5 Ways to Help a Child or Young Person Listen

If you work with children and young people, you might feel it’s impossible to get them to listen. Especially in busy settings, it can feel like we’re constantly repeating ourselves! It’s also something parents and carers often ask for our advice about, when they feel their child won’t pay attention to them at home.

So what can you do to help a young person in your care listen to you?

What does ‘good listening’ look like?

When we think of children paying attention, we often imagine them stopping what they’re doing and sitting still. We might feel they’re not paying attention if they’re squirming in their seat, fidgeting, doodling, or playing with something.

However, children and young people are active. They find it difficult to stay still for any length of time and they may be listening, even though their body is moving. Often, we look for eye contact to show someone is listening, but for many individuals, this can feel uncomfortable.

We can challenge our preconceptions about what ‘good listening’ looks like and instead focus on our own communication skills, meeting individual needs, and the physical environment we’re in to help children and young people listen when we speak.

So what does ‘good listening’ look like? There’s just no one-size-fits-all.

Why do children and young people appear not to be paying attention?

There are many reasons why a young person might not be paying attention when we speak. Having a good understanding of them, and of their needs and preferences can help us understand why they appear to not be listening, or struggling to give us attention.

They could be:

• • Focused on something else: When a young person is intently doing something, they may literally not hear us—this is something we all do when we are very focused on an activity.

• • Worried about something: If they feel stressed or under pressure, they may struggle to focus on what we’re saying. They could just be preoccupied with other thoughts or be having a physiological stress response to a perceived threat.

• • Choosing not to listen: Young people may find it hard to stop doing an activity they enjoy, so it’s not surprising they may choose not to listen when it will take them away from something they are enjoying.

• • Struggling to process what we’re saying: Many children can struggle to follow long, complex sentences, or multi-step instructions. It can take them longer to process information and they can feel frustrated if they can’t understand.

While there are many strategies we can use to help a child or young person listen, it’s also important to remember physical needs. If they don’t seem to hear instructions, mishear, or increasingly don’t seem to pay attention, it’s always worth checking if a recent hearing test has been carried out.