The Lost Art of Listening (43 page)

Are your admonitions based on trying to force a child to live up to

your own expectations? A little girl runs to her mother and says, “Mommy,

Mommy, guess what! I got an A in spelling!” “That’s nice, dear,” the mother

responds, sounding pleased, but not very. The daughter tries again. “There’s

twenty-nine
kids, and I got the second highest score.” “That’s good, honey.”

The conversation continues for another couple of minutes, with the little

girl, proud and excited, trying to drive up her mother’s enthusiasm, and

the mother pleased that her daughter did well but not wanting her to get

hooked on achievement (like her father). When the little girl persists, the

mother finally says, “Don’t brag. It isn’t nice.”

One minute the little girl is throbbing with excitement. Getting an A

was wonderful. She rushed home to tell her mother to complete her expe-

rience. You could say she met with misunderstanding, but it was worse.

Because a child seeking appreciation is reaching out, exposed, a failed

response is an emotional head-on collision.

Empathic failure can come out sounding mean: “Don’t be such a

baby!” “Stop showing off!” But even a simple lack of enthusiasm can hurt

a child who’s eager for attention. When our children make the mistake of

daring not to be invented by us, when they reveal, perversely, minds and

wills of their own, we are put to the test.

“Why Must You Argue with Everything I Say!”

Few things are more exasperating to parents than constant arguing. “Do

I have to?” “It’s not fair!” “I don’t want to!” and, of course, “Why? Why?

Why?” Who wants to listen to that all day?

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257

The best way to defuse arguments is to separate the
expressive
func-

tion of communication from the
instrumental
. Let children complain.

Show your understanding by listening. It shouldn’t be too hard to listen if

you have the final say. Unfortunately, the usual formula—“I understand,

but . . . ”—doesn’t work very well. It isn’t paraphrasing what children say

or telling them that you understand that makes them feel taken seriously;

it’s letting them express themselves. It’s listening.

Responsive listening
works by drawing children out, encouraging them

to talk about what they want, and, if feasible, postponing any decision

until later. The more children are encouraged to express themselves, and

the more this part of the dialogue is separated from laying down the law,

the more children are likely to accept what they’re told to do.

What’s the Best Way to Disarm Children’s Resistance

to Doing What They’re Told?

The answer is, you don’t disarm a child’s resistance—you accept it as a

perfectly legitimate expression of the child’s feelings.

Children deserve to have their feelings taken seriously. What they

don’t need are elaborate explanations. The well- meaning attempt to

explain to a four-year-old
why
she has to go to bed is misguided. Explain-

ing such decisions implies that they have to be justified—and are there-

fore open to debate. It’s different with teenagers. Explaining the rules to

teenagers shows respect for their maturing status. Younger children don’t

need to know why their parents have rules; they need to know that their

parents are in charge.

Whining
2

When little children don’t get what they want, they whine. They beg and

they plead, and they keep at it until they get their way or drive their par-

ents up the wall.

2Much of the material in this section is taken from my book
Stop Arguing with Your Kids

(New York: Guilford Press, 2004).

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LISTENING IN CONTEXT

Everyone knows that giving in to whining doesn’t work.

And they’re wrong.

Giving in to whining works very well, actually. Giving in stops the

fussing (and reinforces the child for doing so). What’s more, the parent is

reinforced for giving in—by the child’s quieting down. Psychologists call

this
negative reinforcement
. Positive reinforcement increases behavior by

rewarding it. Giving a pigeon a pellet for pressing a bar and giving a whin-

ing child a cookie are both examples of positive reinforcement. Negative

reinforcement works by removing an unpleasant stimulus. A pigeon’s press-

ing a bar to turn off a blast of air and a parent’s giving in to a whining child

to make him quiet down are both examples of negative reinforcement.

Child psychologists recommend that parents refuse to be manipulated

by whining. The most effective strategy is to ignore it. No response, no rein-

forcement. If whining occurs in public, don’t scold or argue. Just remove

the child from the scene. The lesson is, whining leads to exclusion.

If whining occurs at home, parents are advised to pay no attention.

They should just go about their business without lecturing or fussing. Lec-

turing and fussing constitute the other half of an argument. Ignoring a

whining child means not only not debating with the child but also not

sighing or giving angry looks. These nonverbal signals are also responses,

and they prolong whining every bit as much as scolding.

If you want to eliminate whining, ignoring it is good advice. The best

way to diminish any form of behavior is not to respond to it. But do you

really just want to eliminate your child’s whining?

Whining becomes manipulative, but it doesn’t start out that way. It

starts as an expression of the child’s feelings. By using responsive listening

you can tune in to a whining child’s feelings and shift the interaction from

a struggle to a conversation.

Whining is a request for attention. If you stop and focus

on the child—“What are you trying to say, honey?”—

the whining will usually stop.

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259

Alice was trying to talk with her mother about finding a nursing home

for her father. Four-year-old Amy kept interrupting— perhaps she sensed

her mother’s anxiety—and Alice told her to go and play. The interruptions

continued until, finally losing her temper, Alice spanked Amy and sent

her to bed.

Alternatively: Alice was trying to talk with her mother about find-

ing a nursing home for her father. Four-year-old Amy kept interrupting—

perhaps she sensed her mother’s anxiety—and Alice told her to go and

play. When that didn’t work, Alice bent down and picked Amy up and

said, “What’s the matter honey?”

