As we close the door to our past and move down the corridor, we come to our third door. The key fits easily, but when we try to push the door open, we meet with resistance. Come on, push. Harder! It’s moving—just enough to let us squeeze inside. As we step into the room we find dozens of rocks and boulders scattered across the floor and pressed against the door. No wonder it was so hard to open.
Perhaps you’re puzzled and are tempted to ask, “A pile of rocks? What value could these have?”
I asked that myself when I entered this room for the first time. I stooped to pick up a small rock the size of a grapefruit and turned it in my hand. So dull and drab, yet it appealed to my sense of adventure. I had heard of rocks called thunder eggs that held within their dull, thick, gray walls a breathtaking crystalline quartz.
Curious, I picked up a hammer and chisel from a long wooden table, stained with age and gouged by a rock hound’s tools. I worked at the stone, my concentration intense. Finally my tapping was rewarded—the stone broke. I set down my tools and gazed in awe at the sight.
Hundreds of miniature pinnacles rose to meet the light, like the Grand Canyon or an ice cave carved in crystal. Lavender, pink, and silver reflections shimmered in the light, casting rainbows across the drab gray walls.
In this room lies the answer to better communication between mother and child. For a parent, sometimes communication can be as hard as splitting rock. But with persistence, and using the tools of patient talking and listening, you can break through the sometimes uninteresting or crusty surface. Once inside, you will find a treasure of words and ideas more brilliant and rewarding than the most valuable stone.
Communication is like a marriage. There are two parts that must come together to make a whole. There must be a balance on both parts for communication to work effectively. So often, we let words fall out of our mouths or bounce off our ears without taking the time to really consider what we’re saying or hearing. At those times our words are a superficial means of making conversation.
I’d like us to take a look at our first tool—talking.
I’m not going to go into all the ways we talk to people, but I will give you a few examples of ways in which moms communicate with their kids and take a look at the results.
Nag! Nag! Nag!
I’ve come to believe there is a nag in every woman. But not every woman nags in a detrimental way. In my years as a mother I have learned there are two methods of nagging. One is effective, the other is not.
Nagging, I’ve discovered, is a matter of attitude. If you continually criticize, browbeat … well, take a look at this example.
Ellen, mother of three, felt it was her duty to consistently point out her children’s mistakes and get them shaped up.
“For crying out loud, Andy,” she would yell after him as he slipped out the door to play with his friends. “Why can’t you be more like your sister? I always have to clean up after you and I’m getting tired of it. Do you hear me?”
Andy heard; he just wasn’t listening anymore. It was easier to walk away. Even if he kept his room spotless, she would have found something wrong. Just a few more years, he told himself, and I can leave home. Then she won’t have to put up with me anymore.
Andy is a grown man now. His mother still nags. “Why don’t you ever call me?” she whines. “Is that any way to treat your own mother?” He visits her once a week as a dutiful son. If not for guilt, he might even stop these visits. She is still disappointed in him. And he, after all these years, still wants to please her, but he can’t. He never could.
Ellen is the kind of woman talked about in Proverbs. She is quarrelsome, contentious, and her words are as annoying as a continually dripping faucet (see Prov. 19:13). Her method of communication is negative and one-sided.
If you feel you must nag, go ahead, only shift the emphasis from criticism to encouragement. Remove the frown and add a smile. Do a little less talking and a little more listening. I’ll be talking about the art of listening later in this chapter, but first a word on the positive side of nagging.
Creative Nagging 101
In Erma Bombeck’s book on motherhood, she dreamed of a fictional class called Creative Nagging 101. Although such a class doesn’t exist, it should. Nagging in a creative way can be an excellent tool for mothers in teaching the essential principles of life.
Of course, by now you know I don’t mean the senseless, faucet-dripping nagging. I mean words of wisdom repeated regularly to help develop lifelong habits.
Maybe you don’t agree, but I ask you, where would you be today if your mother hadn’t told you (often), “Always wear clean underwear. You never know when you’ll be in an accident and have to go to the hospital.” Another great one was, “Never squeeze the toothpaste in the middle and always replace the cap.”
Although I haven’t been entirely serious about this nagging business, I do see it as beneficial.
Creative nagging (repetition) is important. Bible verses, proverbs, and Christian principles need to be repeated so that, when children are old, they will not depart from the truths they learned at Mother’s knee. Rules are better remembered when they are repeated clearly and concisely on a regular basis and at appropriate times.
Creative nagging is a mother’s way of saying I love you. One friend, Nancy, stopped nagging completely.
