The single most important thing we can do for the children in our care is to teach them to listen. Listening skills are the one thing most people never learn and suffer from a lack of all their lives.

Listening means closing the mouth and opening the ears. Listening means to put self second and someone else first. Listening means to put our own ideas aside and listen to someone else talk about what they think.

Listening does not mean to adopt other people’s ideas, allow people to bully us, or change everything we think. Listening, after all is passive. It’s a time when we simply stop what we are doing and put ourselves on hold for someone else to “have a moment.”

That’s not possible with most adults, and those adults who never listen teach their own children not to listen by example, and that’s a shame.

Listening usually follows a question. Most adults rarely ask a question and less frequently listen to the answer. That’s because most adults are trudging through life holding a hand mirror, and we all know how frustrating that is.

We are working steadily at question asking and listening so that our children will be the absolute best students who ever lived. By learning to listen to what is being said, and that means putting self aside, and finding what is being said interesting enough to ask a question means the development of “curiosity,” and curiosity about the world is one of the most important attributes a functioning human can have.

And while we are discussing such topics, teaching parents to read is a goal as well. This forum – the blog – is our school newspaper. If you are reading this article, just say “Rumpelstiltskin,” and your child gets a treasure box pass.