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Chapter 3 - Active Listening: The Language of Acceptance. How to Listen, and Talk, So that Kids Will Talk to You.
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Version 2018.06.09
A fifteen-year-old girl, at the conclusion of one of her weekly counseling sessions with me, got up from her chair, paused before heading for the door, and said:
"It feels good to be able to talk to someone about how I really feel. I have never talked about these things with anyone else before. I could never talk with my parents like this."
A mother and father of a sixteen-year-old boy, who was failing in school, asked me:
"How can we get Justin to confide in us? We never know what he's thinking. We know he's unhappy, but we have no idea what's going on inside that kid."
A bright, thirteen-year-old girl, who was brought to me just after she ran away from home with two of her girlfriends, made this telling comment about her relationship with her mother:
"It got to the point where we just couldn't talk at all about even the littlest things... like schoolwork. I'd be afraid I flunked a test, and I'd tell her I didn't do well. And she'd say, 'Well, why not?' and then get mad at me. So I just started lying. I did not like to lie but I did it, and it got so it did not really bother me... Finally it was just like two different people talking to each other. Neither of us would show our real feelings... what we really thought."
These are not unusual examples of how children pull down the shades on their parents, refusing to share with them what really goes on inside. Kids learn that talking to their parents is not helpful, and often not safe. Consequently, many parents miss thousands of chances to help their children with the problems they encounter in life.
Why do so many parents get "written off" as a source of help, by their children? Why do children stop talking to their parents about the things that really bother them? Why are so few parents successful in maintaining a helping relationship with their children?
And why do children find it so much easier to talk to competent professional counselors, rather than talking to their parents? What do the professional counselors do differently that enables them to foster a helping relationship with the children?
In recent years, psychologists have been finding some answers to these questions. Through research and clinical experience, we are beginning to understand the necessary ingredients for an effective helping relationship. Perhaps the most essential of these is the "language of acceptance."
THE POWER OF THE LANGUAGE OF ACCEPTANCE.
This is one of those simple but beautiful paradoxes of life: When you feel that another person truly accepts you as you are, then you are free to move on from there. You can then begin to think about how you want to be different, to change, and to grow. You can consider how you might become more of what you are capable of being.
When you are able to feel and communicate genuine acceptance of another person, you possess a capacity for being a powerful helping agent for others. Your acceptance of others, as they are, is an important factor in fostering a relationship in which they can grow, develop, make constructive changes, learn to solve problems, move in the direction of psychological health, become more productive and creative, and actualize their fullest potential.
Your acceptance of another is like fertile soil, that
Parental acceptance is a significant positive influence on children, although that idea is not generally understood by parents. Most people have been brought up to believe that if you accept children as they are, they will remain just the way they are. Unfortunately, most parents were raised to believe that the best way to help children become something better in the future, is to tell them what it is that you presently do not accept about them.
Therefore, most parents rely heavily on the language of non-acceptance in rearing children, believing it is the best way to help them. The soil that most parents provide for their children's growth is heavy with evaluation, judgment, criticism, preaching, moralizing, admonishing, and commanding. Those messages convey non-acceptance of the children as they presently are.
I recall the words of a thirteen-year-old girl who was just starting to rebel against her parents' values and standards.
- She said, "They tell me so often how bad I am, and how stupid my ideas are, and how I can not be trusted, that I just do more things they don't like. If they already think I am bad and stupid, I might as well go ahead and do all of those things anyway."
That bright girl was wise enough to understand the old adage, "Tell a child often enough how bad he or she is, and they will most certainly become bad."
Children often become what their parents tell them they are, and apart from that effect, the language of non-acceptance turns kids off. Children simply stop talking to their parents. Kids learn that it is far more comfortable to keep their feelings and problems to themselves.
The language of acceptance opens kids up. It frees them to share their feelings and problems. Professional therapists and counselors have shown just how powerful such acceptance can be. Those professionals who are most effective, are the ones who can convey to the people who come to them for help, that they are truly accepted as they are.
This is why I often hear people say, that in counseling or therapy, they felt totally free of the counselor's judgment. Those people report that they experienced the freedom to tell the therapist the worst about themselves. They felt their counselor would accept them no matter what they said or felt. Acceptance is one of the most important elements contributing to the growth, and change, that takes place in people through counseling and therapy.
Conversely, we have learned from professional therapists that non-acceptance closes people up, makes them feel defensive, produces discomfort, and makes them afraid to talk, or to take a look at themselves.
Thus, part of a professional's secret of success, in fostering change and growth in troubled people, is in the therapist's absence of non-acceptance in the relationship with them, and in that counselor's ability to talk the language of acceptance, so that it is genuinely felt by the other person.
In working with parents in our Parent Effectiveness Training course, we have demonstrated that parents can be taught the same skills used by professional counselors. Most of these parents learn to drastically reduce the frequency of messages that convey non-acceptance, and they acquire a surprisingly high level of skill, in employing the language of acceptance.
When parents learn how to demonstrate, with their words, an inner feeling of acceptance toward a child, the parents are then in possession of a skill that can produce some startling effects.
A parent can then be influential in the children's learning to accept and like themselves, and in their acquiring a sense of their own worth. A parent can greatly facilitate the children's development, and can help children realize the full potential with which they were genetically endowed. A parent can accelerate the children's movement away from dependence toward self-directed independence. A parent can help children learn to solve for themselves the problems that life inevitably brings. A parent can give them the strength, to deal constructively, with the usual disappointments and pain, of childhood and adolescence.
