Active Listening –the phrase sounds so technical and jargony, maybe even a little insincere or formal. At least this is what I thought at first, but then I heard it done so incredibly naturally I didn’t even know it was happening. It was like magic, helping me understand my own thoughts and coming to my own conclusions without input from anyone else. Active Listening helped me be, well, more me.
This little dose of magic is also what it does for our children. Imagine not having to tell your child how to solve his own problems and watching him come to his own conclusions that are even better that what you thought of yourself! It is a pure gift to watch the thought process of a child and to hear the genuinely loving solutions they come up with themselves if given the chance. I’ve written about this in recent posts, but it’s so hard to get the essence of it just from reading a blog post, so here a few really fun short videos from Everybody Loves Raymond.
Deborah and Ray in P.E.T. class
Ray Active Listens to his Parents
I hope you enjoyed and for more on Active Listening in real life see the below links:
[…] and see how it plays out and if it becomes necessary to help, we can do it in an objective way, by listening and then reflecting back each child’s point of view, according to both Parent Effectiveness Training’s Active […]