“How come I never get to talk to Grandma?” Amy asked.

“I know, honey, you want to visit with Grandma.” Then she

took Amy by the hand and walked with her over to her toys and said,

“In ten minutes, you can take Grandma outside and show her your swing

set.”

Children don’t whine just to be annoying. They have legitimate con-

cerns. They whine because they’re unable to express themselves in a more

mature way. They’re frustrated. They’re tired. They’re young. The parent

who responds punitively—“Stop that noise!”—is inadvertently supplying

the other half of the argument. The parent who ignores a whining child

conveys—“I won’t listen to you when you’re upset.” Or, worse, “I won’t

listen to you until you get
really
upset.”

Tantrums

Whining escalates to tantrums when children give up asking for what they

want and give in to frustration. Now, instead of pleading their case, chil-

dren start kicking and screaming.

The child who throws a tantrum may be trying to get his way, but he’s

become too upset to put his feelings into words. In responding to a child

in the throes of a tantrum, the principles of responsive listening still apply,

but you must take into account the child’s loss of control. First and fore-

most, don’t respond to a child’s tantrum with an argument. Don’t repeat

what made the child upset in the first place—“I said no, and I meant it!”—

and never tell a child who’s having a tantrum to calm down.

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LISTENING IN CONTEXT

Telling a child who’s upset to calm down implies

that she has no right to her feelings.

When dealing with a child who’s having a tantrum, remember that an

argument is a tug of war:

“Yes, you will!”

“No, I won’t!”

Avoid escalating the argument by continuing to verbally oppose the

child—“I don’t care what you do; I’m not going to change my mind!”—

and don’t tell the child to control himself. Instead, begin by trying to

acknowledge what the child is feeling. Since he’s probably too upset to put

his feelings into words, help him.

“Wow, you’re really mad, aren’t you?”

Notice that putting this statement in the form of a question invites

the child to agree. This may not be a good idea. Inviting someone to agree

leaves open the possibility of arguing. A better alternative is to reflect

what the child seems to be feeling without asking him to agree.

“Wow, you’re really mad!”

What I’m suggesting here may seem like an exception to the rule of

helping people to elaborate their feelings with a question. How does saying

“Wow, you’re really mad!” qualify as responsive listening?

The essence of responsive listening is
permission giving
. The idea is

to give children permission to feel what they feel and to express those

feelings to someone who cares. The reason for not asking children in the

throes of a tantrum questions about their feelings is that they’re too over-

wrought to explain. Here a reflection of feelings lets the child know that

you understand—and gives him permission to elaborate or disagree if he

wishes.

Most accurate reflections of feeling are punctuated with an exclama-

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261

tion point. Try saying out loud, “Wow, you’re really mad.” Then say the

same thing with an exclamation point. See the difference? Oops, I mean:

What a difference!

Reflecting a tantruming child’s feelings won’t magically make him

calm down. What it will do is let him know that you understand what he’s

feeling and, more important, it will avoid the tug of war of trying to argue

with a child who’s out of control.

Speaking Up for Themselves

From five to twelve, children spend a lot of time learning the rules. They

learn to conform to the expectations of teachers and principals and lunch

room ladies and bus drivers and soccer coaches and Scout leaders and Sun-

day school teachers—and, of course, their parents. Parents of school-age

children have to make sure their kids get ready for school in the morning,

do their homework at night, put away their clothes, do their chores, turn

off the computer, don’t kill their brothers and sisters, brush their teeth, and

get ready for bed on time. Arguments become the rule.

Some adults respond to children’s challenging the rules as though it

were an attack on themselves. Authoritarian parents and teachers expect

to be obeyed without question. Arguments are an affront to their author-

ity. A child who argues for more flexibility may have no intention of chal-

lenging anyone’s authority. He or she is just wants more freedom. But if

adults insist that respecting their authority means obeying without ques-

tion, then children are forced to disrespect them in order to challenge

the rules. Thus, whether children’s speaking up for themselves is seen as

a legitimate form of self- expression or an attack depends on how adults

interpret it.

Standing up for what you want isn’t the same as being disrespectful.

If parents and teachers respect children’s rights to argue, the children will

respect their right to decide. But children whose feelings aren’t accepted

as legitimate will turn from arguing their points to challenging your right

to control them. Show respect for children by listening to what they have

to say, even when it’s inconvenient.

In studying the families of five- to twelve-year-old children, research-

ers found that encouraging give-and-take was associated with skill in com-

munication, while parents with an authoritarian style (“Because I said

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LISTENING IN CONTEXT

so!”) who discouraged responses from their children produced higher lev-

els of verbal aggressiveness.3 The take-home lesson is that listening is a

two-way street.

The single most important thing you can do to develop

a cooperative relationship is to listen to what your child

has to say. Once children have had a chance to say what’s

on their minds—and have their feelings acknowledged—

they become more receptive to what you have to say.

If a child doesn’t do what he or she agreed to, don’t nag; find out

why.

“I notice that you didn’t show me your homework like you said you

would.”

“I forgot.”

“Maybe there’s a reason you forgot. Is it that you hate doing home-