Asma Balfaqih
Family and home
Listening is the hardest courtesy
Listening demands more than being quiet. It demands holding back your own thought until the other person has finished. That is hard for children, and to be honest it is often just as hard for adults.
We have a small exercise at home. Whoever is telling something is not interrupted, not even with a well meant addition. Only when the sentence is finished may the next person speak. At first this felt unusual, and by now the children remind us of it themselves.
It is the courtesy that is least visible and that changes the most. A child who is genuinely listened to does not have to get loud in order to be heard. And along the way it learns how to listen itself.