Communication among family members is necessary for the mental health of its members and is a process that often needs to be learned by paying attention to specific points.

To facilitate communication in the family, here are some questions that members can initially consider to better understand their own feelings and, therefore, how other family members might feel when communicating.

If you are a listener:

• How does it feel to listen?
• How long were you able to focus on listening to the other person?
• When the other person was speaking, were you thinking about something else?
• Were you present in the moment?

The answers to these questions and others create what is known as active listening. Active listening is very useful in communication because it:

• Facilitates the speaker to narrate their experience.
• Helps the speaker feel trusted.
• Allows the listener to understand the other's experience as clearly as possible without evaluating it.
• Shows the speaker that they have been understood, following the process of paraphrasing or asking exploratory questions.

Some directions that can guide the listener in their effort to practice active listening in communication with others include:

• Listening carefully and trying to facilitate the other to articulate their thoughts or experiences.
• Showing interest in listening and expressing curiosity about what the other person is saying.
• Not interrupting.
• Not changing the subject of discussion.
• Trying to understand how the other person feels as they speak.
• Facilitating the continuation of the narrative by paraphrasing.
• Observing one's own thoughts and feelings.

To learn how to communicate, continuous practice is needed. This effort usually needs to be repeated to serve as a reminder and strengthen the communication skills of parents. Through Parenting Groups, parents are often trained on how to learn to listen to their children continuously.