Active Listening -- A Parent's Go-To Tool

When we take a foreign language in school, we can spend years studying it and still not be fluent. That's because we are not immersed in the language and we have to think before we speak. Active listening, for parents, is kind of a foreign language. It's a way to help kids come to terms with their feelings and then joining with them to help them solve their own problems. While solving our kids' problems for them can be a short-term fix, it deprives our children of the process by which they are best able to solve their own problems.  When you are hard-wired to problem-solve with your children, take a breath and first active listen their feelings.