Text Size:
Current Size: 100%
Chapter 4 - Putting Your Active Listening Skills to Work.
Female.
Male.
Click The 'Right-Arrow' Above To Start The Audio MP3 File; ...
...Or To Download The MP3 File.
RIGHT-mouse-click either of the "Download.." links below, and in the drop-down menu that appears, if you use FireFox select "Save Link As..."; or if you use Internet Explorer select "Save Target As...".
http://www.great-grandma.com/aquakeys/files/pet/aud/pet-ch_04-female.mp3
http://www.great-grandma.com/aquakeys/files/pet/aud/pet-ch_04-male.mp3
Or To Download All Of This Book's MP3 Files In A Single *.Zip File.
See the bottom of this book's cover page here.
Version 2018.06.09
Parents are usually amazed when they discover what active listening can accomplish, but active listening takes effort to apply it. And, difficult as it may seem at first, active listening must be used frequently, and consistently.
Parents ask, "Will I know when to use active listening?" Or they ask, "Can I get good enough at active listening, to become an effective counselor, for my own children?"
For example, an intelligent, well-educated mother of three, confessed to the other parents in her P.E.T. class, saying, "I now realize how strong my habit is, to give my children advice, or tell them my solutions to their problems. It is a habit I have with other people also, including my friends, and my husband. I wonder if I can change from being Mrs. Know-It-All."
Our response is a somewhat qualified, "Yes." Yes, most parents can change, and learn when to use active listening appropriately, provided they take the plunge, and start putting it to work. Practice makes perfect, or, at least, practice will bring most parents a reasonably effective level of competence. We say to hesitant parents, who at first feel in-adequate about trying this new method of talking to kids, "Give it your best shot. The rewards will be worth the effort."
In this chapter, we will show you how parents have learned to use active listening. As with learning any new activity, people inevitably encounter difficulties, and even failures. But, we know you will see progress, if you work seriously at developing your sensitivity, and your skills. You will see your children grow toward independence, and maturity, and you will enjoy new warmth and intimacy with them.
When does the child "own" the problem?
Active listening is the most appropriate thing you can do, when your child reveals that he or she has a problem. Anytime you hear them expressing feelings, you can usually recognize they have a problem.
All children encounter situations in their lives that are disappointing, frustrating, painful, or shattering. They can have problems with their friends, their brothers or sisters, their parents, their teachers, or their environment, and they can have problems with themselves. Children who find help in solving such problems, maintain their psychological health, as they continue on with their lives, acquiring more strength, and self-confidence. Children who do not find help, develop emotional problems.
You need to be tuned in to hear your child's, "I have got a problem," kinds of words and feelings. That is how you can recognize when it is appropriate, to put active listening to work. This is also when the idea of problem ownership comes into play.
Your child owns a problem when he or she is thwarted in satisfying something they want, or need. That is not a problem for you directly, because your child's behavior, does not interfere with your satisfying your own needs. Therefore, your child owns the problem.
Active listening is most appropriate when your child owns the problem, because active listening helps your child to find solutions to their own problems.
But, active listening is not enough when you own the problem. Active listening alone seldom helps you find solutions when your child's behavior is causing you a problem.
In the next chapter, we will introduce methods for you to solve problems you own, when your child has no problems, but when your problem is caused by your child's behavior. You own those problems then, and it is important that you clearly recognize the difference between problems you own, and problems your child owns.
Here are some examples of problems owned by your child.
- Alex is feeling rejected by one of his friends.
- Victor is disappointed because he did not make the baseball team.
- Linda is devastated because nobody asked her to the prom.
- Bonnie is unable to decide what she wants to do in life.
- Ray is uncertain about whether to go to college.
- Steven is embarrassed because he is overweight.
- Lisa is scared because a girl at school is threatening to beat her up.
- Rodney gets angry when he loses a game to his brother.
- Kids at school are calling Lauren "stick legs" because she is so thin.
- Heather is feeling troubled because she might fail two courses.
- Mike's friend keeps pressuring him to smoke.
Your child inevitably encounters problems, such as those, as they attempt to cope with their own life; a life they own. Your child's frustrations, and concerns, and even their failures, belong to them; not to you.
