This post will deal with what has become a lost art in our society - listening. This is not even remotely just a children's problem. It cuts across all age groups and socioeconomic status. I cannot possibly cover this subject on that wide a scale. This post will zero in on the problem as it relates to children's ability to listen.
Half Listeners
As a society we have lost the ability to truly tune in and listen to just about anything for more than a few minutes. We half listen to just about everything. This is true in our relationships, in our professional lives, in our schools, and even in our recreation times. I saw a series of pictures recently showing all the different times people check their cell phones, blackberries, etc. It showed people at a basketball game texting on their cell phone. It is impossible to avoid. We are a distracted society.
We have actually been a distracted society for much longer than you would think. Before it was cell phones and computers, it was television and talking on the phone. For most of the second half of the 20th century, we as a society transitioned from being a society that relied on what we hear to relying on what we see. Of course, now it seems to be getting much worse with every passing year. Is this such a big deal? Does it matter that we now don't really listen?
The Decline in Education
It should come as no surprise that the timing of this transition in our society coincided with our decline in education. Being able to listen affects our ability to focus. Recent research shows that children who cannot focus have a hard time in school. Have our brains changed over the last 70 years? No. What has changed is what we develop. From the time we are infants, we are bombarded with visual stimuli. We no longer have to rely on oral stimuli to process our surroundings. Most of the time, we quickly decipher the situation visually and tune out a great deal of the oral stimuli. This was not possible for the people who lived 100 years ago. They had to depend on oral stimuli as much as visual stimuli to make sense of their world. They developed their ability to listen as much as their ability to see. We as a society handicap ourselves by our over-reliance on visual stimuli.
Listening Is a Skill
Fortunately listening is a skill, and like any other skill it can be developed. We as a society must raise its importance. Our educational system seems to be going in the wrong direction. Instead of putting more focus on developing listening skills, the schools keep transitioning to visual stimuli at a faster pace. Visual stimuli does not increase our focus. Until we start putting more emphasis on listening skills, we will continue our spiral downward. Fortunately, all we need to do is resurrect some old traditions.
Storytelling
With the breakdown of communication in our society, another very valuable tradition has been lost - storytelling. When I was young the older generation still felt it their duty to pass on to the younger generation the stories of the area. However, that faded by the time my own children were small. Until recently, I did not realize how little my own children knew of the stories I took for granted as a child. Somehow storytelling has fallen by the wayside, and that is one of the greatest travesties of the last 70 years. Therefore, number one, we need to resurrect storytelling. This is not the same as reading picture books to children. Storytelling involves no pictures. Children are forced to picture the story in their own minds instead of relying on the pictures in the book. This is an absolutely invaluable skill to develop reading comprehension. If a child cannot picture a story that is told orally, they will not be able to picture in their minds a story that they read without pictures. One of the greatest gifts my third grade teacher gave to us as a class was orally reading books to us that were beyond most of the reading levels of the class. It was our after lunch ritual. She did more to expand the entire class's reading comprehension level in that one act than a great deal of what passes for reading comprehension instruction today.
Other ways to build these types of listening skills might include the following. Partner with the senior citizens of your area and have them come in to tell stories to the children. At first, the children will struggle with listening to stories for more than a few minutes. Therefore, have them start with short stories and gradually build the children's ability to sit and listen to stories this way. It really doesn't take that long. It just takes persistence. Another way involves reading poetry to the children without pictures. This is what I did for my own children, and their reading comprehension scores were very high as children (by the way, I homeschooled). Poetry demands a greater level of visualization than regular stories. One poem a day goes a long way to building children's listening and reading comprehension abilities. Start with nursery rhymes without pictures and build to short poems. Many good poetry books for children are on the market.
The Adventures of Polliwog Pond
At this point I want to have a quick commercial for one of my other blogs "The Adventures of Polliwog Pond." The purpose of the blog is to build listening skills and reading comprehension skills in children. Basically, this blog consists of a series of stories surrounding four characters - a frog, a turtle, a dragonfly, and a duck. The stories are to be read to children orally. Then the parents or teachers ask the children to draw a picture about that story. When parents or teachers send those pictures in to me, I post them on the story that the child illustrated. The posting of the pictures is not the point. The point is to have the stories read orally and have the children draw what they picture in their minds. The posting of the pictures acts as a catalyst to get the children to actually listen to the story. I partner with parents, child cares, and elementary classrooms to provide teachers a means to help develop listening skills in children in today's society. You can see the blog at http://summerbug1226.blogspot.com.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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