Why god gave us two ears and one mouth?

Yesterday I had CH & S class. We learned about counselling skills. Be a good listener, that’s one of the important skills that we learned and practised during the counsellor-client activities in class. I enjoyed the activities, practising both role as a counsellor and client.

Now try to reflect yourself, are you a good listener? When your friends pour their hearts out, did you try to find time to listen to them or would you simply listen for few minutes and then advise them based on your past experience? Instead of being a listener, you act more like an advisor and do most of the talking. I guess most people do that. In fact, sometimes I do but I hope I’ll be able to change that from now on.

Last few days, I read 'How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk' by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I find this book really interesting although I haven’t finished reading it. In this book, the writer shared their years of experience, stories and new insights from their parent group. Simply describe, this book assist parent to nurture and sharpen their skills in parent-child relationship. I think parents should read this book, they might find some of the skills useful and applicable, if not all.

Some of the interesting things in this book, the authors said parents should say less, because a single word sometimes works better than a long paragraph. For example, when a mother said, “Look at you! You’re walking out the door without your lunch again. You’d forget your head if it weren’t attached to you” or “Son, your lunch!” Which do you think will have more effect on children?

In listening skills, the author suggested, among other things, that parents should listen with full attention and acknowledge their children’s feelings with words. Even simple words like, oh.. mm…uuh… will do. I believe it’s true. I know it's not easy for parents to communicate and listen to their children especially after a hard, rough, tiring day at work. But sometimes, it’s not that children want parents to give every solution to their problems. They just wanted to share their feelings and parents need to acknowledge that. I guess this can be adapted in our daily relationships too, with family, friends, colleague, students and others.

When I was attending a two-month English Language course in Singapore few years ago, my Myanmar friend, Chaw Kalyar, present us with a topic of 'why does god gave us two ears and one mouth?'. The answer simply is because god wanted us to listen more and talk less.