Inquiry 2

1. Inquiry 2

Session 2: Communicating Effectively

Inquiry 2: Active Listening for Child Care Providers

active listening: responding to another person in a way that communicates that the sender’s message is being heard and understood

Child care providers use a technique called active listening in their communication with children, parents, and co-workers.

When you actively listen, you show people that you care about them. Consider the following conversation:

Child: Jason is being so mean to me. I don’t like him. (Child has a tear in his eye.)

Child Care Provider: It sounds like you are very sad about the way Jason is treating you.

Benefits of Active Listening

There are many benefits of active listening for both children and adults. Active listening achieves the following:

It helps people feel their message has been heard and valued.
It increases sense of worth and self-esteem.
It allows listeners to check that they have understood correctly.
It gives a person a chance to think out loud.
Because they feel heard, people who are actively listened to are likely to listen in return.

For children, active listening

helps them express themselves freely and brings out what they are really feeling
creates a friendly feeling between the child care provider and the child
provides them with opportunities to think for themselves
provides them with opportunities to hear themselves talk about a problem (which often leads to finding a solution)
builds self-esteem
encourages them to listen to child care providers’ ideas and thoughts

Components of Active Listening

The first part in active listening is to understand that the message a person sends may express a fact, an opinion, and/or a feeling. Consider the following examples:

Fact: A child looks up at you as you watch an activity and says, “I’m painting the animals on the farm.”

Opinion: A child, using her regular tone of voice says, “I don’t want to listen to this story. It is boring.”

Important: Feelings are often communicated through body language more than through words. For example, if the same child in the second example stamped her foot and yelled, “I don’t want to listen,” the communication would be more than just an opinion.

Feeling: A child says softly, “I miss my mommy,” as he wipes a tear from his eye. (The content is that he misses mommy, but the feeling—sadness—is the strongest part of this message.)

The second part of active listening is responding in a way that lets the person know that you have understood and that you care. When actively listening, remember to do the following:

Name the feeling. Choose a word that you think describes what the child is feeling. You may not be correct right away, but you could make a thoughtful guess, and then wait for the child to tell you that you are right.
Be tentative (best guess based on the knowledge of the child). Respond to the child in a way that gives the child a chance to correct you if you are wrong. For example, if the child says, “Johnny is a bad boy,” the child care provider might respond, “I think you are angry because Johnny pushed you. Am I right?”
Describe what you know about the situation. You might expand on what you have seen even more. For example, you might say, “It seems you were very pleased with the tower you built with blocks. You got upset when the blocks were knocked over.”
Wait for the child’s response. The feelings you suggest in your tentative response may be correct or incorrect. But, if you give the child a chance and the child knows you care, the child will correct you. For example, the child might say, “No, I was mad because Becky laughed at me.”

Checking My Understanding

What Is the Message?

Focus

Understanding the main message is the first part of active listening. The more you practise, the easier listening will become.

Directions

Complete the interactive activity “Classifying the Message.” Identify the main message in each of the situations as fact, opinion, or feeling. Your answers will be checked as you complete the activity.

Key Indicators of Good Communication for Child Care Providers

Child care providers set the tone for positive communication and active listening. Once you understand the process of active listening, you can practise to ensure that children will feel that what they want to communicate is important to you. Keep the following in mind as you communicate:

Make sure children and families know you are available to them and interested in what they have to say.
Listen for cultural differences in body language and words.
Listen for and identify any feelings the child may be communicating.
Call feelings what they are. If you are tired, say “I am tired.”
Speak in a tone of voice that communicates that you want to hear what is being said.
Be patient—children take longer than adults to speak.
Encourage and help children to solve their own problems.
Look for non-verbal messages.

Sometimes, without meaning to, you can communicate in a way that is disrespectful to the child. Disrespectful communication makes the child feel guilty, inadequate, or resentful. The following actions should be avoided whenever possible:

Commanding, ordering: “Don’t talk to me like that.”
Threatening: “You’ll get punished if you do that.”
Moralizing (preaching): “You must always say please.”
Giving the solution: “Go make friends with some other children.”
Lecturing: “Children must learn to get along with each other.”
Judging: “You are wrong about that.”
Inappropriate praise: “But you are so pretty.”
Name-calling: “You are acting like a spoiled brat.”
Interpreting (telling the child why she is doing what she is doing): “You are only doing that because you are jealous.”
Belittling the feeling: “It’s not really that important, is it?”

Remember, these are actions to avoid.