How to Listen So Your Child Feels Heard

I’ve introduced this audience to a handful of the parenting and communication approaches that inspire my psychotherapeutic work with parents. A central theme among them is sensitivity to a child’s inner experience—their thoughts, feelings, and intentions and how they motivate your child’s external behavior. When you are skilled in the mental process of sensing into your own and your child’s mind—and what your two minds are doing together—the more easily you can interpret and predict your own behavior and theirs.

When your perceptions are generally accurate, your internal response and outward actions will generally match up with your child’s inner experience of themselves, of you, and of the interaction between you. Most importantly, when you’re able to imagine your child’s mind accurately more often than not, and verbally or nonverbally reflect back to them your understanding of their internal experience, your child feels felt by you.

Your capacity to do this complex mental maneuver is called reflective functioning. Your skills in this area depend on the reflective functioning skills of your early significant caregivers and their ability to use them to understand your inner experience and communicate that understanding to you. Your child’s development of reflective function is in turn influenced by yours.

A great practice for building reflective functioning skills in both you and your child is active listening. The concept for this kind of communication skill was conceived by psychologist Dr. Carl Rogers and was incorporated into many psychotherapy modalities. Active listening can help you understand your child, and ultimately help your child understand themselves.

Criticizing, judging, and commanding shuts down conversation.

Active listening reduces messages that convey unacceptance

Dr. Thomas Gordon, a mentee and student of Dr. Rogers and creator of the Parent Effectiveness Training program, reminds parents of the importance of acceptance in the parent-child relationship. You might think you’re helping your child do better in the future by telling them what you don’t accept about them right now. Quite the contrary, says Dr. Gordon. Criticizing, judging, and commanding shuts down conversation. These “communication roadblocks” compel kids to distance themselves from you and keep their problems and feelings to themselves.

On the other hand, when your child knows that you’ll truly accept them no matter what—just as they are—that knowledge frees...

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