This concept is one that many parents at first find hard to accept. Most mothers and fathers are inclined to make too many of their children's problems their own. By doing so, as we shall demonstrate later, they cause themselves unnecessary grief, contribute to the deterioration of their relationship with their children, and miss countless opportunities to be effective counselors for their children.
When a parent accepts the fact that a problem is owned by the child, that in no way means that the parent cannot be concerned, care, or offer help.
Professional counselors have real concern for, and genuinely care about, each child they are trying to help. But, unlike most parents, the counselor leaves the responsibility for solving the child's problem, with the child.
Counselors recognize that the child is a separate individual from themselves, and allow the child to own the problem. Counselors accept that the child has a problem, and yet they rely heavily upon, and basically trust in the child's own inner resources for solving their own problem. Only because the counselors let the child own the problem are they able to employ Active Listening.
Active Listening is a powerful method for helping another person solve problems that he or she owns, provided the listener can accept the other person's ownership, and consistently allow the other person to find their own solutions. Active Listening can greatly increase the effectiveness of parents as helping agents for their children, but it is a different kind of help from that which parents usually try to give.
Paradoxically, this method will also increase the parent's over-all influence on the child, but it is an influence that differs from the kind that most parents try to exert over their children. Active Listening is a method of influencing children to find their own solutions to their own problems. Most parents, however, are tempted to take over ownership of their children's problems, as in the following conversation between Anthony and his mother:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY: (walking away and sulking):
Here is how the mother can help the same boy using Active Listening:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
MOTHER:
ANTHONY:
In the first version, the mother used eight of the 12 Communication Roadblocks. In the second, the mother consistently used Active Listening. In the first, the mother "took over the problem"; in the second, her Active Listening kept ownership of the problem with Anthony. In the first, Anthony resisted his mother's suggestions, his anger and frustration were never dissipated, the problem remained unresolved, and there was no growth on Anthony's part. In the second, his anger left, he initiated problem-solving, and he took a deeper look at himself. He arrived at his own solution and obviously grew a notch toward becoming a responsible, self-directing problem-solver.
Here is another situation to illustrate how parents typically try to help children.
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
Now here is how the same girl can be helped with Active Listening:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
DAD:
KATHY:
In the first version of the conversation, Kathy's father failed to decode her message right at the start, and so the conversation got hung up on the eating problem. In the second go-around, Dad's sensitive Active Listening helped uncover the real problem, and encouraged problem-solving on Kathy's part, which eventually helped her to consider making a change.
How parents make active listening work
Here is a chance to see some parents putting Active Listening to work at home, when they are confronted with the nitty-gritty problems that mothers and fathers often encounter. It would be wise for you to not get so involved in these authentic situations, that you forget to take note of the Active Listening these parents are using.
Danny: The Child Afraid to Go to Sleep
In handling this situation, this mother, a P.E.T. graduate, initially used a few of the 12 Communication Roadblocks, but then she refocused, and relied heavily on Active Listening. Her son Danny, who was eight years old, had been having increasing trouble getting to sleep since he was five years old. About eight months before the following dialogue took place, he had moved out of a room he had been sharing with two younger brothers. Although Danny had been eager for a room of his own, his mother found that his sleeping problem had intensified.
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
The mother thinks to herself, 'I feel like strangling him. I'm so tired, I can't stand this tonight.'
MOTHER:
The mother takes the book from him, turns off the light, closes the door, and sits on the bed beside him, leaning back against the wall.
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
The mother knows that Danny loves school. He is in the third grade, and loves math, too.
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
Danny's oldest brother will soon enter college, and there has been much family talk about it.
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
Danny is completely calmed down. He continues talking comfortably, and with no anger.
DANNY:
MOTHER:
Danny pulls up the covers which had been kicked off, carefully covers up his mother's knees and pats them.
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
After a period of quiet, Danny starts snorting and sniffing with much exaggerated clearing of his throat and nose. Snort, snort, snort. Danny does have a slight allergy, with a stuffy nose, but the symptoms are never acute. Mother has never heard Danny snort like this before.
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
Danny snorts again a couple of times.
MOTHER:
DANNY:
Danny snorts again, and sighs in anguish.
DANNY:
The mother is very surprised at this, and she is tempted to ask Danny where his idea came from, but she uses active listening instead.
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
Tommy is Danny's much admired friend, who is two years older than Danny.
MOTHER:
DANNY:
Danny snorts again, and gives a long explanation. He then talks about his friend Tommy, and concludes by saying, "Tommy wouldn't lie to me."
The mother explains that his friend is probably trying to help, but kids get false information sometimes. The mother carefully explains that everyone breathes through their mouth when they are sleeping. Danny is very relieved.
DANNY:
MOTHER:
Danny breathes easily through his mouth for few moments, but then snorts again.
MOTHER:
DANNY:
The mother realizes that Danny has been afraid to go to sleep for years, because he was afraid he would choke to death, and she thinks to herself, "Oh, my poor baby."
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
DANNY:
MOTHER:
The mother gives Danny a kiss, and he is asleep in minutes.
The case of Danny is not a unique example from a parent, whose Active Listening brought about the dramatic resolution of an emotional problem. Reports like these, from parents in our classes, confirm our belief that most parents can learn the skill of Active Listening employed by professional counselors. And parents can learn it well enough to put it to work, to help their own children solve rather deep-seated problems; problems that used to be considered the exclusive province of professional counsellors.
Nancy: The Child Frustrated with School.
Sometimes Active Listening functions only as a kind of therapeutic listening that brings about a cathartic release of a child's feelings. All the child seems to need is an empathic ear, or a sounding board, as with Nancy, a very bright ten-year-old. Nancy's mother had suggested to her daughter that their session be tape recorded, so that the mother could bring the tape to her P.E.T. class.
We encourage parents to do this in our course, so that we can use the tape for coaching the mother or father, as well as for teaching the others in the classes. As you read the verbatim transcript, try to imagine how most untrained parents would instead have used the roadblocks in responding to Nancy's feelings about her teacher.
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
MOTHER:
NANCY:
It is sometimes hard for parents to let a session like that end on an inconclusive, or incomplete note. When parents understand that this frequently happens in counseling sessions conducted by professional counselors, they are much more able to allow the child to stop, trusting that the child will find their own solution later. Professionals learn from experience that you can have faith in the capacity of children to deal constructively with their own life problems. Parents often underestimate this capacity within their children.
Following is an example, drawn from an interview I had with an adolescent. It illustrates the point that Active Listening does not always bring about an on-the-spot change. Frequently, Active Listening may only start a chain of events, and the conclusion may not become apparent for some time, or in some cases, the conclusion may never be known by the parent. This happens because children often work out a solution afterward on their own.
Professional counselors see this happening all the time. A child may end a counseling hour still in the middle of discussing a problem, only to return a week later to report that it has been solved.
This occurred with Nigel, a sixteen-year-old young man who was brought to me for counseling, because his parents were worried about his utter disregard for school, his rebellion against adults, his use of drugs, and his lack of cooperation at home.
For several weeks, Nigel spent the counseling hour defending his smoking marijuana, and criticizing adults for their own use of alcohol and tobacco. He saw nothing wrong with using pot. He thought everyone should try it, because it was such a marvelous experience for him. He also strongly questioned the value of school. He regarded it only as preparation for getting a job, so that a person could earn money, and be in the same trap that everyone else in society was in. He had been getting D's and F's in school. For Nigel, doing anything constructive seemed futile.
One day he came in for his counseling hour, and suddenly announced that he had decided to stop smoking pot. He said he was through "ruining his life." While he still did not know what he wanted to do in life, he said he was sure he did not want to throw his life away by being a loser. He also announced that he was working hard on the two courses he was taking in summer school, after having flunked all but one of his courses during the regular year. Eventually Nigel ended up with two B+ grades in those summer courses. He graduated from high school, and entered college.
I do not know what changed him, but I suspect that his own good sense was mobilized by his being Actively Listened to.
Sometimes Active Listening simply helps someone accept a situation that they know they cannot change. Active Listening helps your children express their feelings about an unhappy situation, and they feel better when they can get their feelings of anguish off their chest. You let them feel that their feelings, whatever they might be, are accepted by someone else.
