listening clearly
September 28, 2016 § 5 Comments
Years ago our daughter told her elementary school nurse that she was home sick. The nurse and secretary called me so that I might offer encouragement, but our daughter patiently explained to me that she was the kind of sick that needs to go home.
It was a time when our daughter’s language was jumbled in order, when we had to listen intentionally to the entire thought and then double-check her meaning.
Less patient teachers, family and friends would finish her thoughts, rush the pattern; leap to false conclusions in their best efforts to demonstrate understanding. Most times our daughter gave up, burdened by the frustration of being misunderstood, and waited in silence to unpack her feelings at home.
Our daughter is no longer flagged for needs, her diagnosis no longer invites intervention or special care like her older brother. There are still long pauses and endearingly obscure turn of phrases, but she’s become better about speaking out and standing up for her thoughts.
It’s made her a more generous listener, more conscientious speaker; it’s made me a better listener, too. Sometimes.
I was thinking of this during our son’s school conferences. Specifically, the manner in which we are constantly assigning and infusing meaning with little clarification or confirmation.
In two classes our son had fallen behind, but both teachers spoke generously of his ability and gently of his anxiety. The language of his grades was an incomplete picture of his relationship with his teachers and classroom experience.
I had attended the evening’s conferences with a list of worries and questions, but I found myself listening, rather than speaking, to an unexpected pattern of meaning. Our son was repeatedly identified as a perfectionist with extreme anxiety over performance. He was noted as a respectful student and a thoughtful peer. A young man with artistic ability and unique math skills struggling with an internalized set of doubts and fears.
In the space of an hour I stopped worrying about performance and became immeasurably curious about our son’s emotions and the gaps between our conversations.
What I wanted to see was secondary to what my son might need his father and I to know.
The past couple of days I’ve been speaking less, listening more; changing my expectations and asking new questions. I’m assigning a different value to those worries I used to dwell on and double checking red flags for meaning.
Listening clearly.
scribblechic 
That is a huge lesson, and well taken Marie.
Considering your circumstances, and what I have seen from you on here, you have always shown me that you listen well.
To ‘see’ in another way must have been a beautiful understanding indeed 🙂
I try, Mark, but it is an imperfect (and inconsistent) effort. Sometimes the noise of my own insecurities as a parent or the audience of peers/family/friends to whom I feel hyper-attuned to criticism drown out the gentler practice of active listening.
But those insecurities has great purpose Marie, they teach you that very thing, to be able to listen to your own heart, which in turn teaches the wisdom of listening to others.
That is love….self love, it always comes first in the teaching, and you are doing well, I constantly hear it here, on your blog 🙂
It is our own, and others, expectations built on our fears that keep us from truly hearing. Face and understand those, and they will set you free…and then, you can ‘hear’ everything…and I mean everything.
I can now hear another’s heart without a word being spoken…as you do, by being the love of a mother. Give that love to you, and all else will follow.
We are all able to do this, it is our journey to slowly be, and appreciate that love 🙂
I still remember Oprah’s parenting guru (her name escapes me at the moment) talking of how she told her child’s teachers not to speak to her of academics but of her daughter as a person. What courage that takes:). You are showing courage in the best way.
Thanks, Kay. Some days I worry I’ve overlooked a step, that I’m doing this parenting thing wrong. It’s a little like the dream where you show up publicly naked; exposed and vulnerable.