5 Top Tips: How to listen so your child will talk

Lately I’ve been worrying about one of my high school students. Chun (name changed) is academically successful and well liked by her peers. In school, she smiles and chats with friends and teachers, her face successfully concealing the storm that rages within her everyday.  

Chun and I have a good relationship, and she sometimes confides in me. In one particularly troubling conversation, she confessed her attempts to harm herself and disclosed her deep feelings of despair, anxiety, and futility. I asked her whether she had talked to her parents about her feelings – did they know the depth of her anxiety and depression?

“My parents don’t listen to me, they never really have,” she said, her voice trailing off.

My conversation with Chun reminded me of the pressing need to create strong relationships with our kids when they are young and receptive. If we build and strengthen close relationships with our kids when they are young, then perhaps they will trust us and talk to us when they are older

5 Top Tips : How To Listen To Your Child:

    Here’s a great rule for life: Judge Less, Empathize More.

As parents, we tend to judge and evaluate everything our kids say because we want to help them do better. But in our desire to help, reform, advise, teach and instruct, we often forget to really hear what our kids are saying and what they are feeling.

So next time your child tells you anything, don’t pass judgment. Instead, just listen carefully and try to understand how your child feels.

Prioritize your relationship with your child and think long term.

In today’s world, we parents are often so anxious about short term goals, that we forget what really matters in the long run.

At the end of the day, our children’s happiness matters more than their achievements, and our relationship with them matters more than their marks and scores.  When they are teens and adults, we want them to enjoy being with us, and we want them to willingly share their lives with us.

So next time you’re anxious, think long term. Don’t nag and instruct, but instead sit down and listen. Listening is the foundation for a strong and close relationship.

Create Rituals in your day, where you have time to chat with your kids:

• Bedtime -- when you can cuddle up with your little one and listen to her talk
• Tea-time -- when I was working part-time and had the luxury of doing this, I used to love sitting at the dining table with my kids when they got home from school and chatting with them about their day. I'd play soft music, they'd eat their snack, and I would have a cup of tea. And we'd enjoy each other's company. And most importantly, I'd listen!
• Car-time -- If you drive your kids to school in the morning, that can be a great time to ask a question and listen to your child talk. 

Note: I would advise putting away all phones and laptops during these ritualized talking/bonding times.

Ask Kids Questions, and master the art of the follow-up question

 If you get into the habit of asking kids questions, they will get into the habit of telling you more about themselves. Ask them open-ended questions and let them talk.  Show them that you’re interested in their lives.

Ask them how their day went, how they’re feeling, and what they think…and then (and here’s the hard part!) keep your mouth closed and listen to their responses. Try to really hear what they are saying and feeling.

When your child tells you about something that happened in school, don’t immediately offer advice. Instead, ask follow-up questions: Why did you do that? Do you think you did the right thing? How did that make you feel? What did the other kids do? What did she say next? What were you thinking at the time?

Put away your digital devices, look at your kids, and give them your full attention.

A few days ago, my seven-year old daughter gave me the best piece of advice I’ve gotten in a long time. I was on my laptop looking at my twitter feed. She wanted to chat, but I told her to wait a minute while I read an article.

She shook her head at me and said, “Mama, I’m far more important to you than all the people you are following on Twitter, so please shut down your laptop and listen to me instead of them.”

 I’m proud to say I did – I held her tightly on my lap and I listened carefully as she told me all about her day at school.

And here's an article in SmartParents.SG that I contributed to ... also on listening to your kids.

Achieving Balance

It’s interesting that all children – whether they are toddlers or teens – tend to simultaneously need opposing things. For example, they need structure and predictability, yet they also need a considerable amount of freedom. Without structure, there’s chaos and kids tend to do nothing at all, yet without freedom, there’s a stifling of creativity and imagination. Similarly, they need high expectations and a little pressure/stress so that they really push themselves, but they also need a safe and nurturing environment where they feel comfortable taking risks and failing. They need guidance because when left completely to their own devices they tend to flail and flounder, but at the same time, they also need to be given choices and left to themselves so that they think creatively and learn to make their own decisions. They need teachers and parents who are simultaneously firm and nurturing, who are at once both “hands-on” and “hands-off.”

The more I think about it, the more I realize that achieving this balance is an important part of being a successful teacher. And it is not always easy. For example, I often wonder about how prescriptive an assignment/project should be?  And how democratic should my classroom be? How do I find the right balance between guiding students and empowering them? And what about the effect of grades: how much should I consider a student’s feelings/self-esteem when I grade a paper or give feedback on a project? How do I find the right balance between pushing a child to work harder and helping a child maintain his self-confidence and self-esteem? How much to critique/push versus how much to praise?

Similarly, as a mother, I find that I’m constantly trying to find a balance between holding my children close to me and letting them go. I’ve been trying very consciously to give my six year old son more freedom. And I’m trying hard to give him the time and space he needs to play creatively on his own in any way he chooses. Yet, I also want to make sure that he gains exposure to organized sports and music, and I want to help him improve his reading skills, so I enrol him in classes and work with him on his reading at home. What’s a good balance though? How much structure? How much freedom? As a mother, I find this balancing act particularly interesting because it has such an emotional dimension to it. Should one be a “free-range parent” who encourages lots of creativity and risks, sometimes at the expense of safety, or should one be a “helicopter parent” who hovers and protects, thereby squashing independence, creativity, and risk-taking? Obviously, the answer is to be somewhere in-between. The mothers I admire most are the ones who are simultaneously very involved in their kids’ lives but also very relaxed and chilled out about their kids. They know intuitively when to let go and when to hold on, when to encourage risks and when to provide safe support.

So, both in my teaching and in my parenting, I think I need to continue to seek balance between contradictory and opposing forces.