Barbara grew up with an abusive father that she feared and hated.

So when she became a mom, Barbara needed lots of help.

To me, focus on the family has always been my parenting guide because my parenting that I grew up with needed to change.

Today's culture pushes confusion and chaos.

Parents like Barbara are desperately looking for a source of

biblical guidance and truth. Focus on the family provided the parenting resources that I needed

in order to raise a healthy child, one that knew she was loved, knew she was important, knew she was

special to God.

I'm Jim Daly.

Every day, people reach out for help with their marriages, their parenting, and their faith.

Your support is urgently needed to deliver hope and joy to these families.

For a limited time, we have a matching opportunity where any gift you send will be doubled.

Give today at focus on the family.com slash family.

How can you be a good listener to your child if that wasn't modeled to you when you grew up?

We're going to address that today.

I'm John Fuller with Dr. Danny Werta,

who leads the Focus on the Family Parenting Team, and Michelle Niedert is mom of two,

and she joined Focus on the Family President Jim Daly to talk about how you can really listen well to your children.

In fact, you encourage parents to listen intently, which can be a short stick for parents

because we don't always have time to listen intently to our kids because we're not sure

they're going to say anything that we think is important.

But you want to challenge that to say if they're expressing themselves, you need to hear it.

...