Active Listening
Active Listening is a method of truly hearing and trying to understand what the other person is saying and experiencing (the basis of empathising). P.E.T. emphasises the inclusion of feelings in Active Listening. First conceived by the eminent psychologist Dr Carl Rogers (for client-centred counselling), Dr Gordon recognised that these counselling skills would also be useful for parents to improve family relationships.
How do I put this into practice?
My role, when my child ‘owns the problem’ is to try and help them through the problem using Active Listening
‘ Active listening ask’s you to step out of your judgement about their behaviour and decode the messages they are sending and feed back a response. They will either correct you (which gives us greater clues), or feel very heard and understood if you are in fact right’
Active Listening helps children……
understand and name feelings
understand themselves better
to start the process of controlling their emotions, once they understand what they are feeling.
reduce the number of times they get angry, or have tantrums.
to become more confident and have better self-esteem.
feel better about their parents, and have a closer relationship with them.
to develop resilience and empathy
Parents can……
find this an effective way to defuse angry situations, such as when the child is about to have a tantrum
gain a better understanding of their child from the child’s perspective
show they respect their child as a person
find that children are more likely to listen to them
EXAMPLES
“You feel . . . because . . .
“You seem really overwhelmed with all that study and balancing social time”
” You look really annoyed and frustrated when those blocks just keep falling down!”
“You seem hurt and sad that your friend didnt play with you today.”
“You look really dissapointed because the party got cancelled and you were all dressed up”