“They never listen to me anyway,” she rationalized. Nancy stopped telling her teenage son to get his hair cut before she entered him in the Miss America Pageant. She stopped urging her daughter to clean her room by taking down the poster that said, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” When Nancy neglected to tell her ten-year-old to eat her peas at dinner one night, the child burst into tears and cried, “You don’t love me anymore!”
Needless to say, Nancy saw the wrong she had done and changed her ways. Now, when her children pretend to ignore her words of wisdom, Nancy smiles. “Someday, when they’re older, they’ll remember.”
So you can see, nagging can be a way of saying to your kids, “I love you, and I care about who you are and what you do.” And after all, don’t kids need a mother who cares?
Talking Stones
Just as there are two ways of nagging, there are two ways of just plain talking. One is superficial—a how’s the weather, drink your milk, how was school kind of conversing. Some people go through their whole lives never going much deeper than the surface. They never reach the delicate and treasure-filled inside layers.
As a mom I always wanted to get inside my kids. I wanted to see the beauty God created within their minds and souls. But I’ve discovered there’s only one way to find that inner treasure. I had to first show them the inside of me.
How? By letting them know how I felt about … well, about all kinds of things. They know a part of me that whips out her squirt gun, just to have a little fun. They know a mom who sometimes cries at old movies, weddings, gymnastic meets, and sunsets.
I’ve been known to share moments out of the past, dreams I’ve had, or silly things I’ve done. Sometimes they’ve been amazed that I’ve had the same feelings they experience.
They know a mom who more than once made a fool of herself as a teenager. Like the time I pretended to have as my constant companion a six-foot irresistible rabbit. I could never have done it without my best friend, but the two of us were dubbed loonies by our fellow students for months.
Letting your kids see inside you can open the doors of communication. I remember one evening several years ago when my daughter, then a teenager, didn’t want to talk to me. She’d come in at 1:00 A.M. Her curfew was 12:00.
“You’re late,” I said. “And what have you been doing for the last six hours?”
“Nothing.” She turned to hang her coat in the closet.
“You spent six hours doing nothing?”
“We went to a movie … Mom, you just don’t trust me.” She threw up her arms and stomped off to her room.
“Try me.” I followed.
She sighed. “We pulled into the driveway before 11:00 and … started talking.”
Now at this point the conversation could have gone several ways. I could have said, “Talking? You sat in a parked car for two hours with the guy and just talked?”
That’s what I could have said, but accusations would probably have turned her off completely. I’m not going to take credit at this point for being an ideal mother psychologist. More likely, my stroke of genius was accidental because I remembered a time when I’d been unjustly accused of the same thing. What I did say was this:
“Talking, huh?” I grinned and arched an eyebrow. “Hmmmm. That I can believe.”
“You can?” She stared at me.
“Sure.” I sat on her bed and hugged my knees to my chest. “I remember dating this really cute guy in high school. After he brought me home, we got started talking and couldn’t seem to stop. We sat there for two hours. I loved watching his dimples … and those eyes.”
“Mom!” It was a half-scold and half-giggle. “Do you expect me to believe that all you did was talk?”
“Well … he did kiss me once.”
“Only once?” Caryl flopped across the bed on her stomach.
“Yeah … unfortunately. How about you? Tonight, I mean.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Twice, but I couldn’t get into it.”
“Really?”
“Hmmmm. He’s nice as a friend, but … you know, no sparks.”
“I’ve dated a few of those myself.”
“Mom …” she hesitated. “Did you ever break curfew?”
“Once. I got grounded for two weeks, and it wasn’t even my fault. After a pep rally this guy brought about ten of us home. One of the girls lived way out in the boondocks. Would you believe the car stalled about a mile from her house? A couple of the guys had to go for help. By the time they dropped me off I was forty-five minutes late.”
“You mean Grandma and Grandpa grounded you for that? It wasn’t your fault.”
“Tell me about it. I argued a lot, but they wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t believe they’d be so mean. But I guess it worked. I never broke the curfew rule again.”
“Mom,” she turned to me. “Since it upset you so much, and you know how awful it feels, and since I was in the driveway before 12:00, don’t you think we could forget about grounding me this once? I promise I won’t do it again.”
“Not a chance, sweetie. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ground you. Two weeks.”
“Rats!”
“I know it’s hard, but you broke the rules.”
“Oh, I know. It isn’t that, it’s just … well,” she looked up at me and gave me a knowing wink. “Too bad he wasn’t worth it.”
Sometimes, opening yourself can open the lines of communication.
Let’s take a look at the second tool used in effective communication. This one might be even more important than talking.
“You Never Listen”
Do you ever get the feeling your children aren’t listening to a thing you say? If that’s the case, maybe you should take a few minutes to examine why. Few people ever really take the time to listen to others. I mean really listen. Perhaps your children are not listening to you because you don’t listen to them. Perