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Building A Listening Partnership- An Ease In Releasing Parenting Stress

Being a peaceful parent, and trying to listen to our children’s feelings isn’t easy, particularly because many of us are trying to parent in a way that is radically different from our own childhood. When we were young there was little understanding of the importance of listening to children with warmth and patience, so our parents couldn’t give us a model of how to do this. Our unheard feelings from our own childhood get triggered in challenging moments with our children.

Another reason parenting is so challenging is that our busy, modern, society is not built around listening to each other. We often don’t have the time and support we need and so our feelings get in the way of us being the parents we want to be. Once upon a time we did know how to listen. In many indigenous cultures there is a tradition of listening deeply to each other, and the healing power of doing so. These traditions suggest that the ability to listen, is something deeply instinctual to us, and that we can recover and relearn the skills.

Hand in Hand parenting is not just about listening to our children’s feelings, but about listening to our own, and those of the other adults’ around us. Listening partnerships are the powerful tool where two parents listen to each other, so that they can de-stress from the challenging work of parenting. They can build community where parents support each other, and want the best for each other. This gives them the chance to do the deep healing work as they need to have the patience to accept their children’s emotions.

Children function best when they feel connected to someone who cares about them. Parents can build connection with their child through play, laughter, roughhousing, cuddling, and warm, enthusiastic attention. Stresses of all kinds, loneliness, isolation, and criticism erase a child’s sense of connection, and make it harder for a child to love and learn. All you need to do is to listen to the children and be close. Irrational feelings will melt. Your child will soon be reasonable again. If you stay close, holding him/her or keeping your hand on them, your child will feel deeply supported, even if child is upset with you. When he or she is finished, they will have a strong sense of your love and a renewed sense of wellbeing.

Parents know that there's no better way to make their children feel safe and loved than listening to them. But listening takes work and patience. When you have a listening partner of your own, you can offload stressful emotions, brainstorm solutions, and get back to being the parent you want to be.

You can build your ability to be confident, warm and unshakable when your sweet child has been hurt, disappointed, or is facing a big and scary challenge. Here’s how you can use your Listening Partnership to steady your own emotional boat in heavy seas.

1) Pick the situations that worry you, anger you or pain you the most. Take them one by one as topics for your Listening Partnership turn. When you’ve chosen a situation, you can use the following approaches to allow you some relief from the grip of big feelings when they arise. These are not the only approaches: you and your Listening Partner will come up with what works best for you. These ideas are just to get you started!

2) Say all the things that come to mind to say, the ones that swirl in your head and that express your inner reaction. “Don’t you dare treat my child that way!” or “You fool! Why did you have to do that!” or “Poor baby! I don’t know what we’re going to do. I never wanted you to have to go through this!” Whatever your unvarnished response to the situation is, it needs to be heard by your Listening Partner.

3) Then, try to trace the feeling or the reaction you have back to your childhood. Is this what you never got to say to a domineering older sibling? To your own parents? Is this reaction full of heat because you were victimized in the same way? What did you need to say to people then? Did you need to scream for help? To beg your parents for protection? Explore, and go back in time to stand up for your young self, and to express the feelings that never were heard by a caring listener.

4) Try expressing yourself with more kindness, more tenderness and more complete attention than is comfortable for you. As you do, you’re likely to laugh with embarrassment, or with the feeling, “That’s not me!” Usually, our ability to express our love with our voices and faces and touch is limited by our parents’ modelling of kindness and full attention. Incomplete modelling of love and attentiveness tends to result in some stiffness on our part—it’s hard to feel at home giving a much rounder version of kindness than we ever got. So to expand your capacity to show the plentiful love you have, just try it out with your Listening Partner. Notice how you feel as you try. As you work to break the tight boundaries of the kindness shown to you, feelings will leap out, healing will take place, and you’ll notice changes in you that will be gratifying to you, and very helpful to your child.

For example, early in my own listening work, I decided I wanted to learn to show affection through touch. I had been able to be affectionate with my brothers and sisters growing up, but our parents were often too stressed to touch us with affection. I noticed that I wasn’t able to give or receive affection as well as I wanted. I spent many Listening Partnership hours doing the simple act of putting my attention on gently touching my Listening Partner’s hand, arm or cheek.

Doing this would flood me with tears, and a long stream of feelings flowed through me, hour by hour, that had to do with the illnesses that plagued our family, with the discipline that was meted out to us children, with my longings to make things better. Just putting attention on a simple sign of affection allowed lots of healing to take place, and my Listening Partner didn’t have to say a word.

Parents ability to listen to their child will increase as we use Listening Partnerships as a place to try more tenderness, try more affection, and as an outlet for the emotions one had to tamp down in childhood. And the priceless inner sense that you’re giving your child exactly what she needs from you will increase, too. Your child’s confidence and trust in you will build, cry by passionate cry. And you will get to help them in a truly powerful way. By building listening partnership, one can change their life as a parent, transform the relationships in their family, and ease the stress of parenting.

Please note: The opinions expressed in this post are the personal views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of mycity4kids. Any omissions or errors are the author's and mycity4kids does not assume any liability or responsibility for them.