Listening for Your 3-Year-Old

Now Is the Right Time!

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play an essential role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship while building essential listening skills in your three year old.

As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you play a vital role in your child’s success. There are intentional ways to grow a healthy parent-child relationship while building essential listening skills in your four year old.

Your child’s healthy development depends upon their ability to listen and understand what you and others are communicating. Listening skills support your child’s ability to engage in healthy relationships, focus, and learn. For example, children must successfully communicate with you and understand what you are saying to them for their survival. They are busy learning new words, phrases, and sentences, so your conversations support their language and brain development.

Now that they are becoming more independent, they need to listen to your instructions to stay safe. As in infancy, each time you are responsive to your child’s cries and needs, showing them love and care, they feel understood and learn about the two-way nature of communication. In preschool and beyond, children must listen to their teacher if they are to follow directions and successfully navigate expectations at school. Not surprisingly, better listening skills are associated with school success.

Through their interactions with you and other caregivers, three- and four-year-olds come to better understand themselves. They are in the process of learning their strengths and limitations, why they feel the way they do, and how they relate to others. Parents and those in a parenting role share in this learning and exploration. This is a critical time to teach and practice listening skills.

Yet, we all face challenges when it comes to listening. With screens, including mobile devices, engaging adults for hours of our day, opportunities to interact eye-to-eye with your child and exercise listening skills may be missed. Listening skills require using several other necessary skills like 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 so that both your and your child’s needs are met. The steps below include specific and practical strategies to prepare you for growing this vital skill.

Why Listening?

Children learn about themselves and how they relate to others through sensitive, caring interactions with you. These interactions impact their ability to listen, communicate effectively, learn about and manage their feelings, and trust in you as a caregiver. Now that your child is preschool age, highly curious, and exploring, they need to be able to follow your instructions to stay safe in your home, the neighborhood, and their classroom. Your focus on listening and communicating with your child will lay a critical foundation for trusting interactions.

Today, in the short term, teaching skills to listen 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 child

• develops a sense of safety, security, and a belief in self
• builds language and literacy competence
• builds skills in self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships, and responsible decision-making
• deepens family trust and intimacy

Five Steps for Building Listening Skills

This five-step process helps you and your child cultivate effective listening skills, a critical life skill. The same process can also address other parenting issues (learn more about it).

Children, ages three to four, are highly active and exploratory, seeking moments for imaginative play. They now can view themselves as a whole person with a body, mind, and spirit but are still learning to identify their big feelings. Your child is gaining skills and ability in cooperating with others and working through conflict with pretend play. Your effort to learn from your child will create empathetic interactions that promote healthy listening skills in you and your child. In becoming sensitive to the nuances of your child’s verbal and nonverbal expressions, you

• are responding to their needs
• are growing their trust in you and their sense of healthy relationships
• are growing motivation for you and your child to work together
• are deepening your ability to communicate with one another
• are growing your own and, simultaneously, their self-control (to calm down when upset and focus their attention)
• are growing empathy and problem-solving skills

Actions

Consider how your child reacts when upset, angry, or frustrated. How do they show you? Children at this age may cry, yell, hide, or pout. Their upset may last longer than an older child’s because they are still learning to understand and deal with their feelings constructively. Check out some ways you can respond to an upset child that promote emotional competence.

• If a child cries, offer comfort items like a favorite teddy bear or a blanket. Do not attempt to talk anything through when a child is distraught. Focus on calming down first.
• If a child hits or bites in anger or frustration, stop and say, “Ouch. That hurts my arm, and it hurts my feelings.” Then, be sure to reflect on the anger. “You are angry. What can you do that is safe and doesn’t hurt others when angry?” Practice some simple ideas like hugging a pillow or walking outside together.
• Name the feeling each time your child is upset or expresses any big feeling, and ask if you are correct. “You seem angry. Is that right?” This builds their feelings vocabulary, increasing their self-awareness and ability to manage them.

As you react to your child in ways that soothe, you will find they will feel a greater sense of your understanding and responsiveness so that your interactions become two-way instead of one-way, even when they are distraught.

You can also name feelings when your child is happy or excited and ask if you are correct. “You seem happy. Is that right?” Naming feelings helps your child better understand their thoughts, feelings, and challenges related to how they feel when they have difficulty with focus and listening so that you can address them.

