The Art of Listening: Building Stronger Family Connections
Mar 28, 2024
Angela and Anna
In this episode of "Good Friends; Strong Families," we delve into the often overlooked yet crucial aspect of communication: listening. Uncover the true power of becoming an active listener to foster deeper connections and understanding within your family. We explore practical strategies to shift from merely hearing words to genuinely understanding and empathizing with your loved ones, ensuring they feel honestly heard and valued. By the end of this episode, you'll be equipped with the tools needed to enhance your listening skills, leading to a more resilient and connected family dynamic. Join us as we discuss the importance of empathetic listening and how it can transform everyday interactions into meaningful, relationship-strengthening experiences.
LUV Listening: LISTEN politely with a genuine desire to understand other people’s ideas and feelings when they talk to you. UNDERSTAND: Show understanding by nodding your head, asking polite questions, or repeating the main points to ensure you understand. VALIDATE the other person’s point of view, even if you disagree, by saying, “I see why you feel that way . . .”
In this episode of "Good Friends; Strong Families," we delve into the often overlooked yet crucial aspect of communication: listening. Uncover the true power of becoming an active listener to foster deeper connections and understanding within your family. We explore practical strategies to shift from merely hearing words to genuinely understanding and empathizing with your loved ones, ensuring they feel honestly heard and valued. By the end of this episode, you'll be equipped with the tools needed to enhance your listening skills, leading to a more resilient and connected family dynamic. Join us as we discuss the importance of empathetic listening and how it can transform everyday interactions into meaningful, relationship-strengthening experiences.
LUV Listening: LISTEN politely with a genuine desire to understand other people’s ideas and feelings when they talk to you. UNDERSTAND: Show understanding by nodding your head, asking polite questions, or repeating the main points to ensure you understand. VALIDATE the other person’s point of view, even if you disagree, by saying, “I see why you feel that way . . .”
Speaker 1:
Hello and welcome to Good Friends Strain Families, the podcast where every episode equips you with a new skill, surrounds you with support and provides actionable steps you can immediately implement In your family life. I'm Angela and I'm joined by my co-host, Anna. In today's episode, we're discussing a really important part of communication. This is listening. We'll dissect the what, the why and the how, so by the end of today's episode, you'll be better equipped to raise resilient, connected families. Anna, we certainly talked about the importance of communication before, Something we talked about a lot and we've got a couple of episodes. We've got one on iMessages where we talk about how to clearly and effectively communicate feelings, our thoughts, our opinions, that type of thing. Today, we're actually talking about the other side of the conversation, which I think is maybe you're the most important part, which is listening. Yeah definitely.
Speaker 2:
I feel like sometimes when we think of communication, we think of that like the communicating part and we often overlook listening and we don't even really think of it as a skill. We just think that, like we hear stuff with our ears and that's great, but we really actually need to be active listeners if we want to be great communicators. I love that quote from Stephen Covey. The biggest communication problem is we don't listen to understand. We listen to reply.
Speaker 1:
Oh, that's painful.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it got me. It got me. Honestly, it still gets me. Sometimes I think it's so easy to like tune out the words that we're hearing right what people are saying to us, and we're already too busy listening to that voice of our own thoughts. We don't even really give ourselves the chance to actually understand what the other person is trying to say. So how can we get better at this?
Speaker 1:
Okay, well, first of all, I got to say this because you and I both are family coaches. We've also raised our kids and all raising kids, and we've done this together, a lot of this together, and so we're going to give friends, we're going to give you a bunch of tips on how to do this, but we got to say we're not perfect at this, definitely not. So we're going to be like what if somebody takes us calling each other and saying like, ah, for like the other person to say like, have you listened? Have you love listened? Have you? You know what I mean? So, but we're going to share. That's really our goal here in this podcast is to like share what are those things that have worked for us and or have not worked for us. But if you had a good friend, what would your good friend tell you? Even better, if you had a good friend that was like a family, whatever they tell you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so this concept is called love, listening and love being L? U V, and there's actually three steps to it. So when you think about love listening in terms of listening, we're just going to walk folks through what those three steps are. So the L, of course, stands for listen, and this is really like listening with a genuine desire to understand. I want to know exactly what you're thinking, what you're feeling, and so this listening is about us using our ears, of course, but also, like our eyes, our heart, trying to put ourselves in their place. I want to know, really know, what they're struggling with. The U stands for understand. So I'm not going to understand unless I've fully heard you. And then one of the ways I can show that I've heard you is I can just sort of repeat back what you've said, not verbate, I'm not word for word, but like what you've said in essence. And then the third is stands for validate. So this is really like us being empathetic even if we don't, just even if we disagree. We don't have to agree with all of your feelings or all of your thoughts, but we do have to be empathetic to the other person.
