By Bidemi Nelson
A lot of parents don’t prioritize listening to their children early enough and by the time they decide to start, it becomes late. Listening is crucial for parents at this time also, because it allows them to know their children better. Children learn from home and school, predominantly and learning from school comes with its upsides and downsides. Only with a skill like listening will you be able to decipher if what your children have learnt are helpful or not. Listening can be done in many ways such as asking intelligent questions. As a parent, it is quite important to listen by probing particularly if you have adolescent children who are taciturn. Your choice of questions should be open-ended, non-judgmental and youth-inclined. For instance, you can know if your children are sexually active by asking them, the most common contraceptives used by their friends. Obviously, you must have made the child comfortable enough to divulge such information; being more friendly can help.
The COVID-19 Pandemic lockdown restrictions in many parts of the world have opened the doors for skills development in many families. While many of these skills are spear-headed by family needs, it still brings relief that family needs are met one way or another.
Many family patriarchs who usually wear the gender-specific assignment cap and not readily help out with house chores are now gradually easing into normal family functioning devoid of gender imbalance.
It is no longer news to hear of families making meals together or fathers who have learnt to bake cakes or mothers who can now give their children hair-cuts. These amassed skills have led to families bonding and waxing stronger.
Nonetheless, there is still an important skill family members especially parents, are not prioritizing enough. This skill is listening. Listening as a skill is learnt overtime.
People often confuse listening with hearing. However, the latter has to do with body functioning which can be involuntary while listening must be done intently, intelligently and with an objective to help.
A lot of parents don’t prioritize listening to their children early enough and by the time they decide to start, it becomes late. Listening is crucial for parents at this time also, because it allows them to know their children better.
Children learn from home and school, predominantly and learning from school comes with its upsides and downsides. Only with a skill like listening will you be able to decipher if what your children have learnt are helpful or not.
Listening can be done in many ways such as asking intelligent questions. As a parent, it is quite important to listen by probing particularly if you have adolescent children who are taciturn. Your choice of questions should be open-ended, non-judgmental and youth-inclined.
For instance, you can know if your children are sexually active by asking them, the most common contraceptives used by their friends. Obviously, you must have made the child comfortable enough to divulge such information. Being more friendly can help.
Listening can be done by observation. Sometimes, children talk more with actions than with words especially now that they spend more time together. During bouts of sibling rivalries for instance, you can know if any of your children has the tendency for bullying or aggressive behaviors.
By watching your children’s social interactions and listening to how they express their feelings, you get to rate your child’s socialization skills.
Furthermore, listening can be achieved by doing activities collectively. By engaging in recreational activities together, you get to identify your children’s strengths and weaknesses.
For example, a particular child who often does not do well in a game of Scrabble might actually be asking for help with spelling problems or learning new words or even using a dictionary.
Beyond that, collective activities can help you deduce the professions that interest your children and help them stay on course. Reluctance of children likewise to join in collective family games can equally be pointers to deeply rooted issues such as child molestation, stress, drugs or other addictions such as pornography.
Parents should value any opportunity to do collective activities with their children as it can reveal tons of information about them. Listening can also be done the conventional way by listening to the conversations of children.
For homes where swearing is not the norm but has children who love to swear, parents can investigate the behavior to see if it connected to school or friends or movies they watch or the music they listen to.
Listening to children banter can expose secrets you would never get to know on a good day. Give children the space to joke around without interrupting else, they will be doing a lot of pretense whenever they are around you.
However, when you notice anything that needs to be probed or corrected, try and do it privately with the affected child, soon enough. Other than that, praises and accolades for good behavior or judgment should be done publicly to encourage the other children to emulate.
The success of listening by parents however is a function of discernment, tolerance and continuity. Parents should be able to discern from their listening skills, when a child is in danger or poses a danger to others and wade in appropriately.
Parents should also be able to tolerate the kinds of information their children might expose to them. For parents who are overtly judgmental, strict and religious, it is only a matter of time before their children lose faith in them and start keeping them in the dark.
Listening is also a continuous thing. Parents should listen every day and listen enough to know when to encourage their children, when to discipline their children and when to apologize to their children. Children respect and trust parents who listen without distractions.
Bidemi Nelson is a public affairs commentator and the Chief Executive Officer of Shield of Innocence Initiative, based in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. She can be reached at Phone Number: +2348033656954, www.facebook.com/shieldoi, www.instagram.com/shieldoi and www.twitter.com/shieldoi1.
