Children tend to listen to us more or less as well as they feel listened to. Probably the number one top complaint of parents is that their child “won’t listen” to them, but what if the child’s refusal or disinterest in listening to us is an indicator that, quite often, they don’t feel very good when listening to us, resulting in some breakdown of the communication. It’s hard to relate to our child’s feelings and frustrations when we feel ignored by our child or feel that our child is purposely fighting us. Yet, it’s when we can see past their refusal to cooperate and try to relate to what feelings they may be showing us that things can start to move from stuck back to open connected communication that works for parent and child! What helps you feel seen, heard and understood? To gain some insight into your child’s world, perhaps first think about this from your own perspective: Bring to mind a relationship where you struggle to get your point of view across, a relationship that always feels like a one way communication, even when they listen, you can tell they’re not really listening, that they’re amped to jump back in and get their point of view across, to give advice, to correct or criticize you (perhaps subtly) and generally always bring the communication back to their thoughts, feelings and opinions. You might wish they could show genuine interest in hearing and understanding your perspective. Notice how you feel when thinking about this person and these interactions. If you were to need this person’s help or co-operation, what thoughts would come up for you? Possibly, you’d rather not need them at all and if you do need to ask their help or advice, you would probably already feel defensive and quite stressed. Now think about the person who always shows genuine interest in your point of view, in your experiences and feelings and gives you positive reflections. Think about how you feel if you need to seek their help? Much calmer? If you think about the messages you receive from these different experiences, you’ll no doubt gain some valuable experience-based insights into what active listening is and is not. These insights are way more valuable than anything you can read on the subject! Love is not enough, we need communication skills. The difference between these two different interactions probably has a lot to do with whether a certain person can practice active listening or not. What is Active Listening? What does it look like in a conversation? What improvements will likely happen in my family interactions if I can learn to apply it? When active listening, the listener resists the temptation to make the assumption that they already know what the speaker is trying to say. It’s easy to think “oh I’ve heard this before” or “I know what you should do”, “yeah right, as if you’re so innocent in this” or “come on get to the bottom line”. Such thoughts make it difficult to properly hear and interpret the speaker’s words and can deny both parties the opportunity for deeper understanding and to resolve potential misunderstandings. Mostly when people are speaking, they are showing feelings, not just information and facts. When the listener responds back to the facts while ignoring the feelings, this can leave the speaker with an unsatisfied sense that their feelings haven’t been seen, understood or cared about (empathized with) hence leading to tension between listener and speaker. This can subsequently make it more difficult for the speaker to then listen actively when it’s their turn to listen. ~ Genevieve
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 00:00:01 +0000
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