TinyStepper
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Listening Eyes Practice

A brief face-to-face game where you both focus your whole faces on listening — not on words. Trains the body language that makes a child feel heard and reduces speech pressure.

Activity details

2y–4y5 minslowindoorNo prep

Instructions

Get ready
  • Sit facing your child cross-legged or on chairs at the same height.
  • Tell them: 'We're going to practise listening with our faces.'
  1. Sit facing your child cross-legged or on chairs at the same height.
  2. Tell them: 'We're going to practise listening with our faces.'
  3. Demonstrate: make warm eyes, a soft smile, a tiny head nod.
  4. Say: 'When you talk, I'll listen with my whole face. When I talk, you listen with yours.'
  5. Your child speaks first. Anything they want — even silly noises.
  6. Make your full listening face. Don't speak. Don't react with words.
  7. When they finish, pause, then take your turn with a tiny sentence.
  8. Swap roles — now your child practises their listening face for you.

Parent tip

Start before you overthink it. No-prep activities work best when you begin while the moment is still recoverable.

Relaxed child lying on a floor cushion with blanket and pinwheel in a cosy calm corner

What success looks like

A few quiet minutes together without pressure. If your child relaxes even slightly, that’s self-regulation building.

Sit facing your child and practise what 'listening with your face' looks like. You take turns. One person says a sentence — anything, even nonsense — and the other person makes their best attentive face: warm eyes, slight nod, soft expression. The point is the face. The Stuttering Foundation's research is clear that the listener's face has more effect on fluency than the listener's words, because what the child reads on your face tells them whether their speech is welcome.

Why it helps

The Stuttering Foundation's parent advice highlights the role of the listener's face in fluency: 'Use your facial expressions and other body language to convey to your child that you are listening to the content of her message and not to how she's talking.' What the child reads on the parent's face tells them whether their speech is being judged or welcomed. The NHS frames the same point in terms of the relaxed environment — a calm listening face is one of the strongest signals of that environment.

Variations

  • Try it with a mirror so each of you can see your own face while you practise.
  • Use a soft toy as a third member — the toy 'speaks' nonsense and you both listen carefully to it.
  • Practise just before bed in the dark with eyes closed — listening with the rest of your face when the eyes are out.

Safety tips

  • Avoid an exaggerated 'I'm-so-interested' face that comes across as performative — keep it natural.
  • Don't comment on the way your child is speaking, even kindly.
  • If your child seems self-conscious about being looked at, soften your gaze and look at their hands instead.

Want to try another?

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