As they go through their day, your children experience many moments of exhilaration and frustration. Often the quality of your day can feel tied to your children’s own roller coaster of emotions. One way that you can keep yourself on an even keel is to learn how to weather their ups and downs. Listening to your children is a chief skill you can use. You can hear their disappointment when they do not make the team; you can accept their frustration when their plans do not work out; and you can acknowledge their dissatisfaction when they complain that their friends follow a different set of rules.
It can feel like a relief to parents to learn that they do not need to “fix” everything for their children. Just listening can help your children. By showing that their thoughts are important, you are showing that they are worthy of your attention. By hearing their distress, you are demonstrating that their view of the world has merit. By allowing them time to decide their course of action, you are indicating your trust in their ability to solve problems.
How do you really listen?
Listening involves paying full attention to what your children have to say. It means turning off the running dialog that goes on in your head – the one where you are so busy thinking about all the things you need to do or should be doing or you are so busy thinking of the perfect response to your children that you miss half of what they are saying to you. If you are too busy at the moment to listen, then you can set an appointment with your child to talk at a later time. For example, “I need to make a few phone calls before 5:00, but after I am finished, I am all yours.” It is important that you keep to your time schedule and don’t get involved in another activity. You want to communicate to your child that he is important and that you care about his thoughts, feelings and struggles.
In addition to tuning in completely, when you really listen, you do not judge your children’s experience. You accept that they are feeling one way or another, whether or not you agree with their perceptions. It is okay to allow your children to vent, at least for short periods of time. If recounting the story over and over seems to escalate their emotions rather than help dissipate them, you need to stop the rant. Also, if you find yourself unable to tolerate their strong feelings or unable to listen without getting upset yourself, then you need to put a limit on their unloading. A parent could say “I hear that you are upset and I can’t listen anymore. When you are ready to discuss what you can do about this situation I will be able to talk. Until then, I’ll be in the other room knowing how upset you are.”
There are several different ways that you can listen to your children.
• Sometimes, just being there and listening will be enough. You can provide a safe dumping ground which only requires your attention, a few “um’s” or “I see’s,” and an occasional nod.
• At other times, you can help your children by repeating back what they have said so they can “hear” themselves and know that you have heard and understood them. You can use such phrases as “You’re angry that…” or “What I hear you saying is…”
• And in some situations, while you listen to your children, you can also teach them general rules of life; for example, a parent might say to a child, “When people look forward to getting something new, they can be frustrated and angry when it breaks on the first day.”
When your children feel heard, they are in a much better position to move on from the issue at hand and often they are able to figure out solutions to those problems without your needing to jump in and fix things for them. Sometimes, there really is not any way to “fix” the situation, but, just by listening, your children know that at least one person in the world cares about them and is on their side.
What is not Listening?
As parents, you want your children to be happy, and the hardest thing to do is listen to their struggles – you want to do something. However, your actions often get in the way. Here are some common traps that parents fall into when trying to listen to their children:
• Reassuring- You want to promise your children that it will all be okay in the end, that it’s not such a big deal, and that things will work out for the best. While their problems may seem small and easily rectified to you, they don’t seem so to your children. By reassuring your children too quickly, you are minimizing the problem. After your children have had an opportunity to vent, you can certainly help them to gain perspective, encourage them to find solutions, and remind them of their ability to overcome the obstacles. However, that strategy can only be successful AFTER children have been heard.
• Sharing- Sometimes you want your children to know that you have been through the same thing. You want them to know that you understand how they feel and that you have survived. Your intentions are good; however, once again, if you share too early in the process, you take the focus off of your child’s experience and onto yourself. Your children won’t feel heard.
• Questioning – Your children come in upset and you want to understand what is happening. Frequently the story being recounted is disjointed or is told in such detail that you have difficulty understanding what the problem is. It is tempting to jump in with your own questions to clarify the situation, to speed up the process, or to get to what you believe are the important facts. Once again, by asking questions you are taking control over the direction of the conversation, often taking the focus off what your children consider to be important. You can learn a lot just by listening to what they do include, what information they value. Do they talk about feelings or facts? Do they talk about others’ perspectives or just their own? Can they see the big picture or do they get bogged down in the details?
• Explaining – Because your children are still children, they may lack all of the knowledge or information needed to accurately access the situation. You may want to jump in and fill the gaps and explain why another person behaved the way they did. While quite useful and important, these explanations fall under the category of teaching – an important part of parenting, but not part of listening.
• Solving – Again, you want your children to be happy. It is uncomfortable to watch your children struggle, especially when the solutions to their problems are quite clear to you. Like teaching your children, helping your children find ways to resolve a difficult situation is an important part of parenting. However, if you move into that mode too quickly, your children do not feel heard and usually reject any of your attempts to help. If you can hold back and really listen first, then your children become open to ideas and suggestions. You can test your children’s readiness by asking “Do you want to think about what you can do about this situation?” You can start by seeing if they have ideas for solving it on their own or if they need your assistance. But again, they can only move to the problem solving stage after they feel they have been heard.
Article source: parentingedu.org