Of all the effects of acceptance, none is as important as the inner feeling of the child that he or she is loved. Accepting others, as they are, is truly an act of love, because feeling accepted is to feel loved.
In psychology, we have only just begun to realize the tremendous power of feeling loved. It can promote the growth of mind and body, and is probably the most effective therapeutic force we know, for repairing both psychological and physical damage.
Acceptance Must Be Demonstrated.
It is one thing for a parent to feel acceptance toward a child; it is another thing to make that acceptance felt. Unless a parent's acceptance comes through to the child, it can have no influence on the child. You must learn how to demonstrate acceptance so that your child feels it.
Specific skills are required to be able to do this. Most parents, however, tend to think of acceptance as a passive thing, as a state of mind, an attitude, or a feeling. True, acceptance does originate from within you, but to be an effective force in influencing another person, acceptance must be actively communicated or demonstrated. I can never be certain that I am accepted by someone, until he or she demonstrates it in some active way.
Professional counselors' effectiveness as a helping agent is greatly dependent on their ability to demonstrate acceptance of the client. Therapists spends years learning ways to implement this attitude through their habits of communication. With formal training and long experience, professional counselors acquire specific skills in communicating acceptance. They learn that what they say makes the difference between their being helpful, or not being helpful.
Talk can cure, and talk can foster constructive change. But it must be the right kind of talk.
The same is true for parents. How they talk to their children will determine whether they will be helpful or destructive. The effective parent, like the effective counselor, must learn how to communicate his acceptance, and must acquire the same communication skills.
Parents in our classes skeptically ask, "Is it possible for a nonprofessional like myself to learn the skills of a professional counselor?" Thirty years ago most professionals would have said, "No."
However, in our classes, we have demonstrated that it is possible for most parents to learn how to become effective helping agents for their children. We now know that it is not a knowledge of psychology, nor an intellectual understanding about people that makes a good counselor. It is primarily a matter of learning how to talk to people in a "constructive" way.
Psychologists call this "therapeutic communication," meaning that certain kinds of messages have a "therapeutic" or healthy effect on people. They make them feel better, encourage them to talk, help them express their feelings, foster a feeling of worth or self-esteem, reduce threat or fear, and facilitate growth and constructive change.
"Non-therapeutic" kinds of talk are destructive. Those messages tend to make people feel judged or guilty. They curtail the expression of honest feelings, and threaten the other person. They foster feelings of unworthiness or low self-esteem. They block growth and constructive change by making the other person defend more strongly the way he, or she, is.
A very small number of parents naturally possess this therapeutic skill intuitively.
Most parents, however, have to go through a process of first unlearning their destructive ways of communicating, and then learning more constructive ways. That means that parents first have to be exposed to their typical habits of communication, so that they can see for themselves, how their talk is destructive and non-therapeutic. Then they need to be taught some new ways of responding to children.
COMMUNICATING ACCEPTANCE NON-VERBALLY.
We send verbal messages through spoken words with what we say. But we also send messages using, what social scientists call, non-verbal messages, even though we might not say anything. Non-verbal messages are communicated via gestures, postures, facial expressions, or other behaviors.
Wave your hand away from you, with your palm toward a child, and it is highly probable that the child will interpret this gesture as "Go away," or "Get away from me," or "I don't want to be bothered right now." Turn your palm toward you, and wave your hand toward yourself, and the child will probably perceive this gesture as a message to "Come on over," "Come closer," or "I would like you here with me." The first gesture would communicate nonacceptance, and the second gesture would communicate acceptance.
Non-intervention to Show Acceptance.
Parents can show acceptance of a child by not intervening in his or her activities. For example, consider if your child was attempting to build sand castles at the beach. If you do not interfere with the child, and occupy yourself with an activity of your own, you are permitting the child to make mistakes, or create their own unique design for a castle. Your child's creation will probably not be like you would design it, and for that matter, it might not even look like a castle. But you will be sending a non-verbal message of acceptance.
The child will feel, "What I am doing is okay," "My castle-building behavior is acceptable," "My mother, or father, accepts my doing what I am doing right now."
Keeping hands-off, when a child is engaged in some activity, is a strong non-verbal way of communicating acceptance. Many parents fail to realize, how frequently they communicate nonacceptance to a child, by simply interfering, intruding, moving in, checking up, or joining in. Too often adults just do not let a child be. Parents invade the privacy of the child's rooms, or try to move into the child's personal and private thoughts, refusing to permit the child a separateness. This is often the result of parental fears and anxieties based within the parents' own feelings of insecurity.
Parents want their child to learn, and so they will say, "Here's what a castle should really look like". They are uncomfortable when their child makes a mistake, so they say, "Build the castle farther from the water, so a wave will not topple the castle wall". Parents want to be proud of their child's accomplishments, and be able to say, "Look at the perfect castle my child made". Or, they will often try to impose rigid adult concepts of right and wrong on the child, saying, "Shouldn't your castle have a moat?". Parents can also have secret ambitions for their children, and so they might say, "You are never going to learn anything, building that thing all afternoon". And, often parents are overly concerned about what others think of their child, and say things like, "That is not as good a castle as you are capable of making". Or, as a final example, they want to feel that their child needs them, so they volunteer by saying, "Let me help you build it," and so on.
