Seventeen-year-old Soumya sat at the dinner table with her doting parents and kept poking her food with a fork. She looked absent-minded. Her parents looked at each other and sighed. Perhaps the same thought ran in each parent’s mind: “Where is the adoring child who talked nonstop and wanted to spend her every moment with us?” ’ The same child now wanted to escape from her parents at the earliest opportunity and spend her time with friends her own age.
In a nutshell, communication had become an issue in their relationship. This is the case with many children stepping into their pre-teen and teenage years.
How can we ace our communication with our children? Here are five powerful steps:
Improve our listening skills: When we listen, paying attention to every word, we are saying, “You are important to me, and what you say matters to me.” Listening is more than hearing as it requires focus and effort to understand what is being conveyed. It is important to listen without judgement, listen to understand what the child is saying, and listen as well to what is not being said.
It is not okay to listen to your child while multitasking. You may miss hearing what your child is saying. You may think you are listening, but you may miss out on what is being conveyed by your child. When we practise active listening, we can build better relationships, solve problems, and resolve conflicts.
Build self-esteem: Through our daily communication, we must build the self-esteem of our children. It is said that to reach a child’s mind, a parent must capture his heart. As parents, we must give up the language of rejection and practise a new language of acceptance that is supportive of the child. As parents, at the end of each day, it would be helpful to do an internal check and see if our language is rooted in fear or love. Take note so you can respond differently in the future. When our language is based on fear, it includes blame, shame, ordering, accusing, ridiculing, belittling, and threatening.
Let’s keep track of our communication on a daily basis and note our errors and improvements so that communication improves daily. It will be also good to note things about your child that you wish to praise him or/ her for at the appropriate time.
Build trust and confidence: Through every conversation, show that you trust your child. In every word you speak and every opinion you express, consciously express your trust. If your child does not live up to your trust, express your concerns using sentences that start with “I. Statements that start with “I” help to express anger without insult as compared with “you” statements. Eg: “I feel upset when…” I cannot understand. Protect yourself and the child by using statements that begin with “I” rather than statements that begin with “you.
Each time your child speaks, listen to them without judgement and never interrupt. Listen intuitively to what is not being said and ask questions to get a better understanding of what your child is trying to convey.
Help your child speak effectively: Encourage your children to speak and express themselves at every opportunity. Give them the space to express what they are feeling without judgement, criticism, pity, or denial of their feelings.
As parents, we need to ask questions to understand what our children are saying. Open-ended questions that begin with ho “what, how, why, what if, when, where, who if, tell me about” prove more useful in understanding the matter being discussed than close-ended questions that begin with “is, did, are, will, can, etc.” Open-ended questions help your child think through the topic and help both speaker and listener to deeply understand it. On the other hand, close-ended questions result in a “yes” or “no” answer and are likely to end the discussion abruptly.
When you listen attentively, acknowledge, and validate children when they speak, they will gain the confidence to express their thoughts. As parents, we can encourage our children to speak their thoughts in front of people. Gradually, they will gain confidence to express their opinion. They may show interest in public speaking. Guide them to take an interest in learning more about the interests and nature of the audience as they prepare to talk to bigger groups of people.
When your child talks about a situation, try to build problem-solving skills in them by asking, “What do you think are the options we have?” “Look at each option one by one with your child till you arrive at the best option.”
Use the skills of acknowledging and validating. As parents, we must never deny our children their feelings. Statements such as the below are best avoided:
Oh, it couldn’t have been so bad.
Don’t feel upset about your guitar performance today. You were having a bad day.
Let us understand the key skills of communication:
Acknowledging: When you acknowledge your child when they are talking, they feel understood. It shows your child you are listening attentively and helps you keep track of the conversation. It does not mean that you agree with what they are feeling. You are letting them express what they are feeling and helping them to cope better. You can do this by repeating back what you heard in similar words or paraphrasing in your own words.
That must have been annoying.
It must be tough when…
I hear your disappointment.
Validating: We validate our child when we accept their point of view even when we may not agree with it.
You have every right to be angry,
It is natural to feel confused at this point.
We are all aware that a good relationship is grounded in good communication. We need to work on our communication right from the time our children are small so that by the time they are teenagers, we are communicating effectively with them. We can then be confident that the scenario we saw with Soumya and her parents will not happen in our household.
By using positive, affirming language in the family and with our children, we are actually building them and their destinies.
Originally Written by Hema Vinod and Posted at Momspresso
