Communicating actively and listening attentively to your children are essential ingredients to successful parenting. Your children’s feelings, views and opinions worth your attention.
Make sure you take the time to sit down and attentively listen to them openly and discuss with them honestly.
Talking with your children is a good sign of healthy parenting. Young children begin their life fascinated by language and communication.
To the small children, their parents’ words are important, comforting, and soothing. Use this to your leverage.
Start intimate communication early on about everything and you have a greater chance of continuing this communication into their teen years.
As parents, there seem to be a natural tendency to react rather than to respond. You pass judgment based on your own feelings and experiences.
However, responding means being receptive to your children’s feelings and emotions and allowing them to express themselves openly and honestly without fear of repercussion from you.
By reacting, you send your children the message that their feelings and opinions are invalid. But by responding and asking questions about why the children feel that way, it opens a dialog that allows them to discuss their feelings further, and allows you to understand them better.
Responding also gives you an opportunity to work out a solution or a plan of action with your children that perhaps they would not have come up with on their own. Your children will also appreciate the fact that maybe you do indeed understand how they feel.
It’s crucial in these situations to give your children your full and undivided attention. Set aside anything you do and be attentive to hear the full situation and make eye contact with your child. Keep calm, be inquisitive, and afterwards offer potential solutions to the problem.
Don’t discourage your child from feeling upset, angry, or frustrated. Your initial instinct may be to say or do something to steer your children away from the issue, which could be detrimental to the subject not being resolved.
Again, listen attentively to your children, ask questions to find out why they are feeling that way, and help alleviate their bad feeling and tantrum.
Just as you do, your children have feelings and experience in various difficult situations too. By listening attentively as your children talk about their problems, it demonstrates to them that you do care.
You want to help them based on similar experiences of your own that you can share with them, where they can learn from.
Remember, though, communicating thoughts and ideas is not a skill you or your children are born with. The art of self-expression must be learned. Give kids ways to talk about how they feel. Let them know how important they are and that you want to hear what they have to say.
Honesty and openness must be commended. Include your children in family discussions when appropriate. When talking is part of the daily routine, it becomes easier to deal with difficult subjects.
Take time to share with them even how busy you are by managing your time. Don’t hesitate to apologize of something you should have not said or you should have not done to hurt their feelings.
By telling your children that you love them is not enough. Pamper them with your affection just as you did when they were small.
Show your love by showing them there is no better time spent than with them.