Thus, by your doing nothing, in a situation when the child is engaged in an activity, can clearly communicate that you are accepting of the child, and what the child is doing. It is my experience, however, that quite often, parents do not permit this kind of separateness frequently enough, and for them, understandably, a "hands-off" attitude comes hard.
At the first party that one of our daughters gave during her first year in high school, I remember feeling very rejected, after being told by her, that my highly imaginative, and constructive suggestions for the entertainment of her guests, were quite un-welcomed.
Only after recovering from my mild depression from being asked to stay out, could I comprehend how I was communicating messages of nonacceptance. I had been implying messages like, "You can not give a good party by yourself," "You need my help," "I do not trust your judgment," "You are not being a perfect hostess," "You might make a mistake," or, "I do not want this party to be a failure," and so on.
Passive Listening to Show Acceptance.
Saying nothing can also clearly communicate acceptance. Silence, also known as "passive listening", is a potent non-verbal message that can be used effectively to make a person feel genuinely accepted. Professional counselors know this very well, and they make extensive use of silence in their interviews. A person who describes their first interview with a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, frequently reports, "He didn't say anything; I did all the talking." Or, "I told her all the horrible things about me, but she did not even criticize." Or, "I did not think I could tell that counselor anything, but I talked the whole hour."
What these people are describing is their experience, more than likely their first experience, of talking with someone who simply listened to them. It can be a wonderful experience when a person's silence makes you feel accepted. Actually, then, not communicating does communicate something, as in this encounter between a parent and her daughter just home from junior high school:
CHILD: I got sent down to the vice-principal's office today.
PARENT: Oh?
CHILD: Yeah. Mr. Franks said I was talking too much in class.
PARENT: I see.
CHILD: I can not stand that old guy. He sits up there, and talks about his troubles, or his grandchildren, and expects us to be interested. It is so boring you would never believe it.
PARENT: Mm-hmm.
CHILD: You just can not sit in that class doing nothing! You would go crazy. Jeannie and I sit there, and make jokes when he is talking. Oh, he is just the worst teacher you can imagine. It makes me mad when I get a lousy teacher.
PARENT: (Silence).
CHILD: I do good with a good teacher, but if I get someone like Mr. Franks, I just do not feel like learning anything. Why do they let a guy like that teach?
PARENT: (Shrugs).
CHILD: I suppose I had better get used to it, because I am not always going to get good teachers. There are more lousy ones than good ones, and if I let the lousy ones get me down, I am not going to get the grades I need to get into a good college. I am really hurting myself, I guess.
In this brief episode, the value of silence is clearly demonstrated. The parent's passive listening enabled the child to move beyond her initial factual report of being sent to the vice-principal. It allowed her to admit why she was punished. It permitted her to release her angry and hateful feelings toward her teacher, and let her contemplate the consequences of her continuing to react, as she had, toward bad teachers. And finally, passive listening by the parent allowed the girl to come to her own independent conclusion; that she was actually hurting herself by this kind of behavior.
During the short period of that conversation, while the parent was being accepting of her daughter, the girl experienced self-directed growth. She was allowed to express her feelings. She was helped to move along, on her own, into a kind of self-initiated problem-solving. From this emerged her own constructive solution, tentative though it may have been.
The parent's silence facilitated this "moment of development;" this small "increment of growth;" this instance of a child in the process of self-directed change. What a tragedy it would have been for the parent to have missed this opportunity, to contribute to the growth of that child, which is what would undoubtedly have happened, if the parent had interfered with the child's communication, by interjecting such typical non-accepting responses as:
- "You what? You were sent to the vice-principal! Oh great!"
- "Well, that should teach you a lesson!"
- "Now, Mr. Franks is not that bad, is he?"
- "Sweetheart, you just have to learn some self-control."
- "You had better learn to adjust to all kinds of teachers."
All those messages, and the many more that parents typically send in situations like that, not only would have communicated non-acceptance of the child, they would have stopped further communication, and would have prevented any problem-solving on the girl's part.
So, saying nothing, as well as doing nothing, can communicate acceptance. And acceptance fosters constructive change, and personal growth.
COMMUNICATING ACCEPTANCE VERBALLY.
Most parents realize that they cannot remain silent very long in a human interaction. People want some kind of verbal interaction. Obviously then, parents must talk to their children. Their children need them to talk to them, if they are to have an intimate, vital relationship.
Talk is essential, but how parents talk to children is crucial. I can tell a great deal about a parent-child relationship, simply by observing the kind of verbal communication that occurs between that parent and child, particularly the way the parent responds to the child's communications.
Parents need to examine how they respond verbally to children, because the key to a parent's effectiveness is found there.
In our P.E.T. classes, we use an exercise to help parents recognize what kinds of verbal responses they use, when their kids come to them with feelings, or problems. If you would like to try this exercise now, all you need is a sheet of blank paper, and a pencil or pen.
Suppose your fifteen-year-old announces one night at the dinner table:
- "School sucks. All you learn is a lot of unimportant facts that do not do you any good. I have decided not to go to college at all. You do not need a college education to be someone important. There are a lot of other ways to get ahead in the world."
Now, write down on the paper the exact words you would use to respond verbally to that message from your child.
Now, when you have done that, try another situation. Your ten-year-old daughter says to you:
- "I do not know what is wrong with me. Ginny used to like me, but now she does not. She never comes down here to play anymore. And, if I go up there, she is always playing with Ashley, and the two of them play together and have fun while I just stand there all by myself. I hate them both."