Speaker 1:
I'll tell you a quick, funny story. When Bruno, my husband, and I were not that you don't know my husband, my husband Bruno, when Bruno and I were doing we were teaching these classes, once for couples, couples communication class, and we had to take the class first before we could teach, and in the middle of the class they had us do exactly this exercise where one of us told the other one there's a story and then you had to repeat back what you heard. And so Bruno tells the story in such a funny way because when he repeated back my story which by the way it was a very emotional story for my childhood In his version of my story there were ninjas. There were no ninjas in the first telling of the story, and so the reason why he told it like that is because he stopped listening halfway through because he was thinking about the story he was going to tell me.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, I can see that so that's not you know, like when you think through how you are listening to understand, in order to validate the blanks if we're already onto the next thought, or I know I that's something that I really struggle with, because I hear what you're saying, but then I, I'm I can be very aware that I'm already thinking about what I need to respond with yes. And if I'm already thinking about that and try not to forget what I want to say, yeah, stop listening.
Speaker 1:
Or if you want to solve the problem, that's the other thing is like I'm just I already know the yeah, let me help you solve it, and I'm just like I just want you to hear me. Yeah that's really good.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I love that breakdown. I think, as the listener, by purposefully looking at who we're speaking to or who's speaking to us, I Think that shows that they're important to us. Yeah, what they're saying is important, and I think that we all want our loved ones to feel important and and what what they say to us Matters, and that we're actually listening. So I think listening to understand and and show understanding can take practice. We are still practicing not in this house, so let's maybe give some examples okay the right thing to do.
Speaker 1:
In real life, all right.
Speaker 1:
So let's think about a scenario where you've got a child that like, maybe you've got a younger child that's feeling well, even older children who are feeling like overwhelmed, like maybe about the day, or like you know, maybe they've got a lot, of, a lot going on that day, and you can apply love listening here, like literally, by Getting down to their eye level, if they're younger, smaller, you know, or sitting in the chair across from them, if they're older, and getting that eye contact with them, and then really give them your full attention, phone away, distractions away, and just listen and do that like heart listening, like I just want to listen to understand, which means, which brings us to the you.
Speaker 1:
That means that once they've expressed everything to you, you do think through your response, in that you want to Make those couple of points that you heard them say. So that's just showing them that you understand and that gives them an opportunity. By the way, if you say something that they didn't say or maybe you misunderstood, then that gives them an opportunity to say no, that's not at all what I said, and so it's a, it is a dialogue. But then what you can do, and you could say it like this like well, it sounds like you had a really tough day. You're feeling really tired and overwhelmed right now. Is that right? And then, if they say yes, that's exactly how I feel.
Speaker 2:
First of all, that might be the first time they topped into those feelings, right, they just thought they were just need to acknowledge it and then and then notice that, like you see that in them. Yeah how good does that feel when you are seen?
Speaker 1:
and also our kids don't know necessarily Especially when they're younger what those feelings are. Yeah, so that's really helpful and it's also that's great emotion training. But then the last piece is that you're just gonna validate them like it's okay to feel this way, it's okay to feel overwhelmed, and and it is okay, it's okay for your little, it's okay for your teenage and it was okay for an adult. And then from there you can start to think about actions to be taken. But you're never gonna get to actions if you don't first get to this part.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I love that. Like I so many times, we just want to feel, feel seen, heard and validated. It really opens that next actionable step. Like we haven't acknowledged, there is a problem. How can we solve it? Yes, so okay, what about a love listening example with our spouse or partner?
