Shownotes
Listening
Now Is the Right Time!
As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your teen’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-teen relationship while building valuable listening skills in your teen.
Your teen’s success depends on their ability to listen and understand what you and others communicate. Listening skills can support your teen’s ability to engage in healthy relationships, focus, and learn. For example, teens must listen to their teacher if they follow directions and successfully navigate expectations at school. Not surprisingly, better listening skills are associated with school success.
Teens and emerging young adults ages 15-19 are transitioning between childhood and adulthood, learning about who they will become as independent people, their strengths and limitations, why they feel the way they do, and how they relate to others. This is also known as their self-awareness. They come to better understand themselves through interactions with you, their teachers, and their peers. This is a critical time to teach and practice listening skills.
However, everyone encounters difficulties in listening. With screens, such as mobile devices, captivating teens for hours each day, it's easy to overlook chances to engage with your teen and practice listening skills. Effective listening involves utilizing crucial skills such as impulse control, focused attention, empathy, and nonverbal and verbal communication.
For parents or those in a parenting role, the key to many challenges, like building essential listening skills, is finding ways to communicate to meet your and your teen’s needs. The steps below include specific and practical strategies to prepare you for growing this vital skill.
Why Listening?
Whether it’s your fifteen-year-old walking away frustrated while you are talking or your nineteen-year-old daydreaming during their teacher’s instructions and not understanding how to do their research paper, establishing regular ways of practicing listening skills can prepare your teen for family, school, and life success.
Today, in the short term, teaching skills to listen effectively and reflectively can create
● greater opportunities for connection, cooperation, and enjoyment
● trust in each other that you have the competence to manage your relationships and responsibilities
● a sense of well-being and motivation to engage
● language and literacy fluency
Tomorrow, in the long term, working on effective listening skills with your teen
● develops a sense of safety, security, and a belief in self
● builds skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making
● deepens family trust and intimacy
Five Steps For Building Listening Skills
This five-step process helps you and your teen cultivate effective listening skills, a critical life skill. The same process can also address other parenting issues (learn more about it)[1] .
Tip: These steps are done best when you and your teen are not tired or in a rush.
Tip: Intentional communication[2] and healthy parenting relationships[3] will support these steps.
Step 1. Get Your Teen Thinking by Getting Their Input
You can get your teen thinking about listening skills by asking open-ended questions. You’ll help prompt your teen’s thinking. You’ll also better understand their thoughts, feelings, and challenges related to how they feel when they have difficulty focusing and listening so that you can address them. In gaining input, your teen
● has a greater stake in anything they’ve designed themselves (and with that sense of ownership comes a greater responsibility for solving their problems)
● has more motivation to work together and cooperate because of their sense of ownership
● will be working on collaboration with you to deepen your ability to communicate with one another
● will grow their self-control (adding to their ability to focus attention) as well as empathy and problem-solving skills
Actions
Consider what challenges your teen in their ability to listen effectively. Your active listening will begin modeling the very kinds of skills you are attempting to build. You might start by asking:
● “Do you feel listened to? When and by whom?”
● “How do you know that the person truly listens to you?”
● “Are there times when someone is not listening to you?”
● “How does that make you feel?”
Tip: During a family meal, explore the question: “What does it take to listen well?” Allow each family member to respond. Model listening by allowing each person to complete their thoughts without interruption or judgment.
Step 2. Teach New Skills
Teens are learning to engage in healthy relationships through loving interactions, including listening effectively. Skill building takes intentional practice. Learning about developmental milestones[4] can help you better understand what your teen is working hard to learn.
● Fifteen-year-olds may feel sensitive to criticism and be preoccupied with peer interactions. Because of this, they may come to you for support and a listening ear but may also be conflicted as they attempt to assert their independence.
● Sixteen-year-olds may feel more confident in themselves. They may have new essential goals outside of school (jobs, driving, dating), and along with them, they may have worried. Your focused listening will matter significantly as they consider new emerging adult roles.