Again, write down exactly what you would say to your daughter in response to that message.
Now, another situation, in which your eleven-year-old says to you:
- "How come I have to take care of the yard, and take the garbage out? Ray's mother does not make him do all that stuff! You are not fair! Kids should not have to do that much work. Nobody else has to do all the stupid things I have to do."
Write down your response.
One last situation. Your five-year-old boy becomes more and more frustrated when he can't get the attention of his mother and father and your two guests after dinner. The four of you are talking intently, renewing your friendship after a long separation. Suddenly you are shocked when your little boy loudly shouts:
- "You guys are dumb, and stupid. I hate you."
Again, write down exactly what you would say in response to this vibrant message.
The various ways you have probably just responded to these messages, can be classified into categories. There are only about a dozen different categories into which parents' verbal responses fall, and these are listed below. Take the responses you wrote down on your sheet of paper, and try to classify each of them into whichever of the following twelve categories best fits each of your responses.
-
1. ORDERING, DIRECTING, COMMANDING.
Telling the child to do something by giving an order or a command.- "I do not care what other parents do. You have to do the yard work!"
- "Do not talk to your mother like that!"
- "Now you go back up there, and play with Ginny and Ashley!"
- "Stop complaining!"
-
2. WARNING, ADMONISHING, THREATENING.
Telling the child what consequences will occur if they do something.- "If you do that, you will be sorry!"
- "One more remark like that and you will leave the room!"
- "You had better not do that if you know what is good for you!"
-
3. EXHORTING, MORALIZING, PREACHING.
Telling the child what they should do, or ought to do.- "You should not act like that."
- "You ought to do this......
- "You must always respect adults."
-
4. ADVISING, GIVING SOLUTIONS OR SUGGESTIONS.
Telling the child how to solve a problem by giving advice or suggestions; providing answers or solutions.- "Why don't you ask both Ginny and Ashley to play down here?"
- "Just wait a couple of years before deciding on college."
- "I suggest you talk to your teachers about that."
- "Go make friends with some other girls."
-
5. LECTURING, TEACHING, GIVING LOGICAL ARGUMENTS.
Trying to influence the child with facts, counterarguments, logic, information, or your own opinions.- "College can be the most wonderful experience you will ever have."
- "Children must learn how to get along with each other."
- "Let us look at the facts about college graduates."
- "If kids learn to take responsibility around the house, they will grow up to be responsible adults."
- "Look at it this way. Your mother needs help around the house."
- "When I was your age, I had twice as much to do as you."
-
6. JUDGING, CRITICIZING, DISAGREEING, BLAMING.
Making a negative judgment or evaluation of the child.- "You are not thinking clearly."
- "That is very immature."
- "You are very wrong about that."
- "I could not disagree with you more."
-
7. PRAISING, AGREEING.
Offering a positive evaluation or judgment, or just agreeing.- "Well, I think you are pretty."
- "You have the ability to do well."
- "I think you are right."
- "I agree with you."
-
8. NAME-CALLING, RIDICULING, SHAMING.
Making the child feel foolish by putting them into a negative category, or shaming them.- "You are a spoiled brat."
- "Look here, Mr. Know-It-All."
- "You are acting like a wild animal."
- "Okay, little baby."
-
9. INTERPRETING, ANALYZING, DIAGNOSING.
Telling the child what their motives are, or analyzing why they are doing or saying something; communicating that you have them figured out, or diagnosed.- "You are just jealous of Ginny."
- "You are saying that to bug me."
- "You really do not believe that at all."
- "You feel that way because you are not doing well in school."
-
10. REASSURING, SYMPATHIZING, CONSOLING, SUPPORTING.
Trying to make the child feel better by trying to talk them out of their bad feelings; trying to make their feelings go away; denying the strength of their feelings.- "You will feel different tomorrow."
- "All kids go through this sometime."
- "Do not worry. Things will work out."
- "You could be an excellent student, with your potential."
- "I used to think that too."
- "I know, school can be pretty boring sometimes."
- "You usually get along with other kids very well."
-
11. PROBING, QUESTIONING, INTERROGATING.
Trying to find reasons, motives, causes; questioning them for more information to help you solve their problem.- "When did you start feeling this way?"
- "Why do you suppose you hate school?"
- "Do the kids ever tell you why they do not want to play with you?"
- "How many other kids have you talked to about the work they have to do?"
- "Who put that idea into your head?"
- "What will you do if you do not go to college?"
-
12. WITHDRAWING, DISTRACTING, HUMORING, DIVERTING.
Trying to get the child away from the problem; withdrawing from the problem yourself; distracting the child, kidding them out of it; pushing the problem aside.- "Just forget about it."
- "Let us not talk about it at the table."
- "Come on. Let us talk about something more pleasant."
- "How is it going with your soccer?"
- "I will bet the President does not have problems as complicated as yours."
- "We have been through all this before."
If you were able to fit each of your responses into one of those categories, you are a fairly typical parent.
If any of your responses did not fit into any of those twelve categories, hold on to it until later, when I will introduce another type of response to children's messages. Perhaps your response will fit into one of those categories later.
When parents do this exercise in our classes, over 90 percent of the parents' responses fall into those twelve categories above. Most of these mothers and fathers are surprised at the similarity between their responses, and the responses of the other parents. Also, most of them have never had anyone point out just how they talk to their children, nor what modes of communication they use when responding to their children's feelings and problems.
