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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
THE SIMPLE ART OF LISTENING 2004-07-05 In the world of relationships, there is no more important activity than listening. Parents and their children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters often find themselves at odds with each other over misunderstandings, differences of opinion, and hurt feelings, largely because at least one person in the relationship didn't listen. Several decades ago, the field of psychology, or more accurately its evil twin pop psychology, invented the concept of "active listening." The idea was that listening was more than a passive activity, limited to the ear taking in sound, but should be an active process whereby one person extends a certain amount of effort to truly grasp what the other is saying. This meant more than grasping a simple understanding of the words; it also meant comprehending the deeper meaning of what the person was trying to say. So if a child says to a parent "I don't want to go to school," the parent responds with a paraphrase of the statement such as "you're not feeling like going to school today." The belief of active listening enthusiasts is that the child will then, feeling heard, say more like "I'm sick of school," which will then give a clue to the parent that something is wrong at school. The parent is then advised to paraphrase again and perhaps ask a question. "You don't like school much right now and I'd like to know why." Active listening advocates believe that eventually the parent will get to the bottom of the problem, understand the child's feelings, communicate that understanding to the child and thus enhance the relationship. To some extent, I agree. I certainly think this approach is better than saying "I don't care what you want, you're going to school today buster," which might have been the response of some in my parents' generation. But the fact is that most parents either don't have the time to have a long drawn out formulaic conversation with their child or they think it sounds stupid, which it kind of does. I used to teach active listening to couples and families and it rarely worked. I could usually get two people to follow the formula in the office, however silly they felt doing it, but they rarely did it that way at home. It didn't feel like natural conversation and it often slowed them down unnecessarily when they were trying to resolve an issue. It turns out I wasn't the only one who thought this as John Gottman, noted marriage researcher, says that successful couples rarely use active listening to resolve their conflicts. The other day I was reminded of a better way to listen. I was outside with my grandson who still has difficulty pronouncing some sounds. As I said in my last essay, Sean replaces the "L" sound with the "H" sound, saying "heaf" instead of leaf, "hemonade" instead of lemonade, "hog cabin" instead of log cabin, and "Hegohand" instead of Legoland, where I went with Sean last week. After we came home from a day at Legoland, Sean and I went into my backyard. He asked a question that I didn't understand. "Is there a sog in your backyard gammy?" I wasn't sure how to respond as I don't want to embarrass or frustrate Sean by asking him to repeat what he said or telling him I don't understand. So instead, I did some mental gymnastics, asking myself what "sog" could possibly mean. I thought of other words Sean says that start with "S" and I thought of how he pronounces "family room" as "sammy room" because he generally replaces "F" with "S." He also can't pronounce consonant blends like "GR," saying "gammy" instead of "grammy" and "Gace" or "Ace" instead of "Grace." I also thought of the last time Sean was in the backyard. He and grampy went out at night with flashlights to search for frogs. When I worked hard to put the pieces together I figured out that Sean was asking me if there was a frog in my backyard. So effective listening doesn't have to be the "active listening" formula of back and forth between speaker and paraphraser. Good listening only requires the listener to work hard mentally to understand what the speaker is saying. In Sean's case it was a matter of understanding what word he was trying to say, but in other cases it is more a matter of understanding what feelings lie behind a statement or question, or of comprehending what a person is afraid to say. When one of my sons was small he suddenly refused to go to bed one Christmas night. He seemed afraid when he had never been frightened before so my husband and I were puzzled. We tried to reason with him and eventually got tough, insisting he go to bed as it was very late. We were young and not very good listeners at the time and weren't really interested in why he didn't want to go to bed. As I was tucking him in, he looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said "What's an explosion?" Again, I had to decode his language. Fortunately, I listened and thought it through and was able to understand what he was telling me. He and his brother had gotten an electric train set for Christmas. His dad set it up in their bedroom and then showed the boys not to touch two wires together. When he asked why he shouldn't do this, his dad told him it might cause a small explosion. He was very young and didn't understand what an explosion was, but knew it meant trouble and was smart enough to be afraid. If I had only heard his words and simply answered the question I would not have really been listening and would have probably made things worse. But I had heard his father telling him this and so instantly knew why he didn't want to go to bed. He was simply afraid of something bad happening. At that point I called his father in and let him explain that there was nothing to be afraid of. Listening is so important to all relationships. We rarely speak as clearly to each other as we could. Often we hide our real thoughts and feelings out of embarrassment, or shame, or fear, or even because we aren't quite certain what we feel. When a loving friend or spouse or parent is able to understand what we are trying to say, without our having to spell it out, we are fortunate indeed. When we are able to listen with extra effort to those we love, and even sometimes to our enemies, we can know them at a deeper level, with greater compassion. With our enemies, such effortful listening may help us come to accept them, while with our friends and family, it helps us love them all the more. |