Reflective Listening is like a magic wand that says to another person “I hear you”.A child’s willingness to talk to their parents depends totally on the level of trust that has been developed between the parent and the child. The child will be more likely to open up and reveal what is bothering or upsetting them if they believe that what they reveal will be received with acceptance and understanding and not with criticism, righteous indignation, put-downs, sarcasm, ridicule or threats. Most often, parents who do not know about this skill “Reflective Listening” and do not use it, have a tendency to want to fix the problem or offer solutions before they know what the actual real problem is. They are too busy trying to solve what they think the problem is that they interfere with the child not being able to tell them what is really bothering them. Reflective Listening is like a magic wand that says to another person “I hear you”. Reflective Listening when used communicates acceptance and understanding. I haven’t just listened, but I have heard you. This story is taken from the book “P.E.T” – Thomas Gordon. Pg 112. This story is a prime example and clearly illustrates the dramatic effects of Reflective Listening when a Mother’s first experience of using reflective listening at home with her eight-year old son, who felt his life was rotten and “he’d be better off dead” “My story is simple in the telling. The ending is so obvious in retrospect that I still have trouble believing that I never saw what was happening – what I was causing to happen – before Reflective Listening. “While I was learning reflective listening, my eldest child, a boy then eight year old, began to make frequent remarks to the effect that his life was really rotten, that he’d be better off dead – really “heavy” statements that filled me with deep concern. I have had one clear and unwavering goal in raising my children, and that has been that they should feel positive about themselves and be able to wake up in the morning feeling that they really loved being alive; had I been primarily concerned with some other aspect of their growth – intellectual abilities, getting them to behave ‘properly’ anything else – this development might not have hit me as hard as it did. But it was the case that my oldest child, and only son, appeared to be feeling exactly the opposite of what I had so greatly hoped, and sincerely endeavored, to have him feel. “A few weeks later my son walked dejectedly into the kitchen while I was preparing dinner and dropped another of his depressing pronouncements. I was not very adept at reflective listening at that point; my few previous attempts at using it at home had sounded ridiculous, but I decided to give it another try. He’d say something like, ‘Boy, I sure don’t like my life very much,’ and I’d feel the wheels churning madly inside my head, trying to transform those words into a feeling statement that I could feed back to him; then I’d say something which struck me as totally unsuitable and unimaginative such as ‘Sounds like you’re really feeling down.’ He didn’t seem to notice my incompetence; he let go with another ‘Nobody cares about me’ and another ‘You and Daddy are always doing things with Jennifer and Rebecca (sisters),’ and another. I was thinking, ‘This is the most depressed kid I’ve ever seen,’ and about how if his words were tangible things, we’d have had garbage strewn all over the kitchen, and I was feeling guilty sometimes and then angry and then frustrated, but I continued to say, ‘Hmmmm,’ and ‘You’re pretty sad about that,’ and ‘You think we like them better than you.’ It all sounded pretty contrived to me, and I didn’t think we had much chance of arriving at one of those Hollywood endings in the examples. He wasn’t saying any of those things the children said in the books say; he just continued to dredge up more and more distressing situations. The child went back to things that happened when he was about three years old! “Forty-five minutes later I said that I wanted very much to continue what we were doing but that I was becoming concerned dinner was going to be late and that perhaps we could set a time to get back together again. He said that was OK, that he was finished, and he hopped down from the stool where he’d been sitting and went outside whistling! I was dumbfounded. Then it hit me; I’d never allowed that child to have a bad day! There had always been some explanation for an unhappy moment, something we could do to make it better, and he’d held on to every one to them! I had never extended him the simple sympathy form one human being to another that would have enabled him to let them go. “That was a year ago; there has been no recurrence of apparent depression. There have been unpleasant or discouraging incidents. Never do I explain them away or offer solutions’ I mutter my reflective listening responses as best I can. Life is not all glorious and rosy; all problems aren’t immediately dissolvable; some day s everything seems to go wrong, and that’s alright. It took me eight weeks to figure that out and to discover the disastrous consequences of trying to make it be otherwise for my children”
So what is this reflective listening? Reflective listening involves reflecting (verbally restating in your own words) the feelings and information from what you heard the other person saying to you. This helps each of you to now whether you’ve understood them. It also tells them that your intention is to understand and accept what they said. If done well, it helps the person to clarify their own thoughts and feelings. Reflective listening is an extremely useful helping skill, and to use it well, you need to be feeling free enough of your own problems to focus on the other person. You also need to trust the person to find good solutions rather than wanting to convince them of your own. This is not a skill for when you want to influence the person. Reflective listening also requires the person to be willing to talk: you can’t force them to open up. Also, of course, when simple information is required, you need to give it, not just listen empathically. Reflective listening tells the other that you are interested in their concerns, that you can accept them having problems and trust that they will solve them. It deepens your relationship, as you will really start to hear what clients and colleges say. That is it’s rick, and it’s beauty. As a spin-off benefit, colleges may benefit from your modeling and start to reflectively listen to your concerns about them.
Examples of Reflective Listening - the child will say something that they are upset with, and the Parent will use Reflective Listening in response. EG. 1 Parent: You miss having Grandma around to talk you! EG. 2 EG. 3
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