Invariably, one of the parents asks, "Well, now that we know how we talk, what about it? What are we supposed to learn from finding out that we all communicate this way?"
What About those 12 Communication Roadblocks?
To understand what effects those twelve roadblocks to communication have on a child, and what they do to the parent-child relationship, parents must first be shown that their verbal responses usually carry more than one meaning, or more than one message.
For example, to a child who complains that their friend will not play with them anymore, you might say, "I would suggest you try to treat your friend better, and then maybe they will want to play with you". That response conveys much more to a child than simply the content of your suggestion. The child may interpret your reply according to any, or all, of the following hidden messages:
- "You do not accept my feeling the way I do, so you want me to change."
- "You do not trust me to work out this problem myself."
- "You think it is my fault, then."
- "You think I am not as smart as you."
- "You think I am doing something bad or wrong."
Or, when a child says, "I just can not stand school or anything about school," and you respond by saying, "Oh, we all felt that way about school at some time or another. You will get over it," the child may pick up these additional messages:
- "You do not think my feelings are very important, then."
- "You can not accept me feeling as I do."
- "You feel it is not the school. It is me."
- "You do not take me very seriously, then."
- "You do not feel my judgment of school is legitimate."
- "You do not seem to care how I am feeling."
When parents say something to a child, they are usually also saying something about the child. That is why your communications to children have such an impact on them as persons, and ultimately upon the relationship between you and them. Every time you talk to a child, you are adding another brick to define the relationship that is being built between the two of you. Each of your messages says something to the child about what you think of him or her. They gradually build up a picture of how you are perceiving them as a person. What you say can be constructive to the child, and to the relationship, or what you say can be destructive.
One way we help parents understand how the 12 Communication Roadblocks can be destructive, is to ask them to recall their own reactions when they had shared their own feelings with a friend. Invariably, the parents in our classes report that anytime their friend used those roadblocks, it had a destructive effect on them, or on their relationship with the person they were telling their troubles to. Here are some of the effects our parents report:
- They make me stop talking, and shut me off.
- They make me defensive and resistive.
- They make me argue, and counterattack.
- They make me feel inadequate, and inferior.
- They make me feel resentful or angry.
- They make me feel guilty or bad.
- They make me feel I am being pressured to change, and that I am not accepted as I am.
- They make me feel the other person does not trust me to solve my own problem.
- They make me feel I am being treated paternalistically, as if I were a child.
- They make me feel I am not being understood.
- They make me feel that my feelings are not justified.
- They make me feel I have been interrupted.
- They make me feel frustrated.
- They make me feel I am on the witness stand being cross-examined.
- They make me feel the listener is just not interested.
The parents in our classes immediately recognize, that if the 12 Communication Roadblocks had those effects upon them in their relationships with others, then the roadblocks would probably have the same effects on their children.
And they are right. Those twelve kinds of verbal responses are the very ones professional therapists and counselors have learned to avoid when they work with children. Those ways of responding are potentially "non-therapeutic," or "destructive." Professionals learn to rely on other ways of responding to children's messages, ways that seem to carry far less risk of causing the children to stop talking, or making them feel guilty and inadequate, or reducing their self-esteem, or producing defensiveness, or triggering resentment, or making them feel unaccepted, and so on.
In the Appendix of this book we have catalogued these 12 Communication Roadblocks going into more detail about the destructive effects that each may have.
When parents realize how much they have been relying on these roadblocks to communication, they invariably ask with some impatience:
- "How else can we respond? What ways are left?"
- "If I do not ask questions, how else can I find out what is going on?"
Let us explore some alternatives.
SIMPLE DOOR-OPENERS.
One of the most effective and constructive ways of responding to children's feeling-messages, or problem-messages, is the "door-opener," or the "invitation to say more." These are responses that do not communicate any of your own ideas or judgments or feelings, yet they invite the children to share their ideas, judgments, and feelings. These responses open the door for them, and invite them to talk. The simplest of these are such noncommittal responses as:
- "I see."
- "Really."
- "Oh."
- "You don't say."
- "Mm-hmmm."
- "No kidding."
- "How about that."
- "You did, huh."
- "Interesting."
- "Is that so!"
Other parents are somewhat more explicit in conveying an invitation to talk, or to say more, by saying things such as:
- "Tell me about it."
- "I would like to hear about it."
- "Tell me more."
- "I would be interested in your point of view."
- "Would you like to talk about it?"
- "Let us discuss it."
- "Let us hear what you have to say."
- "Tell me the whole story."
- "Go ahead, I am listening."
- "Sounds like you have got something to say about this."
- "This seems like something important to you."
These door-openers, or invitations to talk, can be potent facilitators of other people's communication. They encourage others to start talking, or to continue talking. They also put the ball in the other person's court. They do not have the effect of your grabbing the ball away from them, as do messages of your own, such as your asking questions, giving advice, reassuring, moralizing, and so on. These door-openers keep your own feelings and thoughts out of the communication process.
The responses of children, and adolescents, to these simple door-openers, will surprise parents. The youngsters feel encouraged to move in closer to their parents, open up, and literally pour out their feelings and ideas. Like adults, young people love to talk, and they usually do when anyone extends an invitation.
Door-openers convey acceptance of the child, and respect for them as a person, because door-openers communicate things like:
- "You have a right to express how you feel."
- "I respect you as a person with ideas and feelings."