It is probably the same phenomenon that griping has in the Army. The griper usually knows he cannot change the situation, but it does seem to help to be able to get negative feelings out in the open, in the presence of someone who accepts and understands. This is illustrated in the following exchange between Alyssa, aged twelve, and her mother.
ALYSSA:
MOTHER:
ALYSSA:
MOTHER:
ALYSSA:
MOTHER:
ALYSSA:
Obviously, no clear solution was reached, nor can Alyssa do anything much to change her teacher. However, being permitted to express her feelings, and have them accepted and understood, frees Alyssa to move on to something else. This mother is also demonstrating to her daughter, that when her daughter has difficulties, her daughter has an accepting person to share them with.
When should a parent decide to use active listening?
To use Active Listening, you do not have to wait until some rather serious problem comes up, such as was the case with Danny, who was afraid to go to sleep? Quite the contrary. Your children send you messages every day that tell you they are experiencing troublesome feelings.
For example, little Nate has just burned his finger on his mother's curling iron.
NATE:
Nate begins crying now, and says:
MOTHER:
NATE:
MOTHER:
NATE, stops crying, and says:
MOTHER:
Responding to this common little household incident, Mother avoided reassuring Nate with, "It's not so bad," or, "It will feel better." She respected Nate's feelings that it was burned badly, and that it hurt a lot.
She also refrained from evaluating, name-calling, and commanding, with one of the most typical parental responses in situations like this. She did not say, "Now now, Nate, you didn't burn it that badly. Don't be such a little baby. Stop that crying, right now."
Nate's mother's Active Listening reflects some important attitudes that she has toward him:
- She acknowledges that he has encountered a painful moment in his life.
- She recognizes that it is his problem, and he has a right to his own unique reaction to it.
- She does not deny him his own feelings, and acknowledges that his feelings are real to him.
- She can accept how bad he feels the burn is, and how much he hurts.
- She does not make him feel wrong, or guilty for whatever his feelings might be.
Parents report that when a child is hurt and cries vigorously, Active Listening will frequently bring about a dramatic and instantaneous cessation of the crying. The sudden change happens once the child is certain that the parent knows and understands how badly the child feels, or how much the child is afraid.
Children can also be very vexing to a parent when they feel anxious, frightened, or insecure, when the parent leaves for work, or leaves for the evening; or when a child is away from home, and misses their favorite doll, or blanket; or when the child has to sleep in a strange bed, and so on. A parent gets understandably impatient when the child will not stop whining, or stop calling out for what they are missing.
- "I want my blanket, I want my blanket, I want my blanket!"
- "I do not want you to go. I do not want you to go!"
- "I want my bear. Where is my bear? I want my bear!"
Reassurance from the parent seldom works in such situations, but Active Listening, on the other hand, can work wonders. The main thing the child wants is recognition from the parent, of how deeply the child is feeling.
One man reported the following incident shortly after taking the P.E.T. class:
"I was watching Michele, aged three and a half, and she began to whine incessantly, when her mom left her in the car with me, while she went shopping in the supermarket.
"'I want my Mommy,' was repeated a dozen times, despite my telling her each time that Mommy would be back in a few minutes.
"Then she changed to loud crying: 'I want my bear. I want my bear.' After everything I tried, failed to pacify her, I remembered the Active Listening method.
"In desperation, I said, 'You miss your Mommy when she leaves you.'
"Michele nodded.
"I said, 'You do not like for Mommy to leave without you.'
"Michele nodded again, still fearfully clutching her security blanket, and looking like a frightened, lost kitten, huddled in the corner of the backseat.
"I continued, saying, 'When you miss Mommy, you want to have your bear.'
"Michele nodded vigorously.
"I said, 'But you do not have your bear here, and you miss your bear, too.'
"Then, as if by magic, Michele got out of her corner, dropped her blanket, stopped crying, crawled in the front seat with me, and began to converse pleasantly about the people she saw in the parking lot."
The lesson to parents, as it was for the man watching little Michele, is that you have to accept the way your child feels, rather than try some direct approach to get rid of the whining and pestering, with your reassurance or threats. Kids want to know, that you know, how badly they feel.
