July 18, 2025

Summer Skills Series: Master the Art of Active Listening

Ever noticed how family conflicts spiral when everyone's talking but nobody's listening? Welcome to the Summer Skills Series on the Stress Nanny Podcast, where today we're diving into the transformative power of active listening.

Most of us think we listen well, but during heated moments with our children, we're often just waiting for our turn to speak or formulating rebuttals rather than truly hearing what's being said. This episode uncovers the neuroscience behind why active listening is so much more than just a communication technique—it's a bridge that connects a child's emotional brain center (amygdala) with their logical problem-solving center (prefrontal cortex). When children feel genuinely heard through phrases like "What I'm hearing you say is..." or "If I understand correctly...", something magical happens: their defensive posture softens, and real problem-solving becomes possible.

The beauty of summer is that it gives us the perfect low-pressure environment to practice emotional intelligence skills before they're needed during the more structured school year. Learn practical phrases that demonstrate active listening, understand why sequencing events helps children integrate different brain regions, and discover how to model this skill so effectively that your children naturally begin using it themselves. This isn't about perfect parenting—it's about creating moments of connection that reduce stress and build resilience for the whole family. Ready to transform how your family communicates? This episode might just be the most valuable 10 minutes of your summer.

For the first Summer Skills Episode on Reacting vs. Responding click here.

Lindsay Miller is a distinguished kids mindfulness coach, mindfulness educator and host of The Stress Nanny Podcast. She is known for her suitcase tricks and playful laugh. When she's not cheering on her daughter or rollerblading on local trails with her husband, you can find her using her 20+ years of child development study and mindfulness certification to dream up new ways to get kids excited about deep breathing. Having been featured on numerous podcasts, platforms and publications, Lindsay’s words of wisdom are high impact and leave a lasting impression wherever she goes.

To sign up for Lindsay's "Calm & Collected" Newsletter click here.

To review the podcast click here.

00:00 - Introduction to Stress Nanny Podcast

01:28 - Understanding Active Listening Basics

03:03 - Phrases for Effective Active Listening

04:34 - The Brain Science Behind Listening

07:40 - Practicing the Skill with Kids

10:08 - Closing Thoughts and Next Steps

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You're listening to the Stress Nanny Podcast and I'm your host, lindsay Miller.

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I'm here to help you keep an eye on your family's stress levels.

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In our fast-paced lives, the ability to manage stress has never been more important for kids or adults.

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When it comes to stress, we have two choices we can decrease stress or increase our resilience to it.

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Here on the number eight ranked stress podcast, I interview experts and share insights to help you do both.

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When you tune in each week, you'll bring your stress levels down and your resilience up so that stress doesn't get in the way of you living your best life.

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I'm so glad you're here.

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Welcome to the Stress Nanny Podcast.

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I'm your host, lindsay Miller, and I'm delighted you're here for another episode of our Summer Skills Series.

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So if you listened last week, this is a series we're doing to help you practice skills of emotional intelligence at home during the summer.

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This is a really great time to practice because we don't have the hustle and bustle of the school year and yet these tools and skills that we'll practice are going to come in really clutch during the school year.

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They make communication easier, they make emotional regulation easier and they just make life flow a little bit better.

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So this week we're going to build on our conversation from last week about response and reaction, and we're going to build on our conversation from last week about response and reaction and we're going to talk about active listening.

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So a lot of times when we're communicating with other people, when they are talking, we're busy formulating a response.

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Either it's a rebuttal, something to kind of fight back or argue what they've said, or it's like a contribution where we're saying, oh yeah, I've done that too, like I loved it, it was such a fun place to visit, or that concert was amazing.

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Yeah, I thought it was one of the best I've ever been to, and those are great.

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Like, those responses are great and we don't need to be overly nitpicky about how we respond in certain situations.

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But when emotions are high, practicing active listening is especially important because it allows us to respond more than we react.

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So, like I said, in everyday conversations, if you're just chatting about what you did last night, a game you watched or played in there's not, you know, we can actively listen and it's great.

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But it's not as crucial as if we're in a disagreement, if we're trying to work through a problem, if, you know, in a disciplinary situation with kids.

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If we're in a disagreement, if we're trying to work through a problem, if, you know, in a disciplinary situation with kids, if they're trying to explain their point of view, those moments active listening can have a really big impact because they allow everyone in the exchange to feel seen and heard.

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And when people, especially kids, feel seen and heard, they're much more likely to, like, engage in dialogue or problem solve or, you know, go through the process of resolving a conflict, um, rather than if they're kind of digging their heels in and just really really wanting to be seen, really really wanting to be heard and wanting their perspective and viewpoint to be validated.

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Now, I know it can get tiring to do this constantly, or especially in the middle of arguments, when potentially you've seen something happen or you know that the conversation meant a little bit differently than what the child in front of you is saying, that it is how it went.

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But again, even in those situations, validating the perspective of the person simply by reflecting back what you heard allows you to find some common ground to continue the conversation on.

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So let me go through a few phrases that can be used in these types of situations to give you an example of what active listening can look like.

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So the idea is that we clarify and then we respond.

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So the clarifying questions we can ask are things like so what you're saying is fill in the blank, if I heard you right and then you repeat you know it doesn't have to be word for word, but you repeat back what the other person just told you correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like and then you go ahead and repeat back what they said or what you know, what their side of the argument or their perspective on any exchange is, or just something as simple as it sounds like what you're saying is.

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So in the exchange where we have the opportunity to practice this type of reflective active listening, what we do is we open up our own understanding of the other person's perspective and until they feel that you know, seen and heard, they're going to be fighting, fighting, fighting to have their perspective validated, so like have their perspective appropriately represented, so like have their perspective appropriately represented.

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So, even though it might sound tedious to repeat back what someone just told you, it is actually really effective and it's also helpful and can save time, because in the long run, if you go through and solve a problem but it's not actually the problem that needs solving, then you've just wasted a bunch of time.

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But if you can get clarity on the problem at hand and then solve it, you know, in a creative way, then you're in a position to, you know, just move through it with a bit more ease.

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One more thing I will say is that when we're talking with kids who are emotionally triggered so maybe they like a sibling has hit them or taken something, or they've just had a really rough exchange with a friend their amygdala the part of the brain that's kind of a fight, flight, freeze, faint or fawn the reactive part of the brain, that's what gets activated.

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When we can help kids connect to the prefrontal cortex, which is a part of the brain that can problem solve, it can process emotion, it can talk through different situations, that part of the brain is more receptive to moving through struggle, whereas the amygdala is going to be the part of the brain that kind of keeps it going.

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So anytime we can connect kids to the prefrontal cortex, we're going to help them diffuse the situation, whereas if they just stay stuck in the amygdala, the situation will likely escalate.

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Now here's where that's important, because when we practice this reflective active listening, we invite them naturally to translate those feelings that they're feeling from the amygdala into words.

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So when we can bring some logic online, when we can help kids get a little more analytical about what's going on, even if it's like let me get the order of this right.

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So what you're saying is John came in the room while you were working on your Legos.

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He knocked over your Legos.

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You were really angry and so then you whacked him in the leg.

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Is that the order?

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Is that how it happened?

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Even just a conversation like that, where it's reflective, you're trying to get all the information.

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You're trying to make sure that the child who's frustrated, or you know the kids in the exchange are talking through what happened and how they felt about it.

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Then, like, if he's like, oh, no, like, first I called him to come in and look at what I was making because I thought it was so cool, and then when he came in, that's when he knocked it over.

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You know something like that.

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Anytime they're processing and having to sequence something, the prefrontal cortex is activated.

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So active listening not only invites them to feel seen and heard and kind of helps put you on a trajectory to work through the issue.

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It also serves them because it puts all of their brain working together.

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It's called integration.

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So when we can integrate the different parts of the brain, the emotive parts and the logical parts, we end up with a whole brained child, a child who can think through the feelings that they're having and then work with them in a productive rather than a reactive way.

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So I'd love to hear this week, if you practice active listening, how it goes and what kinds of things you learn as a result of practicing.

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And just like any skill, when we practice and model the skill for our kids, they're in a position to then figure out how to use that skill in their own lives.

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So I recommend with any of these skills, that you kind of put it into practice for a little bit.

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First, you know you walk through what it looks like in a given situation before it happens.

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So think through how you might use active listening the next time a child comes to you with a complaint, the next time you're breaking up a fight, the next time your kiddo comes home upset from school or from a play date or from.

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You know any of those situations and then you think about how you might respond.

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So the more you kind of can visualize how you would respond to those moments, the easier it's going to be.

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When, like, a moment faces you during the summer, right, where you're just like with your kiddo at the playground and something happens, you can put the skill into practice.

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It can be tricky, without kind of thinking it through a little bit beforehand, to just on the fly make it a habit.

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But if you can kind of walk through like, think through the past school year, think through stuff you've done this summer, and think about when I'm, when I could have used this skill, when, when would it have come in handy?

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What would I have said, and then it'll be easier when you face a moment that you really need to use it.

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So again, once we start to practice it on our own, practice it with our kids, it becomes more natural for us and then we can use it in a situation where maybe the kids are having an argument with each other.

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If it's not too heated and it's still at the point where there's some communication that can happen, we can use some too heated and it's still at the point where there's some communication that can happen.

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We can, you know, use some reflective listening and say, like John, what would you?

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You know, like what?

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Did you just hear Jimmy say how?

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How does Jimmy feeling about this?

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And we invite kids to reflect, to process and to practice the skill themselves.

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Again, we never want to make this punitive.

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It's never something like.

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You just need to use your active listening skills right.

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It's always an imitation, as something that we model first so that they know what it feels like and they know how different it feels when we're actually seen and heard in an exchange, and then they'll be more inclined to use it in other situations.

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So good luck with active listening.

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I'm excited to hear how it goes.

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Thanks again for being here until next time.

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You've just finished an episode of the stress nanny podcast, so hopefully you feel a little more empowered when it comes to dealing with stress.

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Feel free to take a deep breath and let it out slowly as you go back to your day.

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Thank you again for being here.

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Until next time.

Summer Skills Series: Master the Art of Active Listening

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