by Paul Madaule
Director of The Listening Centre - Toronto, Conodo

Listening starts to take shape well before birth and it plays an essential role on the child's sensorimotor, social-emotional, and cognitive development. Defining listening as the ability to 'catch' only the sound information we need, while leaving out the rest only begins to describe what it is. Listening is at the crossroad of our inner and our outer worlds. It is a guiding force behind our attention span, coordination, voice production, musical skills, sense of being grounded, centered and in control. Listening is the child's silent companion during his developing years and continues to be so throughout adult life, so quiet that we tend to take it for granted.

The purpose of this presentation is to shed light on some of the most important, and sometimes unexpected or paradoxical…