- "I might learn something from you."
- "I really want to hear your point of view."
- "Your ideas are worthy of being listened to."
- "I am interested in you."
- "I want to relate to you, and get to know you better."
Everyone reacts favorably to such attitudes. Everyone feels good when he or she is made to feel worthy, respected, significant, accepted, and interesting.
Children are no different. If you offer them a verbal invitation, then you can expect their expressiveness, and expansiveness. You also might learn something about them, or about yourself in the process.
ACTIVE LISTENING.
It is important that you learn how to keep the door open to your children, but when kids have a problem, there is another way you can respond to them, that is infinitely more effective than simple door-opening invitations for them to talk.
It is called "Active listening", and is far more effective than the silence of passive listening. Active Listening is a remarkable way to involve you as a sender of messages, with the child as the receiver. Both the sender and the receiver are actively involved.
For you to learn active listening, you may need to understand more about the communication process between two persons. A few diagrams may help.
Usually, whenever children decide to communicate with a parent, they do so because they have a need; because something is going on inside them. They may want something, or feel discomfort, or have a feeling about something, or are upset about something.
In those cases, we say that the child owns the problem, and is in some kind of un-equilibrium. The child decides to talk in order to try to bring them-self back to a state of equilibrium. Say, for example, that the child feels hunger.
In an attempt to get rid of their hunger, which is the cause of their un-equilibrium, the child becomes a "sender," and communicates something that he or she thinks might bring them food. Children will not always directly communicate what is actually going on inside them, since, for example, hunger is a complex physiological process going on inside them.
Therefore, to convey to someone else about their hunger, they must select some communication to their parent that they think represents, "I am hungry." The child's choice of words is called "encoding", because the child is picking a code they hope will communicate their problem.
Let us say that this particular child selects the code, or combination of words, "When is dinner ready, Dad?" and speaks that code into the air, where the child hopes that the receiver, the father, will receive it.
When Dad receives the coded message, he must then go through a process of decoding it, so that he can try to understand its meaning, in terms of what is going on inside the child.
If Dad decodes accurately, he will understand that the child is hungry.
But if Dad happens to decode the message to mean, that the child is anxious to eat, so that he or she can go out and play before bedtime, the father would be misunderstanding, and the communication process is said to have broken down. The problem is that the child does not know this, and nor does Dad. The child cannot see the thoughts inside of the father, any more than the father can see the thoughts inside the child.
This is what so often goes wrong in the communication process between two people. The sender's intended meaning is misunderstood by the receiver, and neither person is aware that the misunderstanding exists.
Suppose, however, that Dad decides to check on the accuracy of his decoding, just to make sure he has not misunderstood. He can do this by telling the child the thoughts that resulted from his decoding process, as, for example, saying, "You want a chance to play outside before bedtime."
The child, now, having heard the father's "feedback," is able to tell the father that he decoded incorrectly, as in this conversation:
CHILD: No, I did not mean that, Dad. I meant I am really hungry, and want dinner to be ready soon.
DAD: Oh, I see. You are very hungry. How about some crackers and peanut butter to hold you over? We can not eat until your mother gets home, about an hour from now.
CHILD: That is a good idea. I think I will have some.
The father had engaged in active listening, when he first "fed back" his understanding of the child's initial message. In this case, the father had first misunderstood the child's message, but the father's feedback told the child just that. And so, the child sent another code that finally brought the father a real understanding of the child's intended message. If the father had accurately decoded the first time, the process might be diagrammed as follows:
Here are five other examples of Active Listening:
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1.
CHILD: (crying): Dylan took my truck away from me.
PARENT: You sure feel bad about that. You do not like it when he does that.
CHILD: That is right.
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2.
CHILD: I do not have anyone to play with since Tyler went on vacation. I just do not know what to do around here for fun.
PARENT: You miss having Tyler to play with, and you are wondering what you might do to have some fun.
CHILD: Yeah. Wish I could think of something.
-
3.
CHILD: I have a stupid teacher this year. I can not stand her."
PARENT: Sounds like you are really disappointed with your teacher.
CHILD: Yeah.
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4.
CHILD: Guess what, Dad? I made the soccer team.
PARENT: You are really feeling great about that.
CHILD: Am I!
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5.
CHILD: Daddy, when you were a boy what did you like in a girl? What made you really like a girl?
PARENT: Sounds like you are wondering what you need to get boys to like you, is that right?
CHILD: Yeah. For some reason they do not seem to like me, and I do not know why.
In each of those illustrations, the parent has accurately decoded the child's feelings, and what was going on inside the child. Then, in each case, the child verified the accuracy of the parent's decoding, with some expression indicating, "You heard me correctly."
With active listening, the receiver tries to understand what it is that the sender is feeling, or what the sender's message is. Then the receiver encodes their understanding by putting the sender's message into their own words, and feeds their interpretation back to the sender for the sender's verification. The receiver does not send a message of their own. The receiver does not give an evaluation, nor an opinion, nor advice, nor logic, nor analysis, nor a question. The receiver feeds back only what they feel the sender's message meant; nothing more, nothing less.
Here is a longer exchange where the parent is consistently using active listening. Note how the child verifies the feedback of the parent each time. Also notice how the parent's active listening makes it easier for the child to say more, to go deeper, and to develop their thoughts further. You can feel the movement of the conversation, and see the child begin to redefine their problem on their own. The child then tentatively develops some insights about them-self, and makes a good start toward solving their own problem.