Another situation, where Active Listening can effectively be put to work, is one in which children send messages that are strangely coded, making it difficult for the parent to understand just what is going on inside their heads. Often, but not always, their messages are coded as questions:
- "Will I ever get married?"
- "What does it feel like to die?"
- "Why do kids call me a wimp?"
- "Daddy, what did you like in girls when you were a boy?"
That last question came out of my own daughter's mouth one morning at breakfast, before she left for junior high school. Like most fathers, I was immediately tempted to take the ball and run with it, given such a chance to reminisce about my boyhood. Fortunately, I caught myself, and came up with an Active Listening response instead:
FATHER:
DAUGHTER:
FATHER:
DAUGHTER:
FATHER:
DAUGHTER:
FATHER:
DAUGHTER:
FATHER:
DAUGHTER:
FATHER:
DAUGHTER:
I would have muffed the chance to be helpful, if I had given in to the temptation to tell my daughter about my boyhood preferences in girls. Thanks to Active Listening, my daughter took a small step forward. She acquired a new insight; the type that often leads to a constructive self-initiated behavioral change.
Unusually coded messages, that children send, particularly questions, often mean that the child is coping with a deeper problem. Active Listening provides parents with a way of moving in, and offering to help the child define the problem for themself, and starts the process of problem-solving within the child. If the parent gives direct answers to these feelings-coded-as-questions, instead of the parent using Active Listening, the parent will almost invariably have missed an opportunity to be an effective counselor on the real problem the child is grappling with.
Parents, when they are first trying out Active Listening, often do not realise, or forget, that it is a skill that also has tremendous value in responding to children's intellectual problems. Children continually encounter problems as they strive to make sense out of what they read, or hear, about the world around them, including issues like racism, police brutality, war, ethnic cleansing, ozone layer depletion, divorce, gangs, and so on.
What throws parents off so frequently is that kids generally state their views very strongly, or in ways that make parents shudder at the children's apparent naivete or immaturity. The temptation is for Mom and Dad is to jump in, and straighten the kids out, or show them the broader picture.
Parents' motivation can be honorable, and they may want to contribute to their children's intellectual development. Or the parents' motivation might be self-centered, if they want to demonstrate their own superior intellectual abilities. But in either case, if parents jump in with one or more of the roadblocks, instead of Active Listening, they bring on the inevitable effect of tuning the kids out, or of starting a verbal battle that ends up in hurt feelings, and cutting remarks.
We have found that we have to ask our parents-in-training, some rather penetrating questions, to get them to consider using Active Listening, whenever their kids are coping with ideas, or current issues, or whenever the children are dealing with more personal problems. We ask the parents:
- "Does your child have to think like you?"
- "Why do you have a need to teach your child?"
- "Can you tolerate an opinion that is very much different from your own?"
- "Can you help your child come to their own way of looking at this complex world?"
- "Can you allow your child to be wherever they are within their grappling over an issue?"
- "Can you remember how you, as a kid, had some pretty weird ideas about world problems?"
When parents complain that their kids never talk about serious problems at home, it usually turns out that such problems had been tentatively tossed out at the table by their kids, but then the parents used the traditional roadblocks of admonishing, preaching, moralizing, teaching, evaluating, judging, sarcasm, or diverting. Kids slowly start to pull down a curtain that will forever separate them from their parents. That is prevalent in so many families, because parents do not actively listen. It is no wonder that there is such alienation between parents, and the developing minds of their children.
After parents in our classes begin to bite their tongues, and open their ears, they report markedly positive changes in dinner-table conversations. Their kids start to bring up problems and issues, that previously were never shared with the parents, such as with drugs, sex, abortion, alcohol, morality, and so on. Active Listening can work wonders, in making the home a place where parents and their children can join, in deep, penetrating discussions of the complex, critical problems kids are facing.
Common mistakes in using active listening
Parents generally do not find it difficult to understand what Active Listening is, and how it differs from the 12 Communication Roadblocks. Also, it is a rare parent who does not recognize the potential benefits that can be derived from using Active Listening with children. However, some parents have more trouble than others in applying this skill successfully. As with any new skill someone is trying to learn, mistakes are made, either because of lack of competence, or because the skill is used inappropriately. We will next point out some of these mistakes, in the hope that it will help parents avoid them.
