A child seldom needs a good talking to as a good listening to.
~ Robert Brault ~
"You NEVER listen to me!" Are these words familiar to you? It is not uncommon for children to feel as if they are not being heard by their parents. As both a parent and an educator, it was very easy for me to fall into the trap of telling, rather than listening and actually hearing what my girls were trying to tell me. When my youngest daughter was in seventh grade at an area Catholic school, she would often come home sad, uncommunicative, and somewhat depressed. I would talk to her and tell her how to feel better about going to school each day, and fill her up with good ideas and ways to feel better about her school experience. What I overlooked, however, was the nonverbal, and sometimes verbal messages she was sending. Had I only really listened to what she was trying to tell me in the best way she knew how.
During her seventh grade year, just before the Christmas holiday, Katie began to tell me that one of her teachers started to reprimand her for trivial and insignificant things. As a teacher, familiar with some students who refuse to own some of their negative behaviors, I kept telling Katie that I was sure that her teacher had more important things to do besides dream up ways to reprimand her for no reason at all. In early April, after watching what used to be my bubbly, giggly, happy daughter transform into a sullen, withdrawn, non-communicative teenager, my husband and I finally made an appointment with this teacher, with the hopes of working together to help Katie through this difficult time at school. When we arrived at the school, we received a very cold greeting from three of Katie's teachers. We were invited to sit around the teacher's classroom desk. They asked us to express our concerns regarding Katie, and I began by describing the severe change in Katie's entire demeanor. I mentioned how Katie felt singled out sometimes for what she perceived as trivial situations, and that she felt that often times other students, guilty of much worse infractions were often excused, where Katie was more often than not given a consequence. It was at this time that the teacher in question stopped me, and began to lecture me about how children behave one way at home and yet another way at school, and perhaps Katie wasn't really the same girl we thought she was. To prove her point about Katie, this teacher, and I still to this day can't believe this comment, said, "In addition to her talkative nature, Katie looks at me like she wants something bad to happen to me." Struggling to comprehend how this woman could read Katie's mind, or so she thought, I asked her how she could be so sure of what Katie was thinking by merely looking at Katie's facial expression. I knew exactly which expression the teacher was referring to. When ever Katie got upset, she would screw up her face so that she could prevent herself from crying in front of anyone. I began to try to explain this to the teacher when she cut me off stating that obviously we were there to just defend our daughter and that the meeting was a waste of time. By this time I was boiling mad, and as politely as I could, I excused myself from the meeting, went to the Principal's office, and told her that Katie would no longer be a student at her school.
The story did end well, as I was able to enroll Katie in a public school in a neighboring city within three days time. It was with great pleasure that I watched the Katie we knew and loved slowly return. She was able to reconnect with friends from grammar school, and we got nothing but rave reviews from Katie's teachers for the rest of her school career. The critical lesson that I learned from this experience was that it wasn't enough to listen to what Katie was telling me through her behavior and conversations, I needed to actually hear what she was trying to say. Sometimes kids don't know how to express exactly what they are feeling, or how they are perceiving a particular situation. Learning to read their emotions, behaviors, and being able to read between the lines when they do try to verbally communicate with us are so important to keeping the lines of communication open.
Lucky for us, we were able to turn this negative situation, which had the potential to destroy how we gelled as a family, into a positive learning experience for all of us. So, the next time your child is trying to express anger, frustration, or any other emotion that may be uncharted territory for them, remember, a child seldom needs a good talking to as a good listening to.
