Talking and listening to children accomplishes many important things. It improves your bond with them, and encourages them to listen to you. It helps them to form relationships and to build self-esteem. And if you talk and listen to your children from a very young age, you’ll get yourself and them into habits that become very useful once they’re teenagers. If you can build an open relationship where your children feel comfortable talking about what they’ve been doing and with whom, they’re much more likely to tell you about the details of their life once they’re older.

Like so many other things, talking and listening can be done badly, just OK, or done really well. And like any other skills, you get better with practice. Good communication with children is about encouraging them to talk to you. And listening so they can tell you how they feel. Some children need a lot of encouragement and positive feedback to get talking. Others will be desperate to talk to you when you’re busy doing something else, which might mean stopping what you are doing and listening. Positive communication isn’t just about saying ‘nice’ things or sharing good news. It’s about being able to really listen and responding in a sensitive way to all kinds of feelings, even about being angry or embarrassed or miserable or frightened.

The relationship between a mother and daughter has the unique ability to sustain or devastate to outcome of her life and all of her future relationships. Girl Talk is a program specifically designed to nurture that relationship to create a “Cycle of Power”.