● Seventeen-year-olds may become highly focused on their academic and life goals as they consider graduation and facing life after high school. This can be a high-stress time. Teens may come to you with significant emotional needs, and your ability to listen can offer critical support.
● Eighteen and nineteen-year-olds are now considered emerging adults. Whether entering college, living independently, or beginning a job, their lives will change significantly. This is a time for redefining your adult-to-adult relationship. Listening closely to their needs without judgment and offering your assurance that they can do it on their own are some of your most important roles.
Remember, teaching is different from just telling. Teaching builds basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and prepares your teen for success. It also involves modeling and practicing the positive behaviors you want to see while promoting skills and preventing problems.
Actions
● Model specific listening strategies while interacting with your teen. Listening to your teen will build connection and cooperation; modeling listening skills can be one of the greatest teaching tools.
○ Set a goal for yourself. Pick a time of day when you know that you and your teen will be talking. Then, notice your body language. Ask yourself, “What is my body communicating, and how am I demonstrating I’m listening?”
○ Listen for thought and feeling. In addition to listening to the content of what the person says, see if you can identify the unspoken thought and feeling behind the content, in other words, the context.
○ Teens still seek and need their parents’ attention to thrive. Why not build a sacred time into your routine when you are fully present to listen to what your teen has to tell you? Turn your phone off. Set aside the chores. Set a timer if you need to. When your teen feels seen and heard, they will be better able to listen to others. Even 5 minutes of your undivided attention goes a long way in helping your teen feel seen and connected to you.
● Learn listening strategies together. Teens are keenly interested in figuring out social dilemmas (asking a crush on a date, talking to a teacher about a poor grade, or responding to a peer’s mean words). Share a challenge (without a clear solution) at dinnertime and try out one of the following.
○ Get curious. Don’t stop asking questions when you get one-word answers. Your teen must know that you will relentlessly work to get information from them. Your teen must know that they cannot just outwait you. So when you ask, “How was your day?” and your teen says, “Fine,” don’t stop. Try, “Say more, what was fine about it?” or “What was difficult about today?” or “What went well?” or “Let’s start at the beginning,” or “What made you laugh today?” Don’t give up!
○ Find opportunities to share. Model what it is like to share about your day. If your teen asks you how your day was, be sure not to respond with a superficial or one-word answer. Engage them about a conflict you had or a challenge you faced. See if they can help offer suggestions.
o Use active listening. Try out active listening, in which one person listens to fully understand what the speaker is saying and waits until the speaker is finished talking before responding. A response could be a simple “I get it.” Make eye contact and practice placing your full focus on the speaker.
o Paraphrase. Try paraphrasing by repeating to the speaker a summary of what they’ve said to check your listening accuracy and confirm that you have heard them. You might start, “I heard you say that…”
o Seek clarification. Try out seeking clarification. Particularly if you are listening to learn something from the speaker, it is important to seek clarification on details to ensure you understand. Practice seeking clarification by asking questions like, “What did you mean when you said you weren’t happy this morning? What happened?”
o Practice questioning and commenting with empathy. Instead of responding to a speaker with your own experiences, focus solely on the content of what has been communicated. For example, your teen might say, “Today, Mrs. Smith started a new writing project. We get to write an essay on any topic we are interested in. I can’t wait.” Instead of responding with something like, “I remember when I was in school…,” which takes the focus away from your teen, you might say, “It sounds like you are excited about this project. Have you thought about what topic you are going to choose?” This empathetic pattern of speaking and listening requires practice. Your modeling will make a difference in your teen’s comfort with this communication style.^1
Tip: As your teen spends more time alone and with their peers, it can be challenging to entice them into meaningful conversations. “Fine” might be all you get in response to “How was your day?” So, turn down the car radio. Hang around them without your phone. Offer plenty of chances to listen when they are ready to talk.
Step 3. Practice to Grow Skills and Develop Habits
If you seize the opportunity, your daily conversations can allow your teen to practice vital new skills. Each time your teen works hard to practice essential listening skills, they grow vital new brain connections that strengthen and eventually form habits.
