Empathetic Listening Practice
Ken Breeding
A Little Practice
Use the handout on Active Listening Techniques and choose some responses to the following statements made by a child you have chosen to listen to.
For each one, think about what is important in the message you are hearing.
“Susie is mean! I’m never going to be her friend anymore.”
What is your guess at what the child is feeling? How would you Reflect that back in a respectful, effective way?
What is an open-ended question you might ask?
I would not suggest paraphrasing this statement. The two sentences are very clear, but not likely the truth. They are a means of expressing the depth of the child’s feeling at this time.
“Johny kicked the ball really hard playing kickball. Tom wasn’t looking and it hit him in the head. He ran over to Miss Jane and told her Johny did it on purpose just to hurt him, but he didn’t, he was just playing the game. Miss Jane looked really mad and she went over and took Johny to the office.”
How would you paraphrase this back to the speaker? What the main point of the story?
What do you think the speaker is feeling? How could you reflect that awareness back to him?
“Ronnie ruined my art project! So I’m going to tear his up into a thousand million pieces.”
Assuming Ronnie’s art project is safe from danger at this point, and you have wisely decided to just listen to help this student, how would you just reflect back that you “get” how he’s feeling?
After you have acknowledged his strong feelings, you could even paraphrase by saying something like, “You’re so mad at him that you wish you could destroy his project to get back at him.” These kinds of listening responses take the pressure off and invite the child to continue to talk. The child will be much better able to come to
