Chapter 5
Yet being around is not enough in itself. The critical factor is the parent’s effectiveness in listening accurately to the nonverbal communication of the child so that he understands what is going on inside and can effectively give the child what he needs when he needs it.
He must also utilize the same feedback process for the purpose of checking on the accuracy of his decoding. This feedback process also can be called Active Listening; it is the same mechanism we described in the communication process with more verbal children. But with a child who sends a nonverbal message (crying), the parent must use a nonverbal feedback (bottle in the mouth).
You will be the most effective parent by providing your infant with a home climate in which you will know how to gratify his needs appropriately by using Active Listening to understand the messages that announce specifically what his unique needs are.
The parent might first throw a blanket over the child (decoding the child’s crying as “He is feeling cold”). But the child keeps on crying (“You have not yet understood my message”). Then the parent picks the child up and rocks him (Now decoding, “He is scared by a dream”). The child continues to cry (“That’s not what I am feeling”). Finally, the parent puts a bottle of milk in the infant’s mouth (“He is feeling hungry”) and after a few sucks the child stops crying. (“That’s what I meant—I was feeling hungry—you finally understood me.”)
Certainly the ultimate goal of most parents should be to help the very young child gradually develop his own resources—to become weaned away from dependence on the parent’s resources, more and more capable of meeting his own needs, solving his own problems. The parent who will be most effective in this is the one who can consistently follow the principle of first giving the child a chance to solve his problems himself before jumping in with a parental solution.
Chapter 6
The I-Message is much less apt to provoke resistance and rebellion. To communicate to a child honestly the effect of her behavior on you is far less threatening than to suggest that there is something bad about her because she engaged in that behavior.
you to select your solution” or “I don’t think you’re sensitive enough to find a way to help me with my problem.” 3. Sending the solution tells the child that your needs are more important than hers, that she has to do just what you think she should, regardless of her needs (“You’re doing something unacceptable to me, so the only solution is what I say”).
Consequently, I-Messages help a child grow, help her learn to assume responsibility for her own behavior. An I-Message tells a child that you are leaving the responsibility with her, trusting her to handle the situation constructively, trusting her to respect your needs, giving her a chance to start behaving constructively.
- Children often feel guilty and remorseful when they are evaluated or blamed. 2. Children feel the parent is not being fair—they feel an injustice: “I didn’t do anything wrong” or “I didn’t mean to be bad.” 3. Children often feel unloved, rejected: “She doesn’t like me because I did something wrong.” 4. Children often act very resistive to such messages—they dig in their
After all, parents do have needs. They have their own lives to live, and the right to derive enjoyment and satisfaction from their existence. Yet, many parents have allowed their children to be in a favored position in the family. These children demand that their needs are met but they are inconsiderate of the needs of their parents.
Parents have several alternatives when they own the problem: 1. They can try to modify the child directly. 2. They can try to modify the environment. 3. They can try to modify themselves.
“I’m embarrassed to mention this, but we just got these new chairs and I’m anxious to keep them as clean as possible.” These messages do not “send a solution.” People generally send this type of message to friends but seldom to their own children; they naturally refrain from ordering, exhorting, threatening, and advising friends to modify their behavior in some particular way, yet as parents they do this every day with their children.
Put-down messages can have devastating effects on a child’s developing self-concept. The child who is bombarded with messages that deprecate her will learn to look at herself as no good, bad, worthless, lazy, thoughtless, inconsiderate, “dumb,” inadequate, unacceptable, and so on. Because a poor self-concept formed in childhood has a tendency to persist into adulthood, put-down messages sow the seeds for handicapping a person throughout her lifetime. These are the ways that parents, day after day, contribute to the destruction of their children’s ego or self-esteem. Like drops of water falling on a rock, these daily messages gradually, imperceptibly leave a destructive effect on children.
Parents ask, “What’s so wrong with sending your solution—after all, isn’t she causing me a problem?” True, she is. But giving her the solution to your problem can have these effects: 1. Children resist being told what to do. They also may not like your solution. In any case, children resist having to modify their behavior when they are told just how they “must” or “should” or “better” change. 2. Sending the solution to the child also communicates another message, “I don’t trust
The key here is to remember to describe the behavior, not judge it.
