The Lost Art of Listening (40 page)

If the consequence of every third or fourth thing they do

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is that their parents nag them, children learn that their

parents are nags and that they are a nuisance.

The boundary that makes it easier for parents to listen to their chil-

dren because they are in charge is related to one of the crucial elements

in listening: acknowledging what the other person says before responding

with what you have to say.

Remember Tommy, the boy whose father lectured him on the evils of

anger? If only his father had first acknowledged what Tommy was feeling,

the boy might have been more open to his father’s message. Seeing Tommy

storm upstairs and slam his door, his father might have said, “It’s frustrat-

ing when the mower doesn’t work, isn’t it?” or “Sounds like you had a bad

time.”

Being a parent in charge doesn’t make you a good listener, but it does

release you from some of the anxiety about control that gets in the way of

listening.

Suppose a little girl runs into the kitchen saying, “Look, I caught a

caterpillar!” The mother who responds with “Go wash your dirty hands!”

is obviously deflating the child’s enthusiasm. Saying, “Yes, that’s nice, but

go and wash your hands” isn’t very responsive either.

“Yes, but . . . ” is never enough. The but drowns out the yes.

“Yes, but . . . ” isn’t a real acknowledgment. Like adults, children need

to feel heard before they’re open to a new thought. If a mother were to take

a minute to acknowledge her child’s enthusiasm, she might say, “What a

pretty caterpillar,” or “Hey, wow! Good for you!” The little girl, feeling

heard and appreciated, might then wash her hands without needing to be

told, especially if she knows that’s the rule.

If children suffer when the boundary between them

and their parents is too diffuse, so do the parents.

Parents too actively involved in their children’s lives

tend to be less actively involved with each other.

This may not be obvious to some parents because

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they do so many things together. But how many

things do they do together without the children?

Emotional Triangles

When he came downstairs, Marshall was surprised to see his teenage

daughter sitting at the breakfast table sipping hot chocolate. Before he

could ask why she was still home, Paula jumped up and threw her arms

around his neck: “No school!” Looking out the window, Marshall saw the

yard blanketed in white.

Assuming the driving would be bad, Marshall decided to wait until

after nine before going to work. By that time the roads would be clear and

the worst of the traffic would be gone. While he boiled water and ground

the beans for coffee, Paula built a fire in the fireplace. When the coffee was

ready and the fire blazing, they sat on the couch to watch the flames and

share something that had lately gone out of their relationship: time alone

together.

Just then the front door flew open, and in walked Paula’s boyfriend.

“Guess what? School’s canceled!”

“Hi, Jerry,” Marshall said, none too enthusiastically. Then he went

upstairs to his study. He didn’t exactly slam the door, but he didn’t close it

very gently either.

Paula and her father, who had been so close, were growing further and

farther apart in this, her last year of high school. As Marshall sat there brood-

ing about how Paula seemed to drop everything, including her homework,

when Jerry was around, he knew he was wrong. Daughters grew up and had

boyfriends; a father had to accept these things. He knew he was wrong to be

so resentful of Jerry, and now he had that bitterness as well to swallow.

When Paula was born, Marshall vowed never to be one of those

fathers who said, “I’ll play with you tomorrow.” What a remarkable thing it

was to be a daddy, gifted and burdened with the power to bestow moments

of total joy. As Paula grew older, they still did special things together, but

he noticed that her pleasure in his company was no longer entirely sponta-

neous; he knew that at least part of the time they spent together now was

only to please him.

Two weeks later Jerry broke up with Paula. She cried but showed

How to Listen and Be Heard within the Family
241

no sign of real grief. These things happen. Marshall couldn’t help being

secretly relieved and said so to Elaine.

On Monday Paula said she couldn’t face going to school. Couldn’t she

stay home, just for one day? It seemed little enough to ask. That afternoon

Elaine decided to come home early and cheer Paula up with a little shop-

ping expedition. Finding Paula asleep in her room, still in her nightgown,

was no great surprise. After all, it wasn’t easy being seventeen and having

your heart broken. Elaine never knew what made her go into the hall bath-

room, where she found the empty bottle of aspirin in the wastebasket.

Paula spent four weeks at Twin Oaks on the adolescent unit, where

she learned the importance of giving voice to her feelings. When she dis-

covered her anger, she started raging at her mother for always wanting

everything to be “nice” and for thinking that shopping could be the answer

to her problems. Her mother then did a surprising thing: she listened. But

when Paula directed her anger at Marshall, telling him that he’d been

unfair to blame her for growing up and having a boyfriend, Marshall got

defensive. Nothing hurts like the truth.

During the last week of Paula’s stay in the hospital, Jerry came to visit

her, and after she was discharged, they started seeing each other again.

Marshall was not happy.

Aside from his earlier objections about Jerry, he didn’t think it was a

good idea for Paula to put herself back into a vulnerable position so soon.

His mind filled with bitter thoughts—about this callow boy who’d hurt his

daughter, and might do so again, and about Paula’s unforgiving anger at

him
. Well, maybe bitter thoughts were easier than wondering how a father

lets go of his daughter.

Now when Jerry came around, Marshall was barely civil. He wanted

to talk to Paula about not becoming dependent, about the importance of

having many friends, but he was afraid of her anger, and his own. So he

started complaining to Elaine.

