Listening

Now Is the Right Time!

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

It may seem that the only things infants can do in these early months of life involve eating, sleeping, and crying. They are learning so much that your infant’s brain will double in size in the first year of life. They are deeply engaged in building the foundational social and emotional skills to set the course for their lifetime.

Your infant’s healthy development depends upon their ability to listen and understand what you and others are communicating, even at these early stages. Listening skills support your infant’s ability to engage in healthy relationships, focus, and learn. For example, infants need to feel that they can successfully communicate with you and understand what you are saying for their survival. Each time you are responsive to your infant’s cries and needs, showing them love and care, they feel understood and learn about the two-way nature of communication.

Through their interactions with you and other caregivers, infants come to better understand themselves. They learn 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 infant, and exercise listening skills may be missed. Listening skills require other important 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 to meet your and your infant’s needs. The steps below include specific and practical strategies to prepare you for growing this vital skill.

Why Listening?

Infants learn about who they are 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. Soon, you’ll face a fast-moving child who needs to follow your instructions to stay safe in your home and neighborhood. Your focus on listening and communicating with your infant 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

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 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 infant cultivate effective listening skills, a critical life skill. The same process can also be used to address other parenting issues (learn more about the process).

Infants cry between two and three hours every day. Their primary form of communicating with you is through crying. Paying close attention to your infant’s facial expressions, movements, and sounds helps you understand what they are trying to communicate. Your efforts to learn from your infant create empathetic interactions that promote healthy listening skills in you and your infant. In becoming sensitive to the slight differences in your infant’s cries and expressions, you

• are responding to their needs
• are growing their trust in you, sense of safety, and sense of healthy relationships
• are improving your ability to communicate with one another
• are growing your own and their self-control (to calm down when upset and focus their attention)
• are modeling empathy and problem-solving skills

Actions

Consider how the distinct sounds of your infant’s cries connect with their body language. It is okay if you are unsure or don’t know what your infant is trying to communicate with you. Every infant is unique, and it takes time to learn. Check out these common cues and see if they match your infant’s feelings and associated needs.

• If an infant is uncomfortable, they may use a less intense, short, whiny cry like “eh, eh, eh.”
• If an infant is in pain, its eyes may be closed or open for a second and look blankly in the distance. Parents often feel a greater sense of urgency with this cry. If it’s gas pain, it may scrunch up its face and pull its legs up.
• If an infant is scared, its eyes may remain open, its head may move backward, it may have a penetrating look and an explosive cry, and it might suddenly extend its legs, arch its back, and then curl up again—an involuntary startle response.
• If an infant feels angry, its eyes may be half open or half closed, either in no direction or a fixed location. Its mouth may be open or half open. Gestures may accompany crying, and it may arch its back to show it is upset. The intensity gradually increases.
• If an infant is hungry, it may produce a cry that, depending on the intensity, resembles anger or discomfort. Cries can be short, low-pitched, and rise and fall.
• If an infant is tired, they may rub their eyes with them closing and opening. They may pull at their ears and yawn.

Identifying their cries and physical cues can help you respond to their needs. For example, if an infant is uncomfortable, respond by loosening or changing clothing or swaddling or changing their position and see if it helps to soothe. If your response to your infant’s cues doesn’t help, that’s okay. Test another response and see if it helps to soothe. It takes time to learn what your infant is communicating with you. As you practice, you’ll get better at recognizing their communication style. They will feel a greater sense of your understanding and responsiveness so that your interactions become more two-way instead of one-way.

Infants are learning how to be 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 infant is working hard to learn. Here are some examples:¹

• 0-3-month-olds require lots of daytime and nighttime sleep. They take their first bath, show their first authentic smile, lift and hold up their head, and begin to make gurgling noises to communicate beyond crying.
• 3-6-month-olds seem to “wake up” and become more aware of their surroundings and more capable of interacting with their caregivers. They participate in conversations with coos and laughs and make spit bubbles. They discover their wiggly body parts and learn about who they are as individuals, including their emotions, through every interaction with you.
• 6-9-month-olds are eager to communicate through facial expressions, sounds, and gestures. They imitate you as they learn. They are interested in grabbing objects and examining them. They attempt to move and may begin scooching, crawling, or cruising on furniture backward and forward.
• 9-12-month-olds can engage in conversations, listening to you and adding their sounds, gestures, and beginnings of words. Asking questions and allowing time for your infant to respond promotes two-way communication. They are gaining a sense of cause and effect in basic terms such as, “If I put my hand in the water, it will get wet.” They may be more upset now when you leave them. They are becoming highly mobile, either cruising or taking their first independent steps.

