Reflective Listening Techniques for Early Childhood Educators

Good communication is key in childcare. Every day, educators tackle tricky conversations with children where things can easily get misunderstood. Reflective listening offers a powerful strategy to transform these interactions, fostering deeper connection. It involves understanding the feelings and meaning behind words. Mastering it builds stronger relationships, de-escalates situations, and creates a supportive learning environment.

This article explains reflective listening, its distinction from active listening, and how to implement it.

What is reflective listening in early childhood education?

Reflective listening is a communication technique that involves carefully listening to another person and then reflecting their thoughts and feelings back to them to confirm understanding. It’s about more than just paraphrasing; it’s about capturing the underlying emotion of the speaker. For an early childhood educator, this means tuning into a child’s non-verbal cues and the feelings they might not have the words to express.

For example, instead of just hearing a child say, "He took my truck," a reflective listener might respond with, "You sound really upset because you were still playing with that truck." This response validates the child's feelings and shows you understand their perspective, opening the door for more productive problem-solving. By demonstrating empathy, you help children feel safe, seen, and valued.

Benefits of reflective listening for children and educators

Incorporating reflective listening into your daily practice offers significant benefits for everyone in your childcare program. It’s a foundational skill that supports positive development and strengthens your entire community.

Benefits for children

• Emotional development: When you validate a child's feelings, you teach them that their emotions are acceptable and manageable. Research consistently shows that this emotional validation is crucial for developing self-regulation and resilience.
• Language and communication skills: Hearing their thoughts and feelings rephrased helps children build their vocabulary and learn how to express themselves more clearly.
• Problem-solving abilities: Reflective listening models a thoughtful approach to conflict. It helps children slow down, consider others' perspectives, and participate in finding solutions.
• Stronger relationships: Children who feel understood are more likely to form secure attachments with their caregivers, which is essential for healthy social and emotional growth.

Benefits for educators

• Deeper connections with children: Understanding the 'why' behind a child’s behavior allows you to respond with more empathy and effectiveness, strengthening your bond.
• Improved communication with families: Using reflective listening with families builds a partnership based on trust and mutual respect. When families feel heard, they are more likely to collaborate with you.
• Reduced stress and burnout: By de-escalating conflicts and fostering a more positive classroom atmosphere, reflective listening can make your day-to-day work less stressful and more rewarding.

How to practice reflective listening: 4 key techniques

Getting started with reflective listening is about being intentional in your conversations. Here are four techniques you can use to begin practicing.

1. Repeat or rephrase

This is the simplest form of reflective listening. You can repeat a child's exact words or rephrase them slightly to show you're paying attention.

• Child: "I can't get the block to stay on top."
• Educator: "You're trying to get that block to stay on top of the tower."

2. Paraphrase or summarize

This technique involves restating the child's message in your own words. This confirms your understanding of the core message.

• Child: "She knocked my blocks down, and then he took my car, and I didn't get a turn on the slide!"
• Educator: "It sounds like you've had a really frustrating morning."

3. Identify and name the feeling

This is a powerful way to help children develop emotional literacy. Observe their body language and tone, and make a guess about what they might be feeling.

• Child: (Stomping their foot) "I don't want to clean up!"
• Educator: "You seem angry that playtime is over. It's hard to stop when you're having so much fun."

4. Connect feeling to content

This technique links the emotion you've identified to the specific situation that caused it. This is the most advanced form of reflective listening and is highly effective for showing deep understanding.

• Child: (Quietly, looking at the floor) "Nobody played with me today."
• Educator: "You're feeling lonely because you wanted a friend to play with you during free play."

The difference between reflective listening and active listening

Reflective and active listening are essential communication skills for early childhood educators. However, key differences between the two approaches can impact how effective you are in supporting a child's emotional needs. 

Active listening

As an active listener, you give your full attention to the child's words. This involves the use of verbal and nonverbal communication. 

Reflective listening

Reflective listening requires you to be an active listener, but it takes your communication skills a step further because you reflect to the child what they have said. This can involve summarizing or mirroring their thoughts and feelings to demonstrate that you understand their perspective. Reflective listening can be helpful when a child expresses complex or challenging emotions, as it helps them feel heard and validated when they are able to see and hear that you understand.

How to develop reflective listening skills

To be an effective reflective listener, you must take time to develop attending skills and reflecting skills. It's okay if it takes practice to feel comfortable using these skills naturally in your classroom. 

Attending skills

These are non-verbal communication skills that demonstrate that you're interested in and are paying attention to the child.