- Causing the child to resist her parent’s influence efforts by refusing to change the behavior that is unacceptable to the parent. 2. Making the child feel her parent does not think her very bright. 3. Making the child feel her parent has no consideration for her needs. 4. Making the child feel guilty. 5. Tearing down the child’s self-esteem. 6. Causing the child to defend herself vigorously. 7. Provoking the child to attack the parent or get back at her in some way.
THE ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS OF AN I-MESSAGE Children will be much more likely to change their unacceptable behavior if their parents send I-Messages containing these three parts: 1) a description of the unacceptable behavior, 2) the parent’s feeling, and 3) the tangible and concrete effect the behavior has on the parent. [BEHAVIOR + FEELING + EFFECT.]
It takes a certain amount of courage to send I-Messages, but the rewards are generally well worth the risks. It takes courage and inner security for a person to expose her inner feelings in a relationship. The sender of an honest I-Message risks becoming known to the other as she really is. She is opening herself up—being “transparently real,” revealing her “human-ness.” She tells the other that she is a person capable of being hurt or embarrassed or frightened or disappointed or angry or discouraged, and so on.
This is why parents need to be very explicit about the tangible and concrete effect of a child’s behavior on them. Failure to communicate this to the child leaves her with no good reason to change.
Chapter 7
Praising kids is often motivated by the parent’s intent to get them to do what the parent has already decided is best for them to do. Or conversely, parents praise with the hope that the child will not do what they think he should not do but instead will repeat the “good” behavior that’s been rewarded by the parent’s praise.
. An exciting discussion ensued about the way parents miss so many chances of being honest with kids about their positive and loving feelings. Eager to “teach our kids a lesson,” we miss golden opportunities to teach them far more fundamental lessons. For instance, that we love them so much, that it would pain us terribly if they were hurt or killed.
Child acts up in a restaurant. Parents’ primary feeling is embarrassment. Secondary feeling is anger: “Stop acting like a two-year old.” Child forgets it is her father’s birthday and fails to say “Happy Birthday” or give him a present. Father’s primary feeling is hurt. Secondary feeling is anger: “You’re just like all the other thoughtless kids today.” Child brings home her report card with C’s and D’s. Mother’s primary feeling is disappointment. Secondary feeling is anger: “I know you were goofing off all semester. I hope you feel very proud of yourself.”
Children frequently respond to I-Messages by ignoring them, especially when parents first start using these messages. Nobody likes to learn that his behavior is interfering with the needs of another. The same is true of children. They sometimes prefer “not hearing” how their behavior is causing their parents to have feelings. We advise parents to send another I-Message when the first does not get a response.
“I really appreciate your taking out the trash even though it’s my job—thanks a lot!” “Thanks for picking up your brother at the airport—that saved me a trip. I sure appreciate it.” “When you let me know when you’ll be home, I feel relieved because then I don’t worry about you.” Positive I-Messages are not likely to be interpreted as manipulative and controlling the way praise usually is as long as these two conditions are met: 1. The parent is not consciously trying to use the messages to influence the child to repeat the desired behavior (to modify the child’s future behavior).
Children, not unlike adults, often don’t know how their behavior affects others. In the pursuit of their own goals they are often totally unaware of the impact their behavior might have. Once they are told, they usually want to be more considerate. Thoughtlessness frequently turns into thoughtfulness, once a child understands the impact of his behavior on others.
Chapter 8
Failure to offer a child an alternative before taking something away from her will generally produce frustration and tears. But children frequently accept a substitute without fuss, provided the parent offers it gently and calmly.
Parents begin using this method more extensively once they become aware of its wide range of possibilities: 1. Enriching the environment. 2. Impoverishing it. 3. Simplifying it. 4. Restricting it. 5. Child-proofing it.
