity to practice Active Listening Skills that will help improve overall communication with your children. It can be very helpful to parents to be able to practice new skills outside the potentially emotionally-charged interactions with children. During a more relaxed time, parents can practice new active listening skills to become better prepared for the results of active listening during emotional exchanges. This will help parents be more calm and confident with the new skills.

To practice active listening skills, it’s best to “role-play” different parent-child situations, with a parent acting as themselves in the role-play and then also taking a turn as the child during the exercise.

Now parents have the chance to try and practice new active listening skills. Active listening role plays can be done in person or over the phone. Practice active listening and improve communication with your kids!

For more information on active listening and healthy communication, please visit Responsible Kids Network.

Why active listen?

Active listening shows attention, awareness, acceptance and acknowledgment. It allows the speaker to share, vent and process. This promotes connection in a relationship. An effective listener does not necessarily need to agree with what is being said, but accepts that is how the speaker feels.

One of the challenges many parents face is knowing when to use active listening with children.  Active listening is an effective communication tool for parents when a child with a problem is in a highly emotional state and could benefit from being heard, understood and appreciated. A child needs to get out of the “emotional” part of his or her brain before being able to use the “thinking” part of the brain for processing or problem solving.

Active listening will help a child feel accepted, understood and respected.

To learn more about active listening and to practice one-on-one (over the phone), please visit us at:

http://ResponsibleKids.net

Learn how to active listen

Active listening is a valuable and effective skill for parents of children of all ages and stages of development. To learn more about active listening and to practice one-on-one (over the phone), please visit us at:

http://ResponsibleKids.net