MARIA: I wish I could get a cold once in a while like Tanya. She is lucky.
FATHER: You feel you are sort of getting cheated.
MARIA: Yes. She gets to stay out of school, and I never do.
FATHER: You really would like to stay out of school more.
MARIA: Yes. I do not like to go to school every day; day after day after day. I get sick of it.
FATHER: You really get tired of school.
MARIA: Sometimes I just hate it.
FATHER: It is more than not liking it, sometimes you really hate school.
MARIA: That is right. I hate the homework, I hate the classes, and I hate the teachers.
FATHER: You just hate everything about school.
MARIA: I do not really hate all the teachers just two of them. One of them I can't stand. She's the worst.
FATHER: You hate one in particular, huh?
MARIA: Do I ever! It is that Mrs. Barnes. I hate the sight of her. I got her for the whole year, too.
FATHER: You are stuck with her for a long time.
MARIA: Yes. I do not know how I will ever stand it. You know what she does? Every day we get a long lecture. She stands up there smiling like this, and tells us how a responsible student is supposed to behave, and she reads off all these things you have to do to get an A in her class. It is sickening.
FATHER: You sure hate to hear all that stuff.
MARIA: Yeah. She makes it seem impossible to get an A- unless you're some kind of genius or a teacher's pet.
FATHER: You feel defeated before you even start, because you don't think you can possibly get an A.
MARIA: Yeah. I am not going to be one of those teacher's pets. The other kids hate them. I am already not very popular with the kids. I just do not feel that too many of the girls like me.
[Maria's eyes begin to show tears]
FATHER: You do not feel popular and that upsets you.
MARIA: Yeah, it sure does. There is this group of girls that are the top ones in school. They are the most popular girls. I wish I could get in their group. But I do not know how.
FATHER: You really would like to belong to this group, but you are stumped about how to do it.
MARIA: That is right. I do not honestly know how girls get into this group. They are not the prettiest, not all of them. They are not always the ones with the best grades. Some in the group get high grades, but most of them get lower grades than I get. I just do not know.
FATHER: You are sort of puzzled about what it takes to get into this group.
MARIA: Well, one thing is that they are all very friendly. They talk a lot and, you know, make friends. They say hello to you first, and talk real easy. I can not do that. I am just not good at that stuff.
FATHER: You think maybe that is what they have that you do not have.
MARIA: I know I am not good at talking. I can talk easily with one girl but not when there is a whole bunch of girls. I just keep quiet. It is hard for me to think of something to say.
FATHER: You feel okay with one girl but with a lot of girls you feel different.
MARIA: I am always afraid I will say something that will be stupid or wrong or something. So I just stand there and feel kind of left out. It is totally lame.
FATHER: You sure hate that feeling.
MARIA: I hate to be on the outside, but I am afraid to try to get into the conversation.
In this brief encounter between Dad and Maria, Dad put aside his own thoughts and feelings, in order to listen, to de-code, and to understand Maria's thoughts and feelings. Note how the father's feedback generally began with the word, "you." Note, also, that Maria's father refrained from using any of the communication roadblocks. By consistently relying on active listening, he showed understanding and empathy for Maria's feelings, but allowed her to retain the responsibility for her problem.
Why Should Parents Learn Active Listening?
Some parents who are introduced to the skill of active listening, in our P.E.T. course, say things like:
- "It seems so unnatural to me."
- "That is not the way people talk."
- "What is the purpose of Active Listening?"
- "I would feel like a dork responding to my kid that way."
- "My daughter would think I flipped my lid if I started to use active listening with her."
These are understandable reactions because parents are so accustomed to telling, preaching, questioning, judging, threatening, admonishing, or reassuring. It is certainly natural for parents to ask if it would be worth the trouble to change, and to learn active listening.
One of the more skeptical fathers in a P.E.T. class became convinced, after an experience with his fifteen-year-old daughter. His experience happened during the week after our class session, in which he was introduced to this new way of listening, and talking.
He said, "I want to report to the class an amazing experience I had this week. My daughter, Roxanne, and I have not said a civil word to each other for about two years, except maybe, 'Pass the bread,' or 'Can I have the salt and pepper?'
The other night when I came home, she and her boyfriend were sitting at the table in the kitchen. I overheard my daughter telling her boyfriend how much she hated school, and how she was disgusted with most of her girlfriends. I decided right then and there, that I would sit down, and do nothing but actively listen, even if it killed me.
"Now, I am not going to say I did a perfect job, but I surprised myself. I was not too bad. Well, will you believe it, they both started talking to me, and never stopped for two hours. I learned more about my daughter, and what she is like, in those two hours, than I had in the past five years. On top of that, the rest of the week she was downright friendly to me. What a change!"
This amazed father is not unique. Many parents have immediate success when they try out this listening skill. Even before they acquire a reasonable level of competence at active listening, they often report some startling results.
Many people think that they can get rid of their feelings by suppressing them, forgetting them, or thinking about something else. Actually, people free themselves of troublesome feelings when they are encouraged to express them openly. Active Listening fosters this kind of catharsis. It helps children to find out exactly what they are feeling. After they express their feelings, the feelings often seem to disappear almost like magic.
Active listening helps children become less afraid of their negative feelings. "Feelings are friendly," is an expression we use in our classes to help parents come to realize that feelings are not "bad." When parents show, by active listening, that they accept a child's feelings, it helps the child learn to accept their own feelings. The child learns from their parent's response, that feelings are friendly.