Every good nursery school teacher knows that one effective way of stopping or preventing unacceptable behavior is to provide children with a great many interesting things to do—enrich their environment with play materials, reading materials, games, clay, dolls, puzzles, and so on. Effective parents, too, make use of this principle: if children are involved in something interesting, they are less likely to “get into things” or pester parents.
Chapter 9
If parents could learn only one thing from this book, I wish it were this: Each and every time they force a child to do something by using their power or authority, they deny that child a chance to learn self-discipline and self-responsibility.
Cooperation is never fostered by making a child do something.
Parent and child encounter a conflict-of-needs situation. The parent may or may not have a preconceived solution. If he does, he may try to persuade the child to accept it. It becomes obvious that the child has his own solution and is attempting to persuade the
A conflict is the moment of truth in a relationship—a test of its health, a crisis that can weaken or strengthen it, a critical event that may bring lasting resentment, smoldering hostility, psychological scars.
Parents pay another heavy price for using Method I: they generally have to spend a lot of time enforcing the decision, checking to see that the child is carrying it out, nagging, reminding, prodding.
In P.E.T. we refer to the two “win-lose” approaches to conflict resolution simply as Method I and Method II. Each involves one person winning and the other losing—one gets his way and the other does not. Here is how Method I operates in parent-child conflicts: Parent and child encounter a conflict-of-needs situation. The parent decides what the solution should be. Having selected the solution, the parent announces it and hopes the child will accept it. If the child does not like the solution, the parent may first use persuasion to try to influence the child to accept the solution. If this fails, the parent usually tries to get compliance by employing power and authority.
Parents who rely on Method I to resolve conflicts pay a severe price for “winning.” The outcomes of Method I are quite predictable—low motivation for the child to carry out the solution, resentment toward his parents, difficulties for the parent in enforcement, no opportunity for the child to develop self-discipline.
Actually, it would be a rare relationship if over a period of time one person’s needs did not conflict with the other’s. When any two people (or groups) coexist, conflict is bound to occur just because people are different, think differently, have different needs and wants that sometimes do not match.
Chapter 10
Our instructors assure them that consistency is essential, if they choose to use power and authority. Furthermore, children prefer parents to be consistent, if those
It is paradoxical but true that parents lose influence by using power and will have more influence on their children by giving up their power or refusing to use it.
. The point is: a family climate heavy with rewards may be more harmful to children who cannot earn them than to those who can.
While children lie a lot because so many parents rely heavily on rewards and punishment, I firmly believe that the tendency to lie is not natural in youngsters. It is a learned response—a coping mechanism to handle the parents’ attempts to control by manipulation of rewards and punishment. Children are not likely to lie in families where they are accepted and their freedom is respected.
The effect of inconsistency in the use of rewards and punishment can be similarly harmful to children. Inconsistency gives them no chance to learn the “proper” (rewarded) behavior and to avoid the “undesirable” behavior. They cannot win. They may become frustrated, confused, angry, and even “neurotic.”
An adolescent, therefore, does not rebel against her parents. She rebels against their power.
Whether it is deserved or not is irrelevant—the fact is that “psychological size” gives the parent influence and power over the child.
So parents should not expect, nor will their children expect of them, that they will be accepting of all behavior. What children have a right to expect, however, is that they always be told when their parents are not feeling accepting of a certain behavior (“I don’t like to be tugged and pulled when I’m talking to a friend”). This is quite different from wanting parents to use authority to set limits on their behavior.
Parents assume that adolescent rebellion and hostility are inevitably a function of this stage of development. I think this is not valid—it is more that adolescents become more able to resist and rebel. They are no longer controlled by their parents’ rewards because they don’t need them so much; and they are immune to threats of punishment because there is little parents can do to give them pain or strong discomfort.
But quite apart from the moral and ethical issue of using power over another, when parents ask, “Isn’t it my responsibility to use my power to influence my child?” they reveal a common misunderstanding about the effectiveness of power as a way of influencing their children. Parental power does not really “influence” children; it forces them to behave in prescribed ways. Power does not “influence” in the sense of persuading, convincing, educating, or motivating a child to behave in a particular way. Rather, power compels or prevents behavior.
