{"id":162,"date":"2025-12-31T19:07:44","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T19:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/childguidance\/?post_type=chapter&p=162"},"modified":"2026-05-21T19:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T19:37:12","slug":"active-listening","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.palomar.edu\/childguidance\/chapter\/active-listening\/","title":{"raw":"Active Listening","rendered":"Active Listening"},"content":{"raw":"

Open, Active Listening<\/h2>\r\nAll effective communication starts with understanding others. The ability to openly and actively listen to others is the most important and crucial skill for humans throughout life and in almost all situations. The ability to do this with our children and students is the foundation of all guidance and the solution to many management problems.\r\n\r\nParents and teachers often ask, \u201cHow do I get children to listen and do what I tell them to do?\u201d\u00a0 In his very influential book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey stresses how important it is to \u201cSeek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood\u201d. (Covey, 1989).\r\n\r\nSeeking to understand implies an intention to really see and accept the speaker.\u00a0 It requires us to be empathetic and open. This allows us to create the relationships that invite and almost guarantee that the other will listen and care about what we communicate with them. Unfortunately, we don\u2019t do this very well, especially with children, whom we sometimes don\u2019t acknowledge as unique individuals with equal rights.\r\n\r\nThis ability to listen deeply is a learnable skill, but one most of us were never taught. Even those of us with graduate-level training in a field where this skill is practiced constantly are still in the process of becoming better at doing this. My fervent hope is that you will commit to growing in this skill by learning and utilizing the skills presented in this chapter.\r\n\r\nThe term Active Listening was introduced in the 1950s and refers to a communication technique that involves fully focusing, understanding, responding to, and remembering what is being said. (Rogers & Farson, 1957) We will be diving in to learn all of these important skills over the next several sections. There are active listening guidelines<\/a> to help support your learning with practical application. You may also want to review the active listening techniques<\/a> for later use.\r\n

General Points About Active Listening<\/h3>\r\nThe intention of this kind of listening has to be pure. The intention has to be solely to understand. Often, in guiding children, we have agendas and goals, behavior, and things we want children to do. Understanding does not mean that any appropriate limits have to be breached or that a particular behavior not in the child\u2019s or other\u2019s best interests has to be accepted. What must be accepted are the feelings being expressed. And before you turn to what will happen next, you have to be able to understand the child\u2019s point of view in order to effectively choose your response as well as help them deal with their situation.\r\n\r\nThis kind of listening has to be done from a perspective of equality and mutual respect. One of the activities I have done in class to help students realize the importance of level communication is to ask half of them to stand on desks (sturdy ones that are safe) and talk with a partner who is standing in front of them on the ground about something like where they would choose to go on an ideal vacation. The whole experience of looking down on someone or craning your neck to look up at the person you\u2019re talking to creates amazing differences in their conversation. Those looking up felt inhibited and reserved, while those looking down on their partner often found themselves feeling and sounding condescending.\r\n\r\nListening should always be done at eye level. Most often, with children, we kneel or squat down to their level. The setting can also be important. The goal is to eliminate the dynamics of power imbalances. The speaker needs to feel empowered to share openly. It can feel very different, for example, when having a conference with a parent when the teacher and parent can just sit in a couple of same-sized chairs facing each other rather than the teacher sitting behind a desk and the parent in a child\u2019s chair in front.\r\n\r\nEye contact is not necessarily always needed for this kind of listening. What eye contact often conveys is that the listener is completely focused on the speaker, which is always necessary and important. Research has shown, however, that parents listening to their teenagers is most effective while driving in a car because the setting creates a low-pressure, side-by-side environment where teens feel more comfortable opening up. (Dworkin & Larson, 2006) (Steinberg, 2014)\r\n\r\nBody language is critical. The optimal posture is usually facing each other a comfortable distance apart in an open body position. Legs and arms should not be crossed. Although, as mentioned above, eye contact is not always necessary, it can be very helpful for several reasons. It can communicate that you are focused on the speaker. It also allows you to pick up on all the body language that is being communicated that can greatly affect the meaning of the words spoken.\r\n\r\nFacial expression is a very powerful way to communicate understanding. As your mirror neurons are activated by the perceived emotion of the speaker, your face easily sends messages of that understanding and caring. This can be very powerful for the speaker to see.\r\n\r\nSimple head nods or words like \u201cOh\u201d, \u201cWow,\u201d and \u201cHmm\u201d can communicate that you are there with them and interested without interrupting what they\u2019re saying.\r\n

Paraphrasing<\/h3>\r\nThe key skill used in active listening is reflecting back what the speaker has said. There are many reasons why this is so effective. First, it lets the speaker know that you heard what they said. It also allows mistakes or misunderstandings to be resolved easily. Thirdly, it can help the speaker clarify for themselves what they are saying and stay on track in continuing to share what they want you to know. It allows them to hear for themselves what they are communicating to you.\r\n\r\nWhen we train peer mediators (students who are trained to help others resolve conflicts), they are taught to always repeat back what each person says continuously throughout the process. This accomplishes the above-mentioned goals, and it also allows the other person to hear the information from a neutral person a second time, which can be very useful.\r\n\r\nParaphrasing is NOT parroting back, word for word, what is said in a robotic way. This can be very annoying and, more importantly, can convey to the speaker a lack of interest or involvement on your part. By paraphrasing in your own words what you heard, the speaker knows that you have not only got the meaning of what was said but have actively processed what was said as well.\r\n

Reflecting Feelings<\/h3>\r\nFeelings, whether verbalized or not, are very often the all-important heart of messages that are being sent, especially in the area of guidance. Reflecting and letting the speaker know that you understand the feelings that are being expressed is crucial.\r\n

Listening for Attachment<\/h4>\r\nAttachment is a term that describes an emotional bond, initially between an infant and their primary caregiver and later in life between intimate partners or continuing relationships with family or close friends. The process of wondering and reflecting back what we sense the emotions are in a child can almost be like magic. When we get it right, at that moment, the child senses that there is someone else who \u201cgets it\u201d. It\u2019s like you\u2019ve reached inside them and put a label on this internal experience that only they know.\r\n\r\nWhen we are fully listening, our perception of emotions in another person triggers \u201cmirror neurons\u201d in our own brain that give us a taste of that emotional experience. This allows us to be empathetic. When this child sees the adult and senses that this adult is feeling something also, the child gets to experience themselves being felt by another person. They can literally see that their emotions matter to someone else, that THEY matter to someone else. This creates an emotional bond that allows these feelings that are almost unbearable in isolation to be bearable.\r\n\r\nThis process allows the child to calm down and become able to use their own self-regulation and problem-solving skills. When someone is listened to in this deep way, an observer can easily see the tension and other manifestations of the emotion in the body of the speaker just melt away. This is so important in managing behavior. This process of calming that is so obvious in the body also has an important neural component. High emotions trigger an automatic response from the limbic system (the parts of the brain that deal with emotions) that can actually shut down part of the functioning in the cerebral cortex (the decision-making, thinking part of our brain). We\u2019re literally \u201cnot thinking\u201d when our emotions have \u201chijacked the captain\u201d, the front part of our brain. I\u2019m sure you can all recall an incident of doing something when you were emotionally activated that you regretted when you calmed down.\r\n

The Process of Reflecting Feelings<\/h4>\r\nNo one can absolutely \u201cknow\u201d what someone else is feeling. All we can do is \u201cguess\u201d based on what we\u2019re hearing and seeing as well as what our mirror neurons are suggesting. All of our reflecting back needs to be tentative. Great ways to communicate your understanding of the feeling being expressed can start with:\r\n