Active listening promotes a relationship of warmth between parent and child. The parent's experience of being heard, and understood by the child, is so satisfying, that invariably it makes the parent feel warmth toward the child.
Similar feelings are evoked within the child as well. Children, in particular, respond with loving ideas and feelings. They begin to feel warmer, and closer to the parent who is an active listener.
When someone listens empathetically and accurately to another, the active listener gets to understand the other person, and gets to appreciate the other person's way of looking at the world. In a sense, the active listener becomes that other person, during the period of putting ones-self in the other person's shoes. Invariably, by allowing yourself to get inside the other person, it produces feelings of closeness, caring and love. Empathizing with another person, is to see them as a separate person, and yet be willing to join with them. It means becoming a companion to them, for a brief period, in their journey through life.
Such an act involves deep caring and love. Parents who learn empathetic active listening, discover a new kind of appreciation and respect, and a deeper feeling of caring. In turn, the child responds to the parents with similar feelings.
Active listening facilitates children's problem-solving. We know that people do a better job, of thinking a problem through toward a solution, when they can talk it out, as opposed to merely thinking about it. Because active listening is so effective, in facilitating talking, it helps the other person in their search for solutions to their problems. Almost everybody has heard such expressions as, "Let me use you as a sounding board," or, "I would like to kick this problem around with you," or, "Maybe it would help me to talk it out with you."
Active listening influences the child to be more willing, to listen to the parents' thoughts and ideas. It is universally known, that when someone will listen to your point of view, it is then easier to listen to theirs. Children are more likely to open themselves up, and receive their parents' messages, if their parents first hear them out. When parents complain that their kids do not listen to them, it is a good bet that the parents are not doing an effective job, of listening to the kids.
Active listening keeps the ball with the child. When parents respond to children's problems by active listening, the parents will see how often the children start to think for themselves about their own problems. Since active listening allows, and encourages children to think for themselves, the children soon begin to analyze, and to take responsibility for their own problems. As children learn to diagnose their own problems, they gain experience, and eventually learn to arrive at creative and constructive solutions of their own.
Active listening conveys a trust in the child, where-as parental messages of advice, logic, instruction, and the like, convey distrust, because they take the responsibility of problem-solving away from the child. Active listening is, therefore, one of the most effective ways of helping a child become more self-directing, self-responsible, and independent.
Attitudes Required to Use Active Listening.
Active listening is not simply a technique, that any parent can pull out of their tool-kit, whenever their children have problems. It is essential that your active listening be done from a set of basic attitudes, for this technique to work. Without these attitudes, active listening will seldom be effective, because, otherwise, you will sound false, empty, mechanical, and insincere.
Here are some basic attitudes that must be present when a parent is using active listening. Whenever these attitudes are not present, a parent cannot be an effective active listener.
- 1. You must want to hear what the child has to say. This means you are willing to take the time to listen. If you do not have time, you need only say so.
- 2. You must genuinely want to be helpful to them, with their particular problem, at that time. If you do not want to, wait until you do.
- 3. You must genuinely be able to accept their feelings, whatever they may be, and no matter how different they may be from your own feelings, or from the feelings you think the child should feel. This attitude may take some time for you to develop.
- 4. You must have a deep feeling of trust in the child's capacity to handle their own feelings, and to work through them, and you must trust your child to find solutions on their own to their problems. You will acquire this trust, over time, as you witness your child solving their own problems.
- 5. You must appreciate that feelings are transitory, not permanent. Feelings change. Hate can turn into love, and discouragement may quickly be replaced by hope. Consequently, you need not be afraid of feelings being expressed. Feelings do not become forever fixed inside the child, if the feelings are allowed to be openly expressed. Active listening will demonstrate this to you.
- 6. You must be able to see your child as someone separate from you, as a unique person no longer joined to you. Although you gave life to your child, you must see them as a distinct individual, and give them the freedom to have their own identity. This separateness will enable you to permit the child to have their own feelings, and their own way of perceiving things. Only by your feeling this separateness, will you be able to be a helping agent for the child. You can be with them as they experience their problems, but you must not feel that you should be joined to them.
The Risk of Active Listening.
Active listening requires you to suspend your own thoughts and feelings, in order to attend exclusively to the message from your child. It requires you to focus on accurately receiving your child's message. If you want to understand the child's messages, in terms of their true meaning, you must put yourself into the child's shoes, or into the child's frame of reference. You must sense the child's world of reality, so that you can then hear their intended meaning.
Your feedback, as part of the active listening process, is ultimately nothing more than your checking, that the message you heard, is the same message that your child was trying to send. Your feedback also assures your child, that he or she has been properly understood, when they hear their own message fed back to them accurately.
Something happens to you when you practice active listening. To understand accurately how another person thinks or feels, from their point of view, you must put yourself momentarily into their shoes, and see the world as they are seeing it.
You, therefore, as a listener, run the risk of having your own opinions and attitudes changed. In other words, you can actually become changed by new things that you come to understand. By your being open to the experience of another person, it invites the possibility of your having to reinterpret your own experiences, and understandings. That can be scary.
A defensive person cannot afford to expose them-self to ideas and views that are different from their own. A flexible person, however, is not as afraid of being changed. And kids, who have flexible parents, respond positively when they see that their mothers and fathers are willing to change, and are willing to be human.