Reflective Listening

Children and Emotions

Children, just like adults, experience a wide range of emotions in their daily lives. Sometimes their experience is pleasant: they feel happy, excited, curious or proud. At other times they might experience unpleasant feelings like disappointment, sadness, upset and anger.

Sometimes our children talk about their feelings.

They might say:-

• “This is a boring game.”
• “I’m really good at swimming.”
• “I hate my brother.”

Sometimes, they don’t say how they feel in words, but they act in a way that shows us that they are experiencing strong feelings.

For example, they might:-

• Cry
• Move away, from us or look away from us
• Refuse to go to somewhere, or to do something you want them to do

Children are much less able than adults to cope with emotions, either pleasant or upsetting. Many times they respond to minor incidents with very intense feelings. They also move from one emotion to another very quickly:one moment they might be full of joy and laughter; the next moment they might be crying.

Reasons to Help Children Handle Emotions

There are three good reasons to help our children to deal with their unpleasant feelings
more constructively and calmly:-

1. A child who is experiencing an uncomfortable feeling is more likely to misbehave than a child who is feeling good. The upset child may be uncooperative or rude. He may damage property or hit someone. The parent is then likely to get upset, and to respond by demanding that he stops his misbehaviour, or by criticising him or shouting. The child then becomes even more upset and misbehaves even more. This cycle of misbehaviour and nagging or shouting is unpleasant for all involved. It makes our lives more difficult, and it damages the child’s self-esteem.
2. Sometimes children don’t misbehave when they are upset, but they may refuse to talk about how they are feeling. They may sulk or become very quiet. Feelings that are”bottled up” seem to get worse and worse. We want our children to communicate to us how they feel, and allow us to be involved with their lives. We want to know what is going on so that we can offer support where we can.
3. When we establish good communication with our children, they will talk to us about school, about their friends, their successes and disappointments. We will then feel more closeness, warmth and love in our relationship with them, and so will they.

Accepting Negative Feelings

How can we change our own behaviour as parents so that our child learns to express his feelings in words, rather than actions? How can we get our children to communicate with us even more?

The first step towards helping our children to deal with their emotions more maturely is for us to accept that all emotions are valid, no matter how uncomfortable. We need to give our children a clear message:

We accept all your feelings, no matter how unpleasant they may be. However, there are some actions that are not allowed, no matter how you feel.

It can be difficult for parents to accept that it is OK for children to feel all emotions. There are several reasons for that:-

1. We love our children so much that we want them to be happy all the time. We find it painful to see them experience sadness or disappointment. Sometimes their negative feelings, especially about school or about other children, remind us of painful experiences in our own past, which we never got over completely. That is even more challenging for us.
2. Sometimes we can’t understand why a child reacts so strongly to what we see as minor disappointments. How can someone get so upset just because they have to wait a few minutes for their meal? Or get angry and hit just because another child touched them? Or cry because an unimportant, cheap toy got broken?
3. The most difficult emotions for us to deal with are those directed towards us or the people we love. We invest so much in our children, and we love them so much. We resent hearing from them that we are mean or horrible, or that they wish their sister was dead.

At some time or another, the reasons listed above will make it difficult for us to accept our children’s feelings. Every parent will, at time, find a child’s emotional reaction upsetting, or even painful.

Why Children Have Negative Feelings

Let’s discuss the previous concerns regarding letting children have all their feelings.

1. It is not possible for anyone to be happy all the time. Acknowledging negative feelings is the first step in reducing them. If we pretend the emotion is not there, or if we blame the child for feeling that way, or tell him there is no point in feeling that way, we may drive the feeling underground. Our child will still feel the feeling, but may pretend to us, or even to himself, that he doesn’t. The child will also be less likely to express his emotions to us in the future. Those hidden emotions will emerge at unexpected moments as even stronger anger, resentment or hatred.
2. Children react strongly to what we see as minor frustrations simply because they are immature! A few minutes’ wait, a child touching them or a broken toy means much more to them than it means to us. By letting children experience their feelings rather than fixing the situation immediately for them, we can help them to develop self-control and resilience.
3. It is very common and natural to have mixed feelings towards those we are close to. The only way that our child will be able to experience more of his loving feelings towards us and other family members and his friends is by learning to deal with his negative feelings towards them. This is especially true about sibling rivalry. Many adults still resent their brothers and sisters due to jealousy that was not addressed in childhood.