Manipulating Children Through "Guidance"
Some parents fail when first beginning to use Active Listening, simply because their intentions are inappropriate. They want to use Active Listening to manipulate their children into behaving, or thinking, the way the parents believe the children should.
Mrs. J
When the instructor asked if she would like to tell the class what happened, Mrs. J explained, "James, aged sixteen, came home from school, and he announced that he had been told he was flunking two courses. I immediately tried to encourage him to talk, by using my new-found skill. James clammed up and eventually walked away from me."
The instructor then suggested that he play the role of James, and that he and Mrs. J would try to reenact the scene. Mrs. J agreed, although she warned the class that the instructor could probably never be as uncommunicative in his role, as her son generally is at home. Note the mother's responses, as the instructor playes the role of James.
The instructor begins by saying, "Wow! I got burned today. Two failure warnings; one in Math, and the other in English."
Mrs. J says, "You are upset."
The instructor replies, "Of course I am upset."
Mrs. J says, "You are disappointed."
The instructor replies, "That is putting it mildly. It means I will not graduate, that is all. Like... I have had it."
Mrs. J responds by saying, "You feel there's nothing you can do about it, because you did not study enough."
With that response, the mother has sent her own message. She is giving her analysis, and diagnosis.
The instructor hears, and acknowledges the mother's response by countering with,
Mrs J says, "Yes. It is certainly not too late, is it?"
Again, the mother has inserted her own message. This time, she was offering a solution.
The instructor replies, saying,
And so it went. James had been backed into a corner by Mrs. J, who, under the guise of using Active Listening, was trying to manipulate James into a crash plan of intensive study. James felt threatened by his mother, but he would not buy into it, and he became defensive.
Mrs. J, like many parents new to Active Listening, latched onto it, because she saw it as a new technique for manipulating children. It seemed to be a subtle way of influencing children to do what the parent thinks they should do, and to guide the child's behavior or thinking.
Should parents not try to guide their children? Is not guidance one of parents' principal responsibilities? While "parental guidance" is one of the most universally sanctioned functions for parents, it is also one that is most misunderstood. To guide means to steer in some direction. It also implies that the hand of the parent is on the steering wheel. Invariably, when parents grab the steering wheel and try to guide the child in some specific direction, they get resistance.
Children are quick to sense the parents' intentions. They immediately recognize that parental guidance usually means lack of acceptance of the child as she is. The child feels the parent is trying to do something to her. She is fearful of such indirect control. Her independence is threatened.
Active Listening is not a guidance technique toward parent-directed change. Parents who think that it is, will send indirect messages: the parent's biases, ideas, subtle pressures. Here are some examples of parents' messages creeping into responses to their children's communications:
GINNY:
PARENT:
GINNY:
Note how the parent slipped in her own message: "I hope this is only temporary and tomorrow you will not be mad at her." Ginny sensed the parent's desire to change her, and in the second message strongly corrected her.
Here is another example:
Child:
PARENT:
Obviously, the parent's feedback is an attempt to dissuade the child from thinking as he does about marijuana. No wonder her feedback turns out to be inaccurate, for it contains her own message to the child as opposed to reflecting accurately only what the child is communicating to her. An accurate feedback would have been something like:
- "You're convinced they ought to legalize marijuana, is that right?"
Opening the Door, Then Slamming It Shut
When they first try Active Listening, some parents start to use it to open the door for their children to communicate, but then they slam the door shut because they do not keep up the Active Listening long enough to hear the child out completely. It is like saying, "Come on, tell me what you feel, I will understand." Then, when the parent hears what the child feels, she quickly shuts the door because she doesn't like what she hears.
Kyle, age six, is looking down in the mouth, and his mother moves in to help:
MOTHER:
KYLE:
MOTHER:
KYLE: No. I'm going to bust him right in the mouth.
MOTHER:
KYLE:
Kyle swings his arm hard, making a punching motion.
MOTHER:
MOTHER:
KYLE:
The door was slammed shut in Kyle's face, so no more communicating. By evaluating, moralizing, and advising, this parent has lost the chance to help Kyle work through his feelings and arrive at some constructive solution to his problem on his own. Kyle also learned that his mother does not trust him to solve such problems, that she cannot accept his angry feelings, that she thinks he is not a nice boy, and that parents just don't seem to understand.