As a child becomes less helpless, less dependent upon the parent for what she needs, the parent gradually loses power. This is why parents discover to their dismay that rewards and punishment that worked when their child was younger, become less effective as she grows older.
No question about it: power works. Children can be trained this way to play with toy cars rather than expensive glass figurines, dogs to heel on command, and bears to ride bicycles (even unicycles, amazingly).
Chapter 11
First, a brief description of Method III: Parent and child encounter a conflict-of-needs situation. The parent asks the child to participate with him in a joint search for some solution acceptable to both. One or both may offer possible solutions. They critically evaluate them and eventually make a decision on a final solution acceptable to both. No selling of the other is required after the solution has been selected, because both have already accepted it. No power is required to force compliance, because neither is resisting the decision.
Method III requires very little enforcement, for once children agree to an acceptable solution, they usually carry it out, in part because of their appreciation for not being pressured to accept a solution in which they lose. With Method I, enforcement is generally required, because the parent’s solution is often not acceptable to the child. The less acceptable a solution is to those who have to carry it out, the greater the need for enforcement—nagging, cajoling, reminding, harassing, checking up, and so on.
A person is more motivated to carry out a decision that he has participated in making than he is a decision that has been imposed upon him by another.
Method III encourages—actually requires—children to think. The parent is signaling the child: “We have a conflict, let’s put our heads together and think—let’s figure out a good solution.” Method III is an intellectual exercise in reasoning for both parent and child.
Method III, then, is a method by which each unique parent and his unique child can solve each of their unique conflicts by finding their own unique solutions acceptable to both.
Chapter 12
Most parents, when they think clearly about it, know that they cannot demand someone’s respect—they have to earn it. If their abilities and knowledge are worthy of respect, their kids will respect them. If they are not, they won’t.
How can anyone refute the idea that parents are wiser and more experienced than children? It seems to be such a self-evident truth. Yet, when we ask parents in our classes, whether their own parents made unwise Method I decisions, they all say, “Yes.” How easy it is for parents to forget their own experience as children! How easy to forget that children sometimes know better than parents when they are sleepy or hungry; know better the qualities of their friends, their own aspirations and goals, how their various teachers treat them; know better the urges and needs within their bodies, whom they love and whom they don’t, what they value and what they don’t. Parents have superior wisdom? No, not about many things concerning their children. Parents do have much valuable wisdom and experience, and that wisdom and experience need never be buried.
Our answer to both these questions is “Yes, of course.” These are crisis situations that demand immediate and firm action. Yet, prior to the crisis of the child’s running in front of a car or needing to be taken to the hospital, nonpower methods can be used.
Chapter 13
They may discover they committed themselves to something too hard to carry out. 2. They simply have not had much experience in being self-disciplined and self-directed. 3. They previously depended on parental power for their discipline and control. 4. They may forget. 5. They may be testing the no-lose method—testing whether Mom and Dad really mean what they say, whether the kids can get by with breaking their promise. 6. They may have expressed acceptance of the decision at the time just because they got tired of the uncomfortable problem-solving session.
In the no-lose method, parents should simply assume that the kids will carry out the decision. That is part of the new method—trust in each other, trust in keeping to commitments, sticking to promises, holding up one’s end of the bargain. Any talk about penalties and punishments is bound to communicate distrust, doubt, suspicion, pessimism. This is not to say that kids will always stick to their agreement. They won’t. It says merely that parents should assume that they will. “Innocent until proven guilty” or “responsible until proven irresponsible” is the philosophy we recommend.
Perhaps it is a principle in all human relationships that when one doesn’t care much about the outcome of a conflict, one may be willing to give in to another’s power; but when one has a real stake in the outcome one wants to make sure to have a voice in the decision-making.
If parents can remember to locate these conflicts where they belong, then they can handle them with the appropriate methods: 1. Staying out of the conflict completely. 2. Door-openers, invitations to talk. 3. Active Listening.