Teaching is different than just telling. Teaching builds basic skills, grows problem-solving abilities, and prepares your infant 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 infant. Modeling listening skills can be one of the greatest teaching tools.
  • Share the focus. As you spend time with your infant, follow their lead. As they pick up new toys or explore a different part of the room, they move, notice, and name what they are exploring.²
  • Notice gestures and listen for thoughts and feelings. Attempt to figure out what your infant is trying to tell you through their sounds, gestures, and facial expressions.
  • Infants 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 infant has to tell you? Turn off your phone. Set a timer if needed. Then, notice your body language. Ask yourself, “What is my body communicating, and how am I demonstrating that I’m listening?”
• Talk to your infant.
• Talk clearly and slowly. Exaggerate your words for clarity and understanding. Don’t use “baby talk,” which can be difficult to understand.
• Label what you see. “I see a duck. Quack, Quack. Do you see the duck, too?”
• Research confirms that talking to an infant enhances their language development.³
• Narrate your daily routines. As you prepare breakfast at home or go shopping together at the store, talk about what you are doing each step of the way. Involve your infant by asking questions. For example, “I am getting out your favorite cereal bowl. I think we’ll have some cereal this morning. Does that sound yummy to you?”

Daily conversations allow your infant to practice new vital skills if you seize those chances. Each time your infant works hard to practice essential listening skills, they grow vital new brain connections that strengthen and eventually form habits.

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 infant may need active support to encourage listening skills. Engage in listening activities together, like listening to a simple audio book or a song, and then reflect on what you heard. “I heard a tapping beat.”
• Recognize effort using “I notice…” statements like, “I noticed how you listened to my direction to stay on the rug. That will keep you safe.”
• Making animal sounds can be a fun, engaging game for you and your infant as they attempt to match what they hear with their growing ability to make sounds.
• Read or chant rhymes or poetry to your infant, particularly those with repetitive words and sounds.
• Make music together by playing a song and offering your infant a rattle, tambourine, or other simple instrument to play along with.
• Read together. When you read stories together, you engage in a listening activity that can be deeply connecting for both of you. 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?” Involve your infant in selecting the book, holding it, and turning the pages to build ownership and interest in reading.

At this point, you are developing your infant’s listening skills and allowing them to practice. You can offer support when needed by reteaching, monitoring, and coaching. Parents and those in a parenting role naturally offer support as they see their infant fumble in a situation where they need help. This is no different.

By providing support, you reinforce their ability to succeed and help them improve their listening skills.

Actions

• Learn about your infant’s development. Each new age presents different challenges, and being informed about your child’s developmental milestones can help you be more compassionate and patient.
• Stay engaged. Trying new listening strategies can offer additional support and motivation for your infant, especially when communication becomes challenging.

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

If your infant 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 infant’s confidence. Your recognition also encourages 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 infant’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 infant’s behavior.

Recognition occurs after you observe the desired behavior in your infant. Noticing and naming the specific behavior you want to reinforce is key to promoting more of it. For example, “I notice you listened when I asked you to back away from the staircase. I know you’re curious about climbing, and I am glad you are keeping safe.”  Recognition can include nonverbal acknowledgment, such as a 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 infant 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 infant progress to a time when the reward will no longer be needed. If used too often, rewards can decrease an infant’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 an infant is having a tantrum. To avoid disaster, a parent offers to buy a sucker if the infant 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.

Actions

• Recognize and call out when things are going well. It may seem obvious, but it’s easy not to notice when everything moves smoothly. Noticing and naming the behavior provides the necessary reinforcement that you see and value your infant’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 infant makes an effort and let them know you see them.
• Build celebrations into your routine. For example, after completing your bedtime routine, snuggle and read before bed.

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 infant. 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.