Practice also provides essential opportunities to grow self-efficacy—a teen’s sense that they can do a task or skill successfully. This leads to confidence. It will also help them understand that mistakes are part of learning.
Actions
● Model aloud for yourself: “I’m setting a goal to listen at dinner without interrupting.” This helps reintroduce one of the conversation or listening strategies you’ve taught your family to practice at dinner.
● Recognize effort by noticing. “I noticed how you listened fully to your sister when she was upset. That’s so helpful to her.”
● Play a favorite family board game. At the start, set a goal to listen to each other carefully.
● Work on lateral thinking riddles or logic puzzles together that require attentive listening and critical thinking skills.
● Listen to TED Talks and discuss with your teen what was interesting or challenging about the talk.
Step 4. Support Your Teen’s Development and Success
At this point, you are developing your teen’s listening skills and allowing them to practice. Now, you can offer support when it’s needed by reteaching, monitoring, coaching, and, when appropriate, applying logical consequences[5] . Parents and those in a parenting role naturally offer support as they see their teen fumble with a situation in which they need help. This is no different.
By providing support, you reinforce their ability to succeed and help them improve their listening skills.
Actions
● Ask key questions such as: “How did your lesson in literature class go today? Do you understand what you must do for your long-term research paper?”
● Learn about development. Each new age presents different social challenges. Regularly informing yourself about what developmental milestones your adolescent is working toward will help you be more empathetic and patient.
● Stay engaged. Working together on ideas for trying out new and different listening strategies can offer additional support and motivation for your teen when challenging issues arise.
● Engage in further practice. Return to setting a listening goal for dinnertime conversations to reinforce skills. Create more opportunities to practice when all is calm.
● If you are running into frequent challenges with listening, you could ask yourself a few questions:
○ Am I expecting something from my teen that they are developmentally able to do? Having expectations out of line with your teen’s developmental ability can be incredibly frustrating for both you and your teen.
○ Have I connected with my teen today on their terms? A teen who feels heard and seen is a far more cooperative teen.
● When your teen is having difficulty listening, be sure you are in the same room and try making contact. If your teen is distracted, shouting across the house is less likely to get their attention and more likely to escalate volume, repeated asks, and frustration for you and your teen.
● Remember that a teen often wants you to listen without offering advice, suggestions, or problem-solving solutions. When your teen comes to you to talk, you may want to ask, “Are you wanting me just to listen, or are you seeking advice?” If they just want you to listen, don’t try to problem-solve, or they may not come to you the next time they want to talk.
● Apply logical consequences when needed. Logical consequences should come soon after the negative behavior and need to be provided in a way that maintains a healthy relationship. Rather than punishment, a consequence is about supporting the learning process. First, get your feelings in check. Not only is this good modeling, but when your feelings are in check, you can provide logical consequences that fit the behavior. Second, invite your teen to discuss the expectations established in Step 2 for listening. Third, if you feel your teen is not holding up their end of the bargain (unless they do not know how), apply a logical consequence as a teachable moment.
Trap: When your teen does not listen to you or focuses elsewhere, you might be tempted to scold or repeat yourself, but be sure to give them additional chances. Everyone loses their focus sometimes. Seek clarification on what they heard and did not, and then review what you said again to help them refocus their attention.
Step 5. Recognize Efforts
No matter how old your teen is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.
If your teen is working to grow their skills – even in small ways – it will be worthwhile to recognize it. Your recognition can go a long way in promoting positive behaviors and expanding your teen’s confidence. Your recognition also encourages safe, secure, and nurturing relationships -- a foundation for strong communication and a healthy relationship with you as they grow.
There are many ways to reinforce your teen’s efforts. It is essential to distinguish between three types of reinforcement: recognition, rewards, and bribes. These three distinct parenting behaviors have different impacts on your teen's behavior.
Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your teen. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “You listened to what I was saying without interrupting—I love seeing that!” Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment such as a smile, high five, or hug.