We teach parents to confront, directly and honestly, any youngster who has not stuck to an agreement. The key is to send the child an I-Message—no blame, no put-down, no threat.
Our advice to parents is: try everything you can think of in such cases. For instance: 1. Keep talking. 2. Go back to Step 2 and generate more solutions. 3. Hold over the conflict until a second session tomorrow. 4. Make strong appeals, such as, “Come on, there must be a way to resolve this,” “Let’s really try hard to find an acceptable solution,” “Have we explored all of the possible solutions?” “Let’s try harder.” 5. Bring the difficulty out in the open and try to find out whether some underlying problem or “hidden agenda” is obstructing progress. You might say, “I wonder what’s going on here that prevents us from finding a solution,” “Are there other things bugging us that we haven’t brought out?”
That may take real discipline, real integrity, real work. Depending on the reasons why a child did not keep his word, parents may (1) find the I-Messages are effective; (2) find they need to reopen the problem and find a better solution; or (3) want to help the child look for ways to help him remember.
The best way to handle such distrust and resistance is for the parents temporarily to put aside the problem-solving and try to understand with empathy what the child is really saying. Active Listening is the best tool for finding out. It may encourage kids to express more of their feelings. If they do, that is progress because, after their feelings get ventilated, these youngsters will often enter into problem-solving. If they remain withdrawn and unwilling to participate, parents will want to send their own feelings—as I-Messages,
Usually these messages are effective in dispelling distrust and resistance. If not, parents can simply leave the problem unresolved for a day or two and try the no-lose method again.
Chapter 14
there are certain inevitable conflicts that parents should not expect to be resolved, even with skillful use of this method, because they are often not amenable to Method III problem-solving. We refer to these conflicts as value collisions.
Children do not rebel against adults—they rebel against adults’ attempts to take away their freedom.
Power and authority may control the actions of others; they seldom control their thoughts, ideas, beliefs.
Parents, like many other adults with whom children will come into contact as they grow up, will be models for them. Parents are continuously modeling for their offspring—demonstrating by their actions, even louder than by their words, what they value or believe. Parents can teach their values by actually living them.
Chapter 15
A parent needs to ask himself a penetrating question: “How much do I like who I am?” If the honest answer indicates a lack of acceptance of himself as a person, that parent needs to reexamine his own life to find ways to become more fulfilled from his own achievements. Persons with high self-acceptance and self-regard are generally productive achievers who are using their own talents, who are actualizing their own potential, who accomplish things, who are doers. Parents who satisfy their own needs through independent productive effort not only accept themselves but also needn’t seek gratification of their needs from the way their children behave. They don’t need their children to turn out in a particular way. People with high self-esteem, resting on a firm foundation of their own independent achievement, are more accepting of their children and the way they behave.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts … You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
Chapter 16
Schools also impose on children a curriculum that most kids consider dull and not at all relevant to what is going on in their lives. Then, recognizing that such a curriculum is not likely to motivate students by virtue of interest and relevance, the schools almost universally employ a system of rewards and punishments—the ubiquitous grades—that almost insures that a certain rather large percentage of children will be labeled “below average.”
Drawing on our experience of working in many school districts, it is clear to me that schools, with very few exceptions, are basically authoritarian institutions that modeled their organizational structure and leadership philosophy after military organizations.
Chapter 2
position to be a facilitator or catalyst or helping agent, helping the child work through the problem-solving process on her own. 6. Kids do need help with certain kinds of problems, but in the long run the kind of help that is most effective is, paradoxically, a form of nonhelp. More accurately, it’s a way of helping that leaves the responsibility with the child for searching for and finding her own solutions. In P.E.T. we call these the “Listening Skills.”
When people become parents, something strange and unfortunate happens. They begin to assume a role or act a part and forget that they are persons. Now that they have entered the sacred realm of parenthood, they feel they must take up the mantle of “parents.” Now they earnestly try to behave in certain ways because they think that is how parents should behave.
