Listening To A Child Is Showing Respect

Listening to a child with respect is the greatest exercise in humility you can undertake as a mother. To do so, we need to change our parenting paradigms and our concept of childhood, as it is essential to see and conceive your baby, no matter how old he is, as a human being with his own ideas and thoughts.

Our behavior, as adults, is sometimes deeply contradictory and often we are not even aware of it. When our son starts talking we melt. We celebrate each babble and each word spoken: Mom, Dad, baby, water … And then, after the months we discover ourselves asking them to be silent and wanting to impose our ideas on theirs, arguing that we, who are their parents, we are right because we have lived more.

This argument from experience is a holdover from the model we were raised with, and although certainly our parents have done nothing but protect us throughout our lives, today we know that the argument from experience is not valid for all circumstances and furthermore that there are more respectful ways to communicate with children.

Certainly, almost all of us are clear that we can certainly listen to a child with respect, but we wonder how to achieve it? Well, we can start by simply applying the good speaker and good listener standards, but really. We must treat our son with the respect and solemnity that any person deserves, it is more with the solemnity that an investiture such as the President of the Republic deserves, for example, or that of any authority that we respect. Yes, sometimes it costs us, but respecting them is how we encourage them to respect us.

Showing respect to your child will make him or her closer to you

Between the rules of a good speaker and a good listener there are clear guidelines such as looking carefully who is speaking to us, keeping silence while the other person is speaking, not interrupting them, listening to the person who is speaking, and above all listening to the person who is speaking to us. talking.

All these rules seem simple to us when we read them, but many times we find it difficult to put them into practice even with the people we love the most in the world like our parents and our children.

However, this exercise in humility that involves truly listening to the other person with attentive ears, heart and mind free from prejudice will help us foster respect for our family members.

Therefore, when you go to talk to your son or he is talking to you, try  to get at the same height as him, bending down or placing him on a chair or high stop, as this exercise will help you look him in the eye to listen to him in a active.

Listen to your child actively, pay as much attention as possible and above all do the exercise of listening, which involves more than hearing. “Hearing is simply perceiving sounds, but listening is understanding and understanding what we hear. This implies trying to understand what the person who speaks to us wants to convey to us, their feelings, emotions and thoughts ”, explains child psychologist Ana León Alonso in an article entitled The importance of listening to the child and how to do it.

It is essential that we try to put ourselves in the place of our son when he is speaking to us, it is the only way in which we can understand his emotions. Listening to and understanding them does not mean that we should agree to everything they tell us, but rather it exercises our ability to respect their feelings. When your baby feels listened to, he learns to trust you and will come to you when he has a problem and will be afraid of finding only scolding about his negative behaviors.

When a child feels heard they are not afraid to express themselves

Another of the privileges that the healthy exercise of listening to your child offers you, whatever his idea is, is that over time he will not feel afraid to speak, express his ideas or feelings or ask for what he needs.

This environment in which the child feels heard is built every day. In an article entitled The importance of listening to the child and how to do it, child psychologist Ana León Alonso recommends reminding your child daily that you are there to listen to him and to help him whenever he needs it.

Almost all parents think that we do this or that our children are clear that they can count on us.

Thinking like this can make us believe that it is not necessary for us to tell them every day, despite the psychologist that it is not good to leave anything over-understood and that it is of the utmost importance to remind your baby that you are always there for him.

You can remind them with these phrases: Whenever you need it, you know that mom and dad will be willing to listen to you. You can tell me everything you want or worry about. It is also very important to give the child the freedom to approach us whenever he wants.

The second thing that the psychologist recommends is to take into account if you want to promote an environment of good communication with your child, you must think that for this it is essential to find the right time to do it.

Ideally, set aside a time each day to talk individually with your child, even if it is only 5 minutes before going to sleep. During that time your child should feel that you are going to be able to give him the proper attention, remind him that they have that time to talk and most importantly, do not forget to tell him and go to your appointment I would say with him.