ExcerptHow Well Are You Listening to Your Children (or Others)?When our children come to us with a problem, we usually want to help them. So we console, interpret, advise, distract or praise. Other times, we feel we must teach our children, and so we interrogate, lecture, moralize or order. And probably more often than we’d like, we respond angrily—blaming, criticizing, ridiculing, shaming or withdrawing. However, all of these responses are problematic—whether with our children, or with the adults in our lives. They often serve to stop the communication of real feelings and the development of individual solutions. Take the quiz below, adapted from the classic Parent Effectiveness Training, by Dr. Thomas Gordon, to assess your listening skills. 1. I let my children feel their difficult feelings, knowing that comments such as “Everyone goes through this” deny the strength of their feelings. 2. I try to listen for the need beneath the words and respond to that. 3. I make it a point to check in to see if I’ve understood something in the way my child intended it. When I do, I try to keep my own feelings, opinions and guidance out of it.
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