Tip: To help your child listen and cooperate, keep directions short, clear, slow, and brief. Support your instructions with body language, such as pointing or motioning.

Step 2. Teach New Skills

Children are learning how to engage in healthy relationships through loving interactions, including listening effectively. Skill building takes intentional practice. Learning about developmental milestones can help you better understand what your child is working hard to learn. Here are some typical milestones of this age group.¹

• three-four-year-olds are beginning to understand that their body, thoughts, and feelings are their own.
• three-four-year-olds are growing in their imagination and allowing it to drive their play. They may take on an imaginary friend or fear imagined monsters or dangers.
• three-four-year-olds find that they can create more interesting pretend play by cooperating and negotiating with other children.
• three-four-year-olds are talking in five to six-word sentences, able to tell stories and speak in ways others can understand.
• three-four-year-olds develop a curiosity about bodies – their own and others.

Teaching is different than just telling. Teaching builds basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and prepares your child for success. Teaching also involves modeling and practicing the positive behaviors you want to see, promoting skills, and preventing problems.

Actions

• Model listening while interacting with your child. Modeling listening skills can be one of the greatest teaching tools.
  • Share the focus. As you spend time with your child, follow their lead. As they pretend to play, join in their world.²
  • Notice gestures and listen for thoughts and feelings. Improve your nonverbal skill interpretation and determine what your child tries to tell you through their sounds, gestures, and facial expressions. When expressing a feeling on their face or through their body, name it and ask them if it’s true. “You look sad. Are you feeling sad?”
  • Help your child understand other people’s feelings by asking them how they think others feel in certain circumstances. You could say, “How do you think your friend felt when they fell at the playground?” Or, when reading a story or in pretend play, you could ask, “How do you think the boy in the story feels right now?”
  • Children require your attention to thrive. So, why not build a special time into your routine when you are fully present to listen to what your child has to tell you? Turn off your phone. Set a timer if needed. Give it a special name you and your child create, like “Mom and Susie’s Special Time.” Then, notice your body language. Ask yourself: “What is my body communicating, and how am I demonstrating that I’m listening?”
• Create a safe base. At a time when your child is not upset, talk about what makes your child feel better and offers comfort. Create a “safe base” with your child — a place in the house your child can choose to go when they want comfort. Place a pillow, blanket, and stuffed animal there. Play act using it. “I am getting red in the face. I’m hot. I feel angry. I’m going to my safe base to calm down.”
• Narrate your feelings. For example, when meeting someone new, talk about how you feel and ask how they feel. “I am feeling excited to meet our new neighbor. How are you feeling?”

Trap: We can get into the habit of saying “No,” nagging, or scolding when a child is learning through play and struggling with listening. Before doing any of these, pause and ask yourself, “How can I better communicate what my child needs to do?” Then, clearly communicate on eye level what they can do rather than what they shouldn’t do or aren’t doing well. For example, you could say, “Let’s gather your toys together so we can start making dinner.”

If you seize the opportunity, your daily conversations can be opportunities for your child to practice new vital skills. Each time your child works hard to practice essential listening skills, they grow vital new brain connections that strengthen and eventually form habits.

The practice also provides important opportunities to grow self-efficacy—a child’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