Paula, too, complained to her mother. “Why is Daddy so unfair?”

Time passed, and the crisis—that’s what Marshall called it; he couldn’t

bring himself to say “suicide attempt”—began to seem unreal and long ago.

Routine reasserted itself, and the only truly tense moments were occasions

on which Paula wanted to go somewhere with Jerry and Marshall looked

grim and said nothing. If Paula pressed him, he said sarcastically, “Ask your

mother.” He felt angry and bereft, but increasingly less so.

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LISTENING IN CONTEXT

Winter passed, and then it was spring. After graduation Paula

broke off with Jerry, saying she wanted to have her last summer at home

free to be with her friends. Men, she had learned, can be pretty posses-

sive.

In D. H. Lawrence’s
Sons and Lovers
, Paul Morel, the young artist,

doesn’t feel free to become his own person until his adored mother releases

him from her jealous love by dying. In the last scene, when Paul’s sweet-

heart, Miriam, asks if he is now free to marry, he says no. He’s become free

to go his own way.

One of the great themes of literature is the oedipal conflict—a child’s

passionate attachment to one parent and rivalry with the other. In real

families, children fall in and out of love with both parents many times. We

expect fathers to become antagonistic to their sons—and hope they will

grow out of it. But when a father becomes alienated from his daughter, as

Marshall did, we seek explanations in character and circumstance. Maybe

Marshall was too attached to his daughter to tolerate a rival. Maybe he was

too stubborn to let go. Or perhaps we can be more generous and say that

it was only natural for him to worry about Paula’s relationship with Jerry,

considering what happened.

The trouble with these explanations is that they may account for the

conflict but not why it wasn’t resolved. Most family conflicts eventually

get worked out—
if
the individuals involved are willing to listen to each

other.

The Cotherapist in Family Therapy

Families, as you may have noticed, sometimes get stuck in ruts. Their prob-

lems are reinforced by the interlocking actions of more than one person.

That’s why the first family therapists described families as homeostatic

systems that resist therapeutic efforts to change them. Over many years

of practice, I learned to look in every family for a cotherapist—one person

willing to set aside blaming and take the first step toward transforming

family patterns by changing his or her own contribution. It takes more

than one person to make a family what it is, but one person can initiate

change. Could you be that person in your family?

How to Listen and Be Heard within the Family
243

When Paula felt the innocent indignation of being misunderstood by

her father, it seemed only natural to turn to her mother. Likewise, when

Marshall worried about Paula’s seeing Jerry again, it seemed reasonable to

complain to his wife. In turning away from each other and detouring their

dispute through Elaine, Paula and her father created a triangle, one of the

great roadblocks to listening.

Take a minute to think about your most difficult relationship in your

family. Chances are you thought of your spouse, or maybe one of your par-

ents, or a child, or perhaps one of your in-laws. Actually, the relationship

you thought of is almost certainly between you and that person and one or

more other parties.

Virtually all emotionally significant relationships

between two people are shadowed by a third—

a relative, a friend, even a memory.

The most notorious triangle is the extramarital affair. An affair might

compensate for something missing in a marriage, but as long as one’s emo-

tional energy is invested elsewhere, there’s little chance of improving the

primary relationship. Similarly, if a young husband or wife remains overly

attached to his or her parents and runs to them with complaints about

the spouse, the couple in formation may never work out their difficulties.

Some triangles seem so innocent that we hardly notice their destructive

effect. Many parents can’t seem to resist complaining once in a while to

their children about their mates. “Your mother’s
always
late!” “Your father

never
lets anyone else drive.” These interchanges seem harmless enough. If

you’re really upset about something, you need to talk about it, right?

When you hear a story in which one person is a victim and

the other is a villain, you’re being invited into a triangle.

If something’s really bothering you and you’re afraid to talk about it —

afraid you won’t be listened to—the urge to confide in someone is almost

overwhelming. The trouble with triangles isn’t that seeking sympathy is

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wrong. The problem is that triangles can become chronic diversions that

corrupt and undermine listening in family relationships.

Mary was a twenty-year-old, single mother who came to the clinic

because she was having trouble controlling her three-year-old. After I’d

listened to her for about forty minutes, Mary confessed that she’d been hit-

ting the baby and was afraid she might hurt her. I was alarmed, so I asked

Mary to bring Tamara to the next session.

Mary, who lived alone and had few friends, related to her little daugh-

ter like a playmate. When the baby was building a tower with blocks, Mary

grabbed away some of the blocks to make her own tower, insisting that

the baby “share.” Later in the session, when I was trying to talk with Mary

about her life as a single mom and Tamara started throwing blocks, Mary

yelled at her—“Quiet down, okay? I’m talking to the doctor”—but didn’t

follow up. Tamara looked up for a minute and then continued throwing

blocks. She was used to ignoring her mother.

Over the next two sessions I helped Mary understand what it means

to be a mother-in- charge. Parents take charge by being parental, which

consists of two things: nurture and control. (The latter makes the former

easier.) Mary learned not to try to control everything the baby did but that

when she did need to enforce a rule to do so with a clear, direct message

and then follow through with consequences. Becoming more confident of

her authority made it easier for her to be more tolerant of Tamara. The lan-

guage of small children is a language of action; “listening” to them means

letting them take the lead in play.

Mary was a quick learner, and her relationship with Tamara improved