Speaker 1:
This is a good one, because I think, especially when our kids are younger or we've got a lot going on, we often forget. I know certainly I have over the years forgotten that, even though our partners an adult, but they still experience these are life transitions. You're raising kids, you've got a family, you've got work, you've got a lot going on in your life, and so this can actually bring you together as a couple Rather than kind of push you apart. And again, not that we're always perfect with this, but the idea here is that you want to create a kind of calm, supportive space for them so that they can share what's going on with them. And it's the same thing. You're gonna turn off distractions. Face them directly, show them that you're fully present. Now you might be saying to yourself and I think I would too if I was you listening but this is why this is preventative.
Speaker 1:
Yeah because if you spend 10 or 15 minutes with your partner just listening to their frustrations, you'll save yourself a ton of time in anger, frustration, argument, just because you're, you're kind of getting ahead of it. Yeah, so that's the point. Yeah, so, but same thing, give them a space to talk after they've spoken. You're gonna just, you know, make sure that you get it right. Seems like you're really frustrated, frustrated, pulling. There's a lot of pressure on you, is that right? And then From there, you just offer your support and empathy. Maybe you're not solving the problem, which, by the way, every time I talk about something, my husband's like I know the seven things you should do in order, and I always like it. Now we have this thing where I'll say Are you trying to just tell me about it or do you want me to solve it? No, I'm just gonna tell you. But that really, just like that, provides a sense of solidarity and it helps to reassure each other. So there's, you know, a little less emotional burden on each other.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I think you brought up another like really good point with the, the making the time, like Maybe you can see that they are stressed or sense that they have pressure on them and say like look, I see that you're. I really want to talk to you, I really want to listen.
Speaker 1:
I really want to know what's going on?
Speaker 2:
Um, would it be better if we do this when the kids are asleep, or? Like that so on for them, so that they're they won't interrupt like yeah. Depending on the situation and the opportunity, like if you can create a scenario where you're not gonna have Disturbances. Yeah, that is ideal, obviously. Sometimes they just we are, we get unloaded on to like rain it in.
Speaker 2:
We can also think of that as, like when we need to communicate, we can say like, hey, I really need to talk to you, but we got a lot going on. So like can we just like set aside time, yeah, or tomorrow or this weekend or something? You know when this is gonna be going up that you have an office later getting to it. I'm like.
Speaker 1:
Breathe, yeah. So here's when this is gonna be hard. Okay, ready when the situation is that they need to talk to you about something about you. Yeah, yeah, that's the hard part, because at that point you still and that's why this takes practice If you're practicing on things that are not like the big things I'm doing air quotes.
Speaker 1:
Like anybody can say but if you're practicing on those things, then it actually gives you for yourself, an opportunity to breathe through, so that, okay, we're going to deal with some like harder things. They're talking about maybe something that you did, or they're complaining or whatever. Okay, let me see if I can hear this so that you can solve the problem.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and maybe the best time to practice this is just when they're telling you something good. Yeah, that's like maybe your kid comes from school and they've had a great day. Don't think that because they've had a great day and they're happy that you can still be on your phone or you can still be putting the groceries away or whatever the situation is Like. Practice listening in the good times, so that you have those skills for the not so fun types.
Speaker 1:
Right, and we've talked about bonding. Boundaries and monitoring are big three things that we talk about with kids. If you can do this, this is what bonding looks like. This is exactly what it looks like. That and sometimes, parents of teenagers where there's been like a role you've heard this like when parents of teenagers talk to us about that, there's like been a rift or they're not used to doing this or they're not used to communicating, or it's like angry communication. We'll tell them to do this so that they can start to repair the rift.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think I'm going to butcher this quote, but I know that there's a quote that talks about like when your kids are younger and they're telling you like the seemingly like insignificant things. They're telling you about the like, the thing they built on the sand in the sandbox or something, and you're like whatever. But it's like the little things to them are the big things. Don't listen to the little, the seemingly again air quote little things. They're not even going to try to tell you about the big things. That's exactly right. So practicing this listening the true love, listening yes, in in the good scenarios, in the rocky scenarios, is really setting the stage for the trickier things.
Speaker 1:
That's so good. That was good. This has been a good one.
Speaker 2:
I agree.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, the more we practice, the better.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely All right. Friends, if you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a five star review and send this episode to a friend. Until next time, you can find us on our Instagram. Good friends, strong families. Bye friends.