TO LISTEN TO A CHILD-TEACHING A CHILD TO LISTEN TO THEIR BODY

It is important for a parent to listen to their child and to try to understand how he feels about things. It is equally or more important to teach a child to listen to themselves.

Elimination communication insures a child stays continually tuned to her elimination needs. If a child is being conventionally toilet trained, the parent needs to un-diaper train the toddler and teach her to pay attention to her bodily sensations of needing to relieve herself, stop what she is doing and make her way to the bathroom.

This is yet another of the many screwed up things about the public school system. Good parents teach their children to listen to their bodies when the child is being toilet trained. Then some teacher the child encounters a few years later tells the child they can't go to the bathroom when they need to.

In this same way, a child should be taught to listen to all of his bodily sensations: to know when he is tired, when he has satisfied his hunger, etc. The child should also learn to recognize different kinds of pain and other physical sensations in isolated areas of their body. For example, if a child has a stomachache, he should learn to recognize whether it is constipation, hunger, nervousness, or something else.
As well, a child should be taught properly how to recognize and deal with their emotions. They should be taught about how emotions can some or oftentimes mask deeper feelings, such as a little boy who expresses anger at something because he actually feels hurt, neglected or nervous.

A child should be taught not to take his emotions out on others (a lot of adults I know should have been taught that.) Nevertheless, she should also be taught that her emotions are a normal, God-given part of her which if dealt with in the appropriate way can help her deal with the world. Tell her it's normal for her to process feelings such as hurt or disappointment, but that she should do it in a way that doesn't hurt others.

Concerning crying, she should be taught that, while she shouldn't cry over every little thing, crying is an acceptable and healthy way of processing feelings at times. Sometimes, if the little girl is faced with a situation in which neither she nor anyone else can do anything about it, crying can be a healthy way to deal with the situation internally. Even in situations where something can be done, crying may be healthy and necessary for releasing pent-up emotion.