What do you mean I’m not listening?
One common theme I have been getting recently is the theme of “you’re not listening to me”. It seems like a simple statement, but thinking about it more, it can be a bit more complex than you think. It makes me think of connection. One of the key elements to help regulating your child, meeting their needs, and overall healing. (One of the main reasons people go to therapy is for connection!) You might be saying “I am with them all the time”, or “We talk all the time of course we are connecting”, or “I am listening and hearing what they are saying” You may be right. However, looks can be deceiving.
When I think about connection, I think about being with your child. In that moment, as a parent, the brain has no agenda. It’s not trying to fix problems at that exact moment. The brain can understand and reflect feelings back to them. Body language being approachable, The muscles in the body being relaxed. There are no other distractions (such as a phone, tv, project ect). As well as being playful. When kids have intense moments, that’s hard for the brain to check in on the concept of connection because kids trigger parents. It is all part of being a human being. When brains get too triggered, that sends us out of connection mode.
For some context, some parents may have experienced moments of their kids saying (or screaming) “I hate you” or “This game is too hard I feel like dying”, or “Nobody understands”. Those words scare our brains as parents and send us out of connection mode. When our of connection mode, our brains do things to protect themselves which leads to kids brains feeling as though they are not listened to. Simple response to those statements may be “ I hear that you are upset” or “ I see that you’re feeling like this is hard”, or “I feel like you may be feeling lonely”. It’s the feelings under the words that matter. I will also mention that there are more ways to connect with kids in these moments, but this is just one example.
Thinking of kids who have mental health diagnoses such as ADHD, anxiety, trauma, depression and so forth. There are moments where they are feeling things or trying to explain things but in odd or explosive ways. The reasons for that? There could be many different reasons that would take way more time to explain than in a blog post. But trust me there are reasons. I reflect on play therapy services and one important take away from those sessions is connection. In those moments when it looks like nothing significant happened in the play therapy session, connection happened. When connections happens, healing can also happen.
These are just the basics and things to get curious about. Next time your child comes to you with a problem, or you are trying to manage your child’s emotional regulation, is connection mode availbe, and if not, how to get it back.