Timeless Truths on IMPROVEMENT AND GOALS - Parent effectiveness training

Listen actively—it will encourage your children to communicate with you

Imagine you are the parent of a young child in elementary school. Your child comes home and says, "I sure got stuck with a rotten teacher this year. What a grouch! I hate her, and I hate school." How would you respond?

According to Parent Effectiveness Training, your response would probably fall into one of the "Typical Twelve" basic categories used by most parents. You might say something like, "Don’t talk that way about your teacher," or " You know you never should hate anyone," or "You’ll just have to learn to get along with all kinds of teachers."

But these "Typical Twelve" responses usually carry implied judgments about the child which are not only disparaging, but actually cause defensiveness and tend to cut off further communication between you.

Parent Effectiveness Training offers a solution! One you can apply with your children, your spouse, even your boss, employees or business associates. It’s called “Active Listening,” and simply requires that the listener find a way to really understand what the sender is feeling. The listener then puts his understanding of that feeling into words, and feeds it back to the sender for verification.

The listener does not send a message of his own, such as advice, an opinion, an evaluation or a question. Instead, he feeds back only the feeling he thinks the sender is expressing!

For instance, in response to the child’s complaint about his teacher, an active listener might say, "Sounds like you’re really frustrated with your teacher." Or, "Sounds like you’re pretty fed up with school today.”

Usually the child will then say something like, "I sure am," and continue explaining and, eventually, unraveling more of his feelings. This process of unraveling leads the child to the point of finding his own solution to the problem!

At first you might feel active listening is unnatural, that people “just don’t talk that way.” But it does become more comfortable with use, and the results are well worth the effort.

Children who are fortunate enough to communicate with active listeners develop higher self-esteem, and more importantly, learn how to take responsibility for finding solutions to their own problems. They actually become freed of their troublesome feelings when they are encouraged to express them openly.

And perhaps best of all, active listening fosters a very warm, trusting relationship between you and your child.

Here’s what you can do:

Develop the skill of "active listening." You’ll find it of tremendous value in building rapport in all of your relationships—but especially with your children.

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Listen actively—it will encourage your children to communicate with you