• Initially, your child may need active support to encourage listening skills. Use “Show me…” statements with a positive tone and body language to express excitement and curiosity and ask them to demonstrate listening. For example, you could say, “Show me how you listen and let your sister finish her story.” Remember that conversations require the skill of taking turns. Taking turns requires practice and is invaluable when children learn to play with others.
• Recognize effort using “I notice…” statements like, “I noticed how you listened fully to your sister when upset. That’s so helpful to her.” 
• Several games and songs require strong listening skills. Offer practice by playing these games with your child.
  • Hide and Seek is a favorite child game. In it, the child tries to figure out where you’ve hidden or where you’ve hidden from you. This also exercises turn-taking skills, which are essential to communication.
  • Simon Says. Parents can play the leader first to model how the game is played. Call-out instructions are always preceded by “Simon says.” “Simon says, patting your shoulders. Simon says, stop.” Call out a command that isn’t introduced with “Simon says,” and the person who isn’t listening carefully and moves on that command must take on the leader role.
  • Music Making. Experiment with various children’s music, movie music, classic pieces, Reggae, Motown, and other genres that inspire dancing, singing, and playing along. Grab pots, pans, and spoons for instruments. Talk about the different instruments you can hear in the music.
  • Yellow Light, Green Light, Red Light – Stop! This classic game helps children practice impulse control. Adults can lead with children, beginning from the other side of the room. Each time the adult spins around with their eyes shut, they recite the phrase, “Yellow light, green light, red light – stop!” Children run on yellow and green toward the leader but must freeze on red. If the leader turns around and sees running on red, the runner returns to start and tries again.
• Read together. When you read stories together, you engage in a listening activity that can be deeply connecting for both of you. Be sure to involve your child in selecting the book they want to read. Involve your child in holding the book, turning pages, and predicting what will come next. Hold onto a page before turning it and ask, “What do you think will happen next?” Reflect on the story, and you’ll take the learning opportunity one step further. “Do you think Little Red Riding Hood was excited to go to Grandma’s house?”
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  Step 4 Support Your Child’s Development and Success

  
  At this point, you are developing your child’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. Parents and those in a parenting role naturally offer support as they see their child fumble with a situation in which they need help. This is no different.By providing support, you are reinforcing their ability to succeed and helping them improve their listening skills.

  Actions

  • Learn about your child’s development. Each new age presents different challenges. Being informed about your child’s developmental milestones offers you empathy and patience.
  • Stay engaged. Working together on ideas for trying out new and different listening strategies can offer additional support and motivation for your child, especially when communication becomes challenging.
  • Engage in further practice. Play listening games to reinforce skills, such as “Let’s see if you can name all the sounds we hear when we go outside!” Create more opportunities to practice when all is calm.
  Trap: When your child does not listen to you or is clearly focusing elsewhere, you might be tempted to scold or nag, but be sure and give them additional chances. We all lose our focus sometimes. Get down on their level, eye to eye, and review what you said again to help them refocus their attention. End with a smile or hug to reinforce your connection.
  

  Step 5 Recognize Efforts

  
  No matter how old your child is, your positive reinforcement and encouragement have a significant impact.

  If your child 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 child’s confidence. Your recognition also promotes 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 child’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 child’s behavior.

  Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your child. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “You listened to my directions to keep you safe – love seeing that!”   Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment such as a smile, high five, or hug.

  Rewards can be helpful in certain situations by providing a concrete, timely, and positive incentive for doing a good job.  A reward is determined beforehand so the child knows what to expect, like “If you behave in the store, you will get a treat on the drive home.” (If you XX, then I’ll XX.) It stops any negotiations in the heat of the moment.  A reward could be used to teach positive behavior or break a bad habit. The goal should be to help your child progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease a child’s internal motivation.

  Unlike a reward, bribes aren’t planned ahead of time and generally happen when a parent or someone in a parenting role is in the middle of a crisis (like in the grocery store checkout line and a child is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the child will stop the tantrum). While bribes can be helpful in the short term to manage stressful situations, they will not grow lasting motivation or behavior change and should be avoided.

  Trap: It can be easy to resort to bribes when recognition and occasional rewards are underutilized. If parents or those in a parenting role frequently resort to bribes, it is likely time to revisit the five-step process. 
  
  
  Trap: Think about what behavior a bribe may unintentionally reinforce. For example, offering a sucker if a child stops a tantrum in the grocery store checkout line may teach the child that future tantrums lead to additional treats.

  Actions

  • Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything is moving along smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your child’s choice.
  • Recognize small steps along the way. Don’t wait for significant accomplishments—like the full bedtime routine going smoothly—to recognize effort. Remember that your recognition can work as a tool to promote more positive behaviors. Find small ways your child is making an effort and let them know you see them.
  • Build celebrations into your routine. For example, after getting through your bedtime routine, snuggle and read before bed. Or, in the morning, once ready for school, take a few minutes to listen to music together.

  Closing

  Engaging in these five steps is an investment that will strengthen your skills as an effective parent or someone in a parenting role on many other issues and develop essential skills that will last a lifetime for your child. Through this tool, children can become more self-aware, deepen their social awareness, exercise their self-management skills, work on their relationship skills, and demonstrate and practice responsible decision-making.