Barriers For Listening To Your Kids

By Erika Krull, MS, LMHP

One big trouble spot for families can be communication. Parent think kids never listen and vice-versa. There’s plenty of truth to that, but also plenty of hope for improvement. Here’s your quick tutorial on improving your listening skills to not only reduce needless arguments but to also model positive behavior for your kids.Many parents do what they think is good listening when their kid talks to them, both about small things and big things. They sit there, hear their kids say words, and then give them their parental talk. In all likelihood, that’s not what kids are looking for when they want you to actually listen to them.

Here are a few tell-tale signs that you aren’t really absorbing what your kid is saying:

“Yeah, but…” That pretty much means you have thrown whatever they’ve said right out the door immediately. Even if they have some cockamamie idea or a ridiculous excuse all cooked up, the main point of communication is for both people to stay engaged with each other. This will shut things down before you get a chance to go to the heart of the matter.
“Uh huh, but don’t you still… (feel this way, think that way, want to do this, etc)?” I had this happen to me a while ago. A person asked me this question, I answered by listing five different things I was doing about a situation, and they asked me this exact same question again. Clear evidence that they didn’t really hear what I said and had only one thought in their mind. If your child is coming to you with something that surprises or shocks you, you might be able to say this once and get away with it. If you repeat it, you can lose your child’s engagement because they know you didn’t absorb anything.
Being obviously (or not so obviously) distracted by something else. If you have the game on in the background when your child comes to talk to you, they might think they need to hurry up or cut their conversation short because you are busy. Even if you know you are listening, it doesn’t show respect for the weight of what they have to say. They might be about to tell you that they are having trouble with their spelling, or that they are feeling depressed. You never know, and distractions make you a less inviting person to talk to.

Tomorrow’s post will give you better options to use instead of these common mistakes. First, I’d like to hear what you think about these examples. Have you done these when you thought you were listening to your child? How did your child react? Please check out tomorrow’s post!

photo credit: Laenulfean