Lesson 3 — Listen to Your Children

Teaching Guide

  1. Lesson Materials

    1. Teaching guide: Listen to Your Children

    2. Handout: Listen to Your Children

    3. Handout: Hints on Communicating with Children

    4. Self-test: Do You Listen to Your Children?

  2. Preparation for the Lesson

    1. Read the handout before presenting the lesson, perhaps marking or highlighting what you think are the most important points to stress.

    2. Distribute the handout a week or so before the lesson and ask clients to read it in advance (if possible and if it seems appropriate for the client).

  3. Suggested Lesson Outline

    4. Following are some ideas for discussion and activities. In a limited time, you will probably be able to do only one (or part of one) of the activities. Select the ones that you believe will lead to a point you want to stress, that you are comfortable with, and that you believe will interest your clients.

    1. Self-test

      1. Have the clients complete the self-test, "Do You Listen to Your Children?" (Allow two to three minutes.)

      2. Score the test with the clients. (Scoring key is on bottom of test page.)

      3. Briefly "process" the test:

        1. Review what the scores mean. Remind clients not to take scores on such tests too seriously.

        2. Ask for any reactions to the test. Ask if they realize anything about themselves as listeners as a result of the test.

    2. Discussion: Listening skills

      Here are some questions to think about and discuss—especially in a group setting; perhaps in a one-to-one lesson:

      1. Do you believe you are a good listener when it comes to your children? Why do you believe you are or are not?

      2. Are you a better or worse listener with your children than with other people? Why?

      3. What is "good listening"? Refer to the handout for some thoughts on this subject.

      4. What can interfere with good listening? What can you do to overcome this interference?

    3. Review the handout

      1. If the parents have read the handout in advance, ask them to share a point or two that they thought was especially important.

      2. Review with the parents the major points from the handout. You may especially want to "walk through" the hints listed at the end of the handout.

      3. You may also want to share information from other reading or experiences.

      4. Check the parents' understanding of each of the points and discuss ways they can apply them.

    4. Activity: Listening for nonverbal messages

      We constantly send and receive nonverbal messages which tell others and ourselves a great deal about feelings. If you and your clients are interested in dealing with this matter, try the following activity, particularly if you are working with a group of parents.

      1. Ask: Can you tell what kind of day your spouse or children or friends or other persons close to you have had even before they say anything? How? Give specific clues, cues, or behaviors.

      2. Ask: Do you interpret the moods or feelings of other people at home or elsewhere? On what do you base your interpretation? Are you usually correct? How confident do you feel about your conclusions or interpretations?

      3. Exercise: Interpreting nonverbal cues

        The goals of this exercise are to show: (1) that nonverbal cues can be ambiguous in communicating feelings; and (2) that different people may have different reactions to the same nonverbal cues. For this exercise you need from five to ten pictures of children or children and parents cut out of magazines. Each picture should have a child who is expressing a feeling. Number each picture.

        The procedure for the exercise is as follows:

        1. Explain to the parents that we reveal our emotions and feelings to people in many ways—often with words, of course, but also with our faces, our hands, and our bodies. Tell them you have several pictures of children showing different emotions.

        2. Pass each picture around.

        3. Ask each person to write or note his or her answer to these questions about each picture:

          • How do the individuals in the picture feel? How do you know? What indicators or evidence led you to that conclusion?

          • How does this picture make you feel?

        4. The parents then discuss their answers for each picture. Ask them to consider these questions:

          • How similar were your ideas of what the individuals in the picture felt?

          • How similar were your feelings in response to the pictures?

          • If members of your group gave different answers: What makes the pictures so ambiguous?

          • Could your own nonverbal cues be interpreted in as many different ways as the ones in the pictures were?

  4. Follow-up/Homework

    1. Ask the parents to set a goal concerning how they listen to their children—an idea, strategy, or tactic that they will try in the next couple of weeks. If they and you are comfortable with this, you might have them share their goal with you—in oral or written form. (This could be a good basis for evaluating the lesson.)

    2. Whether or not they share their goal with you at lesson's end, check back with them in two or three weeks about how they did with their goal.

  5. Application to Nutrition Lessons

    6. This material can be applied to any of your nutrition lessons that involve interaction and communication between parent and child—eating problems, food dislikes, snacks, food choices, etc.

  6. References

    7. For parents:

    Faber, Adele and Elaine Mazlish. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. Avon Books, 1982.

    For teacher:

    Bolton, Robert. People Skills. Prentice Hall (Spectrum Books), 1979.



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