Being accepting is a characteristic of their own personality—their inner security, their high tolerance level, the fact that they like themselves, the fact that their feelings about themselves are quite independent of what happens around them, and a host of other personality variables. Everybody has known such people; although you may not have known what made them that way, you regard them as “accepting people.” One feels good around such people—you can talk openly to them, let your hair down. One can be oneself.
It has given professional sanction for parents to use their authority or power to restrict (“set limits” on) certain behaviors that they cannot accept. Parents have interpreted this to mean that it is all right to control, restrict, prohibit, demand, or deny, as long as they do it in some clever way so that the child perceives it as not rejecting of her but of her behavior. Herein lies the fallacy. How can you be accepting of your child, independent of and contrary to your unaccepting feelings toward whatever the child is doing or saying? What is “the child” if it is not the behaving child, acting in a particular way at a particular moment in time?
- All children inevitably will encounter problems in their lives—all shapes and kinds. 2. Kids have unbelievable and mostly untapped potential for finding good solutions to their problems. 3. If parents hand them prepackaged solutions, children remain dependent and fail to develop their own problem-solving skills. They’ll keep coming to their parents every time they encounter a new problem. 4. When parents take over (or “own”) their children’s problems, and therefore assume full responsibility for coming up with good solutions, it becomes not only a terrible burden but also an impossible task. No one has the infinite wisdom to always generate good solutions for other people’s personal problems. 5. When a parent can accept that she does not own the child’s problem, then she is in a much better
I suggest that parents get into the habit of asking themselves the question: “Who owns this problem?”
You also don’t have to feel the same degree of lovingness and acceptance toward all your children. Finally, you and your spouse don’t have to put up a common front in your dealings with the children. But it is essential that you learn to know what it is you are feeling.
If parents tried to be consistent, they could not be real. The traditional admonition to parents that they must be consistent with their children at all costs ignores the fact that children are different, Mom and Dad are humans who are different, and situations are different. Furthermore, such advice has had the harmful effect of influencing parents to pretend, to act the part of a person whose feelings are always the same.
Real parents will inevitably feel both accepting and unaccepting toward their children; their attitude toward the same behavior cannot be consistent; it must vary from time to time. They should not (and cannot) hide their true feelings; they should accept the fact that one parent may feel accepting and the other unaccepting of the same behavior; and they should realize that each will inevitably feel different degrees of acceptance toward each of their children.
All parents are persons who will from time to time have two different kinds of feelings toward their children—acceptance and nonacceptance. “Real-person” parents sometimes feel accepting of what a child’s behavior is and sometimes feel unaccepting. Behavior is something your child does or says. It is not your judgment of that behavior. For example, a child leaving her clothes on the floor is a behavior. Labeling her as “sloppy” is a judgment of that behavior.
Forgetting the reality of their own human-ness, when people become parents they frequently cease to be human. They no longer feel free to be themselves, whatever they may happen to be feeling at different moments. As parents now, they have a responsibility to be something better than mere persons.
. A parent whose inner attitude is one of irritation or anger cannot help but give off subtle cues, perhaps a frown, a lifted eyebrow, a particular tone of voice, a certain posture, a tenseness of the facial muscles. Even very young children pick up such cues, learning from their experience that these cues usually mean that Mother is not really accepting what they are doing. Consequently, the child is apt to feel disapproval—at that particular moment she feels that her parent does not
Chapter 3
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 him. A parent must learn how to demonstrate his acceptance so that the child feels it.
- You must want to hear what the child has to say. This means you are willing to take the time to listen. If you don’t have time, you need only say so. 2. You must genuinely want to be helpful to him with his particular problem at that time. If you don’t want to, wait until you do. 3. You must genuinely be able to accept his feelings, whatever they may be or however different they may be from your own feelings or from the feelings you think a child “should” feel. This attitude takes time to develop. 4. You must have a deep feeling of trust in the child’s capacity to handle his feelings, to work through them, and to find solutions to his problems. You’ll acquire this trust by watching your child solve his own problems. 5. You must appreciate that feelings are transitory, not permanent. Feelings change—hate can turn into love, discouragement may quickly be
Saying nothing can also clearly communicate acceptance. Silence—“passive listening”—is a potent nonverbal message and can be used effectively to make a person feel genuinely accepted.
