Your child’s ability to actively listen to you, their teachers and their classmates greatly impacts their ability to learn. Having active listening skills is just as important as having problem-solving, teamwork and leadership skills. Without active listening skills, your child will suffer socially and academically.
Why Is Active Listening Important?
My child cannot focus…I have to keep repeating myself…she is acting out in school…she does not remember what I tell her…her grades are bad...
If this sounds familiar, you need to help your child build active listening skills. A lot of children struggle with listening and paying attention. But if this is not corrected your child can miss key points of information like when she needs to clean up her toys or that it’s time to get dressed for school. This can also damage her academics if your child is having trouble listening to her teacher.
Helping your child improve her active listening skills greatly improves her school and social relations. When your child becomes an active listener her reading skills and comprehension will increase. Additionally, as an active listener, your child will have greater sense of self-reliance and resourcefulness.
How Can I Help My Child Be an Active Listener?
One way is to teach by example. When you show your child your active listening skills they will understand more about how to be an active listener and why it is important. Also, being an active listener for your child will bring you two closer together.
Another way to help your child improve her listening skills is reading with your child. Notice I did not say reading “to” your child. Doing a popcorn read – where each of you stop at the end of a paragraph – is a great way to turn up the active listening skills. Reading together gets your child more engaged and interested in what they are reading. When it is your turn to read, she really must pay attention and actively listen to what you are saying so that when it is her turn to read she is not lost in what is going on in the story.
You can also cook and bake with your child. Read her the directions and your child must follow them – to the best of her ability. This is a fun way to check if your child is actively listening. If whatever you too are making doesn’t taste right in the end, she might not have been paying attention.
Lastly, having open and regular conversations with your child, where you actively listen to her and she actively listens to you is one of the best ways to help your child become an active listener.
Sourced through:
https://www.livestrong.com/article/251607-exercises-to-teach-listening-skills/
https://www.oxfordlearning.com/improve-active-listening-skills/
