Listening and Following Directions
Listening is a fundamental skill, but it’s tough to do! Listening includes hearing the words someone else is saying, understanding those words, then reacting appropriately to what they’ve said. It can be a challenge to listen carefully sometimes, but it’s a building block for other social skills, like taking another person’s perspective, working together and solving problems.
Learning to follow directions is another critical skill for positive social interactions., Kids need to be able to listen, internalize what they’ve heard, process it, and then have their actions reflect what they’ve heard.
Below are some activities and articles about ways to practice listening and following directions in a playful way.
Playing board games is a fantastic way to work on social skills for kids. As a therapist, I play a lot of games both in individual and group therapy. As a mom, I also enjoy playing games with my kids. During this podcast episode, I talk about four games I love:
On today’s episode, I share two ways to practice the important social skill of listening!
On today’s episode, my focus is all games. I talk about all the different social skills kids practice when they play board games and card games. Did you know that by simply playing a game, kids work on…
Inside: 8 Fun Ways to Practice Listening with Kids using games - perfect for school, groups or even at home!
How many times have you said something, and it clearly didn’t register with your child because YOU hear...
Inside: a list of social skills, both external (interacting with others) and internal (your inner thoughts & feelings) with playful ways to practice them.
Recently I went to a symposium on play where Stuart Brown, author of Play: How it Shapes the Mind, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul, was speaking. I took off my mom yoga pants and put on real ones, drove to the symposium and sat down at a table. I pretended that I'm not an introvert and started talking to my neighbor. After I gave her my 30 second description of Encourage Play, she said “that sounds great but what does that really mean?”
You’ve just come home from a bad day at work. All you want to do is talk about what happened with someone, to get a different perspective and maybe even some advice. You start talking, but this happens:
We like to do crafting projects using things we generally have in the house. It makes it quick and easy to set up play times. Check out our favorite fun and easy craft posts. Try one and let me know how it goes!
Can I be totally and completely honest with you about something? Truthfully, I’m slightly scared to put this out there, for the fear of the reaction I’ll get from others when I say what I really think.
(deep breath)