There is no better way to insure the failure of Active Listening than to use it to encourage a child to express his true feelings, and then move in with evaluation, judgment, moralizing, and advice. Parents who do this quickly discover that their children become suspicious and learn that the parents only try to draw them out so they can then turn around and use what they hear to evaluate them or put them down.
The "Parroting Parent"
Mr. T. comes to class discouraged with his first efforts to use Active Listening. "My son looked at me funny and told me to stop repeating what he was saying." Mr. T. was reporting an experience that many parents have when they simply mirror back or "parrot" their children's facts, rather than feelings. These parents need to be reminded that the child's words (her particular code) are merely the vehicle for communicating feelings. The code is not the message; it must be decoded by the parent.
The child says angrily to her father, "You're a mean, smelly rat."
Obviously, the child knows the difference between a rat and her father, so her message is not, "Dad, you are a rat." This particular code is merely the child's unique way of communicating her anger.
If the father were to respond with, "You think I'm a rat," the child would hardly feel that she had gotten her point across. If the father had said, "You're really angry at me," the child would have said "I sure am," and she would have felt that she had been understood.
The following three examples show the contrasts between responses that merely parrot the code and those where the parent first decodes, then feeds back the child's inner feeling (the true message he or she is communicating):
BRADLEY:
PARENT: [PARROTING THE CODE.]
PARENT: [FEEDING BACK THE MEANING.]
LARISSA:
PARENT: [PARROTING THE CODE.]
PARENT: [FEEDING BACK THE MEANING.]
SAM:
PARENT: [PARROTING THE CODE.]
PARENT: [FEEDING BACK THE MEANING.]
It takes practice for parents to learn accurate Active Listening. But in our P.E.T. classes we find that most parents who receive coaching and participate in skill-training exercises acquire a surprisingly high level of competence in this art.
Listening Without Empathy
A real danger for parents who try to learn Active Listening solely from a book's printed page is their inability to hear the warmth and empathy that must accompany their efforts. Empathy means a quality of communication that conveys to the sender of a message that the listener is feeling with her, putting herself in the shoes of the sender, living, for a moment, inside the sender.
Everyone wants others to understand how she feels when she talks, not just what she is saying. Children, especially, are feeling people. Therefore, much of what they communicate is accompanied by feelings: joy, hate, disappointment, fear, love, worry, anger, pride, frustration, sadness, and so on. When they communicate with parents, they expect empathy with such feelings. When parents don't empathize, children naturally feel that the essential part of them at that moment- their feeling- is not being understood.
Probably, the most common mistake parents make when they first try out Active Listening is to feed back a response devoid of the feeling component of the child's message.
Rebecca, aged eleven, runs into the yard where her mother is working, and complains about her nine-year-old brother Scott:
REBECCA:
MOTHER:
REBECCA:
Rebecca's mother heard her words, but not her feelings. As of that particular moment, Rebecca is feeling angry and hateful. "You really are sore at Scott" would have caught her feelings. When Mother coldly feeds back only Rebecca's displeasure with having her dresser drawers emptied, Rebecca feels misunderstood and in her next message has to correct her mother with, "Don't like it! [That's putting it mildly]," and, "And I hate him [That's what's more important]."
Little Carey, aged six, pleads with his father, who has been trying to encourage him to come into the water while the family is enjoying a day at the beach:
CAREY:
FATHER:
CAREY:
This father is completely missing the child's feelings, and his attempt at feedback shows it. Carey is not sending an intellectual evaluation of the depth of the water. He is sending an urgent plea to his father: "Don't make me come in because I'm scared stiff!" The father should have acknowledged this with, "You're scared and don't want me to force you into the water."
Some parents find out they are very uncomfortable with feelings- their own as well as their child's. It is as if they are compelled to ignore a child's feelings because they cannot tolerate her having them. Or they want quickly to push her feelings out of the picture, and therefore deliberately avoid acknowledging them. Some parents are so frightened of feelings that they actually fail to detect them in their child's messages.
