Verbal communication does come down to being willing to talk, to speak up, and knowing that it is possible to feel emotionally safe. One rule that encourages speaking up is that all parties must listen without interrupting, correcting, criticizing, or otherwise discouraging communication and allow each family member the right to have a full say. It takes patient listening to invite full participation in conflict.
In my practice I often see young children stop talking because impatient parents cut them off and shut them down.The worst is the parent who seems to suffer from a listening disability. This doesn’t mean being unable to hear; it means being unwilling to listen. She is often so focused on talking about herself that she can’t see beyond her own self-interest; she is “deaf” to any voice but her own. The most attention she can give to others is to complain, criticize, correct, or direct.
In counseling, her daughter complains, “There’s no way to talk to my mom because she does all the talking. She’s not interested in what I have to say. The only person she listens to is herself.” This is a parent with a high need to be known by others, but a low need to know much about them. The lesson is pretty simple. If you want your child to talk and listen to you, particularly in conflict, then listen to your child. Listening shows your child that you respect what he has to say.
Sometimes, however, an out of control teenager will deliberately go on strike, refusing to communicate in order to keep parents in the dark about her life. This sets up a conflict between their need to know and her need to be unknown, between their request for conversation and her refusal to talk. So what can parents do to bring her to the discussion table? Do not fight with her to get her to talk, but do hold her responsible for the consequences of not talking. The parent can say, “Whether or not to talk to me about your life is up to you. However, I do need to say that not talking to me may not work well for you because it doesn’t work for me.
This is what goes through my mind. First I feel ignorant and wonder what is going on. Then I begin to worry about you. That’s when I start asking myself: What if something’s seriously wrong? Then I answer my question by imagining the worst: You are in some kind of danger or trouble that you are trying to hide.
Wanting to protect you from this unknown harm, I decide to restrict your freedom. I don’t let you go anywhere and I don’t give you any money. You may get angry at me for setting limits based on unfounded ideas. You tell me that my thinking is completely off base. But how do I know? You wouldn’t communicate, and I was just doing my best by you based on all the information I wasn’t given.
That’s what can happen when you decide not to talk to me. My ignorance does you no favors. Of course, none of this would have to happen if you had kept me adequately informed. But, as I said, that is always up to you.” Another way to open up a dialogue is to forsake spoken communication for the written kind. Leave a private note expressing your caring and concern in an envelope on your daughter’s bed. Encourage her to write back if it suits her. By separating the message from the messenger and giving her time to read and think about what you’ve written, you signify your willingness to listen when she is ready.
Today, the number of ways we can communicate with our children has increased dramatically, thanks to the information technology we have at our command. After all, now we can trace where in the virtual world of the Internet our children go. We can have cell phone contact with them any time and check the phone memory and/or bill to see who is being called.
We can even use a global positioning system to track where in the world our teenager drives. “What about my right to privacy?” an older child will object. To which the parent must be ready to explain that a child’s privacy from parental intrusion is a privilege, not a right. “So long as you are behaving responsibly and keeping me adequately informed and remain open to discussion, privacy is yours.
However, if your behavior puts you at risk of harm and you will not talk to me about what’s going on, then I will ‘snoop and spy’ as you call it, and invade your privacy to try to find out myself. I will do this for your safety’s sake.” At first, many parents thought that these new communication devices would make it easier to keep up with their children’s lives, with their teenagers in particular, who like to revive the old childhood game of hide and seek, “Find me if you can.”
Actually, all this technology has provided little relief from parental ignorance, since the more we know, the more we want to know, and the more anxious we become when we realize how much we don’t know. Now the conflict question that increasingly perplexes parents is, “Do we know enough?” One parent thought so. “Call me when you get back to your friend’s house tonight,” she tells her teenage daughter, who readily agrees and calls as promised.
The problem, as trouble later revealed, was that she had been calling from her cell phone and was not where she said she was. Her parents then insisted that she call from friends’ houses on a land line, so they could verify where the call was made from. Parents usually give a child a cell phone so they can reach him anytime. But sometimes he doesn’t want to be reached, so he doesn’t pick up. By now, most parents have avoided this conflict by simply setting a condition of use: If he wants a cell phone he will have to answers their calls.
For every system of regulation and surveillance that parents impose, adolescents will try to find a way to circumvent it, perpetuating the ongoing conflict between parent as rule maker and teenager as rule breaker.Parents need to encourage communication as best they can and hold their children accountable for not talking. At the same time, they must hold themselves accountable for how they talk, particularly during conflict, when impatience and emotion can cause them to change their manner of speech.