One of our P.E.T. Instructors told me that she was recently sitting in an airport lounge waiting for a flight when she overheard a tense conversation between a mother and her five or six year old
daughter. It went something like this:
Daughter: But I don’t want to get on the plane. I don’t want to go. I want to go home.
Mother: You’re being a big baby.
Daughter: I’m not a baby! I just don’t wanna go on the plane.
Mother: Well, you’re going to go whether you like it or not. So just be quiet.
Daughter: You could call daddy. He could come and get me and take me home.
Mother: (grabs the daughter and pushes her into a seat) I’m not calling daddy….don’t be ridiculous. We’re here and you’re going with me to Grandma’s house. Period. Now just stop it.
“Fortunately for my state of mind,” the instructor told me, “my plane was ready for boarding and I left the lounge and a teary little girl with an angry mother. But at 33,000 feet I kept replaying that mother-daughter scenario, wondering what might have happened had the mother tried to understand her daughter’s feelings.” My guess is that the little girl was afraid to fly and, if she’d picked up on it, the mother might have said something like ‘You’re really scared about getting on the plane. You’d rather stay home.’ I suspect that just acknowledging the little girl’s feelings might have dispelled them.”
I doubt that upset mother in the airport is reading this blog but you are and I want to share with you some of the things I’ve learned about listening, what works and what doesn’t. Let’s start at the beginning.
Feedback That Doesn’t Work
I have never found anyone unfamiliar with the things people typically say when responding to another’s problem statements. I call them roadblocks because that’s what they do, block the communication pathways.
There are twelve kinds or categories of roadblocks and for illustration lets use the little girl’s statement “I don’t want to get on the plane. I don’t want to go. I want to go home!” and see how each roadblock response might sound.
- Roadblock 1. Ordering, commanding, directing. “You’re going to go so just be quiet.”
- Roadblock 2. Threatening, warning. “If you don’t stop whining, I’ll give you something to whine about!”
- Roadblock 3. Moralizing, preaching. “Big girls don’t cry and carry on. You should be happy to go on this trip to Grandma’s.”
- Roadblock 4. Advising, giving solutions. “The thing to do is think about something else. Then you’ll feel better. Why don’t you get your markers out of your backpack and draw some pictures?”
- Roadblock 5. Lecturing, teaching, giving facts. “It’s only three more hours until we’ll be at Grandma’s house.”
- Roadblock 6. Judging, blaming, criticizing. “You’re ruining my day!”
- Roadblock 7. Praising, buttering up. “You’re such a big girl, and brave, too!
- Roadblock 8. Name-calling, ridiculing. ”You’re being a big baby.”
- Roadblock 9. Interpreting, diagnosing, analyzing. “You’re just trying to embarrass me.”
- Roadblock 10. Reassuring, sympathizing. “Poor baby. Traveling is really hard isn’t it?”
- Roadblock 11. Probing, questioning, interrogating. “Why are you acting this way?”
- Roadblock 12. Withdrawing, sarcasm, distracting. “Look at the big teddy bear the little boy over there has!”
Do these sound familiar? Do they remind you of certain people, places, and events? Do you recall times when you were upset and were told to stop being upset or told the real reason you were upset or told to grow up! Do you recall how you felt and what you did when you got such feedback? Most people shut down or leave or, as the little girl in the airport did, try again to be understood, generally without much success.
None of the roadblocks communicate understanding. In fact, they aren’t even about what the talker said, they are about the listener. And they contain hidden messages.
Roadblocks 1-5 contain the hidden message you’re too dumb to figure this out on your own so I’ll tell you. Roadblocks 6-11 imply that there’s something wrong with you (and in the some cases such as analyzing and diagnosing, tell you what it is.) Roadblock 12’s hidden message is it’s not safe to talk about that or I’m uncomfortable hearing that.
Roadblocks are sometimes called the language of unacceptance. Yet, we know that in order to understand what someone is thinking and/or feeling, the listener must accept those thoughts and feelings as at least momentarily true and factual for the person experiencing them. So, what’s called for is the language of acceptance, feedback that reflects an understanding of the talker’s expressed thoughts and feelings.
(This content comes from unpublished writings from Dr. Gordon.)