Such parents usually learn in our classes that children (and adults) inevitably do feel. Feelings are an essential part of living, not something pathological or dangerous. Our system also shows that feelings are generally transitory- they come and go, leaving no permanent damage to the child. The key to their going, however, is parental acceptance and acknowledgment, transmitted to the child by empathic Active Listening. When parents learn to do this, they report to us how quickly even intense negative feelings are dissipated.
Henry and Amy, young parents of two daughters, brought back to class an incident that greatly reinforced their faith in the power of Active Listening. Both had been raised in strongly religious homes. Their parents had taught them in a hundred different ways that expressing feelings was a sign of weakness and not what a "Christian" ever does. Henry and Amy learned: "It's a sin to hate!" "Love thy neighbor!" "Hold your tongue, young lady!" "When you can speak civilly to your mother, you may come back to the dinner table!"
Trained in childhood with such dictums, Henry and Amy found it difficult as parents to accept their children's feelings and tune in to the frequent emotional communication from their two girls. P.E.T. was an eye-opener. At first, they began to accept the existence of feelings in their own relationship. Then they started communicating their own feelings to each other, helped by each Active Listening to the other.
Finding this new honesty and intimacy rewarding, Henry and Amy had gained enough confidence to start listening to their two pre-adolescent girls. Within months, the two girls changed from being quiet, introverted, and repressed to being expressive, spontaneous, extroverted, communicative, and full of fun. Feelings became an accepted part of living in this liberated family environment.
"It's so much more fun now," Henry reports. "We do not have to feel guilty about having feelings. And the kids are more open and honest with us now."
Active Listening at the Wrong Times
Unsuccessful experiences of parents who first try Active Listening often occur because parents use it at inappropriate times. As with any good thing, Active Listening can be overdone.
There are times when kids don't want to talk about their feelings, even to two empathic ears. They may want to live with their feelings for awhile. They may find it too painful at the moment to talk. They may not have the time to enter into a lengthy cathartic session with a parent. Parents should respect the child's need for privacy in her world of feelings and not try to push her to talk.
No matter how good a door-opener Active Listening is, kids often don't want to walk through. One mother told how her daughter found a way to tell her when she did not feel like talking: "Knock it off! I know it might help to talk, but I just don't feel like it now. So, please, no Active Listening right now, Mother."
Sometimes parents open the door with Active Listening when they lack time to stick around and hear all the feelings bottled up within the child. Such hit-and-run tactics are not only unfair to the child, but hurt the relationship. The child will come to feel her parents do not care enough to hear her out. We tell parents: "Don't start Active Listening unless you have the time to hear all of the feelings this skill so often releases."
Some parents have experienced resistance because they used Active Listening when a child needs different help. When a child is legitimately asking for information, for a helping hand, or for some special resource of the parent, she may have no need to talk out or work through something.
Parents sometimes grow so enamored of Active Listening that they employ it when the child does not need to be "drawn out" or encouraged to get in touch with her deeper feelings: It will be obvious how inappropriate Active Listening is in the following theoretical situations:
CHILD:
PARENT:
CHILD:
PARENT:
CHILD:
PARENT:
These children probably do not need to be encouraged to communicate more. They are asking for a specific kind of help that is quite different from the help that Active Listening provides. They are not transmitting feelings. They are asking for factual information. To respond to such requests with Active Listening will not only seem strange to the child; it will often produce frustration and irritation. These are times when a direct answer is what is wanted and called for.
Parents also discover that their children become perturbed when the parent continues to try Active Listening long after the child is finished sending messages. Parents need to know when to quit. Generally, clues will be forthcoming from the child- a facial expression, getting up to leave, silence, being fidgety, looking at her watch, and so on- or the child may say such things as:
- "Well, I guess that is about it."
- "I do not have time to talk anymore."
- "I see things kinda different now."
- "Maybe that is enough for now."
- "I got a lot of studying tonight."
- "Well, I am taking a lot of your time."
Wise parents back off when they get these clues or messages, even though it does not seem to them that the particular problem has been solved by the child. As professional therapists realize, Active Listening only starts children on the first step of problem-solving- getting the feelings out and the problem defined. Frequently, the children themselves take it from there, eventually winding up with a solution on their own.