Look at all the difficult things kids do: whining, anger, fighting, anxiety, addiction to phones and video games, failure in school, rebellion, lack of responsibility, depression, eating disorders, pornāyou know, all that kid stuff that destroys their happiness.
These behaviors kill them emotionally, spiritually, in relationships. And it makes US pretty crazy too.
What can we do about all those behaviors? A LOT, it turns out. More than anything, as much as air and water, our children need our unconditional loveālove without disappointment or irritationāwhich few of US as parents have ever seen.
Powerful First Step: Listening
It takes a while to learn to love unconditionally, but I can tell you one powerful first step: LISTENING. On the whole, we parents listen very poorly. We PEOPLE listen poorly.
Iāve worked with thousands of families, and kids who are behaving badly UNIFORMLY report that nobody listens to them.
Iāve worked in prisons, and the inmates ALWAYS say there was nobody to listen to them.
AND Iāve observed that kids who DO feel like their parents listen to them uniformly do not have nearly the problems other kids do.
What Listening Looks Like
Listening is that important. What does listening look like?
One day I was talking to a mother who was having a lot of the troubles we just mentioned with her children. Youāve experienced many of them yourself.
She wanted to understand WHY the problems persisted, no matter what she tried.
During the course of a video call with her, I heard her four-year-old son say āMomā on six different occasions, using a different tone of voice each time, all within a few minutes.
When the child walked away, I asked her if she knew what her son had said to her each time he said the word āMom.ā
She said, āWhat do you mean?ā
āExactly my point,ā I said. āYouāre missing what your child is saying to you. With a single wordāMomāheās already saying a lot, and youāre missing it.ā
Listening to the Tones of Voice
She asked me to teach her, so I translated the tones of his voice. I will not attempt to accurately re-create the perfect tones of a child, but I CAN understand them, and I can give you examples of what a child means with a single word.
First Tone
I told her that the first time he said, āMom,ā he was saying, āMom, Are you listening? Do I have your attention? Can I keep talking and have any hope that youāll hear me?ā
āWhy is it important,ā I said, āto nail the meaning of that tone? Because if you donāt understand it, youāll completely botch the communication.
āWhat if somebody came up to you and said, āIām completely lost. Where is Walnut Avenue?ā And you responded with, āI think spinach would work better in that salad than iceberg lettuce.ā
āThat would be utterly confusing and dismissive to the person who needed your attention, wouldnāt it? Our children are just as confused, and feel just as dismissed, when we fail to understand what theyāre saying.
If you had understood that first tone of āMom,ā what WOULD you have done instead of half-listening to him? You would have eagerly turned away from the screen where you were talking to me. You would have lit up like sunrise and said something like, āWow, you came to see me? What did you come to tell me?āā
Mom said, āBut wouldnāt that be rude to you?ā
āOh, thatās my problem. If I found your childās interruptions inconvenient, I would just schedule a call at a better time. But youāre using me as an excuse. You ignore his tone a lotāwhen Iām not there. Heās used that tone many times before with you, and youāve mumbled something useless while you were thinking about something else, or watching a movie, or whatever.ā
āHow do you know?ā
āBecause I know you, and I know the problems youāre having with your kids. If you had established well-worn patterns of really listening to them, they wouldnāt be having these problems. And you donāt feel loved enoughāyouāre not happy enoughāto be that kind of listener.ā
Mom looked deflated by all this information. āRelax, kid,ā I said. āNobody ever taught you how to listen. Nobody ever listened TO YOU long enough that you would feel the love you would then give to your children. Iām not criticizing you. Iām giving you exactly what you need to love and teach your kids.ā
Second Tone
Mom now looked a little encouragedājust a littleāand asked me to tell her about the other five tones I had heard. So I told her about the second occurrence of āMomā: It meant, āMom, I am so eager to share something with you. I want to share what my curious little mind and body just discovered.ā
Third Tone
Third? āMom, Iām feeling loved by you.ā That feeling didnāt last long, but it was there in the tone.
Fourth Tone
Fourth? Big change: āIām angry that youāre not giving me your full attention right now.ā
Fifth Tone
Fifth? āMom, I love it when you listen to me, even when I have to work at it.ā
Sixth Tone
Sixth? āMom: Iām done now. Bye.ā
With each tone translation, I also told Mom how she would have responded to her son with her new understanding of him.
The Results of Real Listening
Weeks later, after searching the RealLoveParents website, and studying the Training, Mom called me and said, āI cannot believe the difference. My kids WANT to be around me. Theyāre acting out WAY less. We have a long way to go, but I finally have hope that I can be a real mother.ā
Real listening can have a miraculous effect on nearly everyone but especially children. With our children, we are literally creating brain pathways that tend to govern the rest of their lives.
If we donāt listen deeply and consistently to them, they see the world as a harsh, uncaring, and lonely place. They feel isolated. They donāt feel loved, so they WILL be in pain, and then they learn to respond with all those destructive behaviors we talked about, to protect themselves and numb their pain. All these effects because we didnāt know how to listenāor love.
Do you want to learn how to really listen to your children, regardless of their age? Itās never too late to try. Go to RealLoveParents.com and learn how.