Now that we are willing to accept that a child should be allowed to express the full range of his feelings, we can move on to the next step: expressing feelings.

It Helps to Express Feelings

Children need to be able to talk about their feelings to someone who really listens. Once they feel heard and understood, the intensity of that feeling will gradually fade, and then the child will be open to problem-solving and is much more likely to listen to what we have to say.

How can we help our children to feel heard and understood? In our Calmer, Easier, Happier parenting programme we teach parents a very useful skill called REFLECTIVE LISTENING.

What is Reflective Listening?

It has three parts.

1. First we need to listen. We give the child our full attention, but don’t offer our opinion or any suggestions. We show that we are listening by using our body language: we need to stop what we are doing and look at the child. We can make encouraging noises, such as”Umm…” or”Aha.” Give your child a hug if you feel like it.
2. We imagine ourselves in the child’s place, and we try to imagine or guess what the child is really feeling. To do this, we have to look below the surface of the child’s words. We need to look deeper because children are often confused or inarticulate, so they may not be saying what they really mean.
3. Next comes the reflecting: We use words to reflect back to the child what we imagine he is really feeling.

Examples of Reflective Listening

Let’s look at the examples outlined at the beginning of this discussion and explore some possible responses.

• Child: “This is a boring game.”.
  • You might be tempted to say:”You wanted to play it, not me!”
  • Instead, you can say:”It is not easy to lose a game, especially after playing so well.”
• Child: “I’m really good at swimming.”
  • Rather than saying”Don’t show off! You’re not that good”,
  • say:”You must be really proud of yourself. A few months ago you were afraid of the water and now you jump in right away.”
• Child: “I hate my brother!”
  • Rather than saying:”Don’t be silly. You played so nicely with him yesterday”,
  • say:”It sounds as if you are really upset with him right now.”

As we discussed, sometimes we can see from a child’s actions that he has a strong feeling, even if he says nothing about it.

When the child’s behaviour shows a strong emotion:-

• The child cries when he falls down.
  • Rather than saying:”It’s nothing, stop making such a fuss”,
  • say:”That must really hurt.”
• Your child moves away from you, or looks away from you.
  • Rather then demanding:”Look me in the eyes!”,
  • you can say: “You must be so embarrassed that you don’t even want to look at me.”
• When he refuses to go somewhere, or do something you want him to do, rather than pleading, persuading or bargaining, just say:”It’s not easy to have to go to a place you don’t like.”

Parents may worry that talking about feelings will make the feelings stronger. In fact, just the opposite happens:

Once aired, feelings tend to reduce in intensity or even disappear.

At that point the child is more likely to listen to us, or to think about his own solutions to the problem.

Giving Wishes in Fantasy

Another way to Reflectively Listen is to give the child his wishes in fantasy. This makes the situation much more light and fun.

Examples:

• When your child complains on a long journey: “I’m tired! I want to get home”,
  • you can say: “I wish I had a special potion we could all drink and find ourselves in our beds NOW!”
• When you child says:”I don’t want to go to school”,
  • You might want to say: “You wish you could stay at home whenever you feel like it”.

If you give your child his wishes in fantasy, he will feel understood and heard. There is no danger that he will believe the fantasy is really possible!

Dealing with Anger

Some emotions, especially anger, can be so strong that Reflective Listening alone is not enough to deal with them. If the child is often very angry, we need to teach him techniques for getting rid of some of the feeling. We can get him into the habit of hitting a punch-bag, doing some other physical activity, taking deep breaths and counting them, etc. We need to introduce these methods, and we need to use “Prepare for Success” techniques, when he is in a good mood.

We also need to understand that a child who often gets angry or upset over little things that go wrong may actually be reacting to a big problem in his life. He might have a learning difficulty. He may be experiencing too much criticism or unclear expectations etc. We need to look carefully at the very angry child’s life, and see how we can help this child to be and feel more successful.

As we said in the beginning, it is OK to have any feeling, but some actions are not OK. To help you establish what behaviour is allowed and what isn’t for your child, you need to put rules into place. Please look at the article on Rules, Routines and Consequences if you need a reminder about those strategies.

We will end on a Reflective Listening note:

I know it is not easy to read all these pages. Reflective Listening seems to go against our temperament and our habits. It probably feels like hard work. When our child is upset or misbehaving, we want to tell him what to do, not Reflectively Listen. However, this skill actually works! If you put it into practice, you will soon see good results.

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