Counseling Plainfield Illinois

How Well Are You Listening to Your Children and (Others)? When our children come to us with a problem, we usually want to help them. So we console, interpret, advise, distract or praise. Other times, we feel we must teach our children, and so we interrogate, lecture, moralize or order. And probably more often than we’d like, we respond angrily—blaming, criticizing, ridiculing, shaming or withdrawing. However, all of these responses are problematic—whether with our children, or with the important adults in our lives. They often serve to stop the communication of real feelings and the development of individual solutions. Take the quiz below, adapted from the classic Parent Effectiveness Training, by Dr. Thomas Gordon, to assess your listening skills. 1. I let my children feel their difficult feelings, knowing that comments such as “Everyone goes through this” deny the strength of their feelings. 2. I try to listen for the need beneath the words and respond to that. 3. I make i...