- ORDERING, DIRECTING, COMMANDING Telling the child to do something, giving him an order or a command: “I don’t care what other parents do, you have to do the yard work!” “Don’t talk to your mother like that!”
The child in each case then verified the accuracy of the parent’s decoding by some expression indicating “You heard me correctly.” In Active Listening, then, the receiver tries to understand what it is the sender is feeling or what his message means. Then he puts his understanding into his own words (code) and feeds it back for the sender’s verification. The receiver does not send a message of his own—such as an evaluation, opinion, advice, logic, analysis, or question. He feeds back only what he feels the sender’s message meant—nothing more, nothing less.
“You shouldn’t 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, giving him advice or suggestions; providing answers or solutions for him: “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.”
When a person feels that he is truly accepted by another, as he is, then he is freed to move from there and to begin to think about how he wants to change, how he wants to grow, how he can become different, how he might become more of what he is capable of being.
Tell a child often enough how bad he is and he will most certainly become bad.
One of the most effective and constructive ways of responding to children’s feeling-messages or problem-messages is the “door-opener” or “invitation to say more.” These are responses that do not communicate any of the listener’s own ideas or judgments or feelings, yet they invite the child to share his own ideas, judgments, or feelings. They open the door for him, they invite him to talk.
Active Listening helps children become less afraid of negative feelings. “Feelings are friendly” is an expression we use in our classes to help parents come to realize feelings are not “bad.” When a parent shows by Active Listening that he accepts a child’s feelings, the child is also helped to accept them. He learns from the parent’s response that feelings are friendly.
Keeping hands off when a child is engaged in some activity is a strong nonverbal way of communicating acceptance. Many parents fail to realize how frequently they communicate nonacceptance to their children simply by interfering, intruding, moving in, checking up, joining in. Too often adults do not let children just be. They invade the privacy of their rooms, or move into their own personal and private thoughts, refusing to permit them a separateness. Often this is the result of parental fears and anxieties, their own feelings of insecurity.
Chapter 4
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.
When parents in our classes begin to bite their tongues and open their ears, they report marked changes in dinner-table conversations. Their kids start bringing up problems that previously were never shared with the parents—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.
She accepts the child as a person separate from herself.
accept the way your child feels rather than try the direct approach of trying to get rid of the whining and pestering by reassurance or threats. Kids want to know that you know how badly they feel.
Remember that the child has a problem when she is thwarted in satisfying a need. It is not a problem for the parent because the child’s behavior in no tangible way interferes with the parent’s satisfying her own needs. Therefore, THE CHILD OWNS THE PROBLEM.
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.
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.
“Can’t you tolerate an opinion very much different from your own?” “Can you help her come to her own way of looking at this complex world?” “Can you allow her to be where she is in her grappling with an issue?” “Can you remember how you as a kid had some pretty weird ideas about world problems?”
“Does your child have to think like you?” “Why do you have a need to teach her?”
Some parents fail in starting to use Active Listening simply because their intentions are wrong. They want to use it to manipulate their children into behaving or thinking the way the parents think they should.
What throws parents off so frequently is that kids generally state their views very strongly or in ways that make parents shudder at their apparent naïveté or immaturity. The temptation for Mom and Dad is to jump in and straighten the kid out or show her the broader picture. Parents’ motivation here can be benign—to contribute to their children’s intellectual development. Or it can be self-centered—to demonstrate their own superior intellectual abilities. Either way, parents jump in with one or more of the roadblocks, bringing on the inevitable effect of tuning the kids out or starting a verbal battle that ends up in hurt feelings and cutting remarks.
All children encounter situations in their lives that are disappointing, frustrating, painful, or shattering: problems with their friends, their brothers or sisters, their parents, their teachers, their environment, and problems with themselves. Children who find help in solving such problems maintain their psychological health and continue to acquire more strength and self-confidence. Children who do not, develop emotional problems.