• Contact: Making eye contact indicates interest in the child who is communicating with you. The amount of contact should be natural and doesn't require you to have fixed contact throughout the entire conversation. It's also important to consider your physical distance. Depending on the conversation topic and even your relationship with the child, you can determine an appropriate and comfortable distance.
• Gestures: Pay attention to your body throughout the conversation. Crossing your arms, looking at your watch or the clock repeatedly, staring off, or turning your attention to something or someone else can communicate that you're no longer interested in the conversation. Be sure to make gestures that demonstrate you're focusing on the child. 
• Environment: Conversations will likely occur in a busy classroom, hallway, or playground. So, while you can't do much to change the overall environment, think about making it as private as possible. Perhaps you can move to a quiet corner or allow the child to speak with their back facing the distractions around them. Also, consider removing physical barriers such as a desk or table between you. 
• Interested silence: Silence can motivate children to speak. Instead of rushing to talk when they're done, allow the silence to linger, showing you're interested in what they have to say next. Sometimes silence is also helpful as they process their feelings and figure out what else they want to say. 

Reflecting skills

These verbal communication skills require you to reflect what was said to you back to the child. You must do this without adding your perspective or judgment to the conversation. 

Reflecting skills are broken down into five categories.

• Acknowledgment response: You respond to statements with nonverbal gestures or one to three-word comments like "right" or "uh-huh" to demonstrate you're listening.
• Reflecting content: You reflect the essence of what they say in your own words. When reflecting on content, you focus on their thoughts, ideas, beliefs, etc. 
• Reflecting feelings: You reflect their feelings in your own words. In this case, you explicitly name their emotions by using vocabulary to capture the emotion of their statements. 
• Reflecting meanings: You reflect the content and feelings of their statements.
• Summarizing: You reflect on the main points of their statements. You should summarize these within two to three sentences. This is useful at the end of a conversation to capture the overall point and clarify the discussion.

Depending on your conversation with the child, you may need to share it with their parents. A tool like brightwheel's daily report feature lets you easily record activities, share real-time updates, and send daily messages to parents.

Reflective listening examples

There are countless situations in which you can utilize reflective listening in an early education setting. 

Acknowledgment responses

You can acknowledge a child's words with simple verbal and nonverbal statements or gestures. 

Child: “The only reason I told him not to sit next to me at lunch was because he was playing with Thomas at recess instead of playing with me like he usually does.”

Response: “Okay.”

Other examples of acknowledging statements include:

• “I see.”
• “That's interesting.”
• “Tell me more.”

Reflecting content

To reflect the content, you reflect to the child their thoughts, ideas, and beliefs from the discussion. Here's an example.

Child: “My friend gave me a best friend necklace for my birthday. My brother knows I wear it every day, but he likes to mess with me. So, this morning he took my necklace and wouldn't give it back. I got so mad that I yelled at him, even though I knew my baby sister was sleeping. She woke up crying, and dad asked me why I was being loud. I tried to explain what happened, but he wasn’t listening to me. My brother finally gave my necklace back while we were eating breakfast.”

Response: “Your brother took your favorite necklace, and you yelled at him, which woke up your sister. Then your dad wouldn't listen when you tried to explain why you yelled at your brother because he was taking care of your little sister.”

Reflecting feelings

When a child communicates with you, reflect their feelings to them. You can do this when they don't explicitly state their emotion. Here’s an example.

Child: “I wanted to make cupcakes with my mom this weekend, and she told me we couldn't because she had to work late. I told her how much I wanted to do it, but she still said no. I didn't want to be around her anymore, so I went into my room and waited until she made me come out for dinner.”

Response: “It sounds like you were frustrated.”

Reflecting meaning

When reflecting on meaning, you want to reflect on the content and feelings of the conversation.

Child: “I was upset because you didn't let me finish coloring my picture. I just had a little more to add and wanted to finish it before I went home. I don't have the same crayons at home, so the colors won't look the same if I finish it there.”

Response: “It sounds like you're upset because you want to finish your picture at school, so the colors look the same.”

Summarizing

To summarize a child's statement, you want to state the key points of the conversation. 

Child: “I'm never tired during nap time and wish I could stay up and do something else. My parents don't make me take naps at home and I don’t want to take a nap here. I just lay there with my eyes open for a long time, thinking about everything, and my body doesn't want to be still. I try, but I need to do something while I'm laying there, then maybe I could be quiet.”

Response: “If I understand you correctly, you need something to do so you can be quiet during nap time because you're not tired.”

Common reflective listening mistakes to avoid

As you begin to practice, it’s common to make a few mistakes. Being aware of these pitfalls can help you refine your approach.

• Asking too many questions: Reflective listening is about statements, not questions. Saying "You're sad" is more validating than asking "Are you sad?"
• Jumping to problem-solving: Resist the urge to fix the problem immediately. The first step is always to connect with and validate the emotion.
• Adding your own judgment: Avoid phrases like "You shouldn't be so upset" or "It's not a big deal." The goal is to accept the child's feelings as they are.
• Sounding like a parrot: Vary your reflective statements. If you simply repeat everything back, it can feel insincere. Mix rephrasing with identifying feelings to keep the conversation natural.

Reflective listening for kids

Reflective listening is a valuable tool for early childhood educators. By actively listening to children and reflecting on their thoughts and feelings, you can help them feel heard and understood. This, in turn, can boost their self-esteem, promote positive social and emotional development, and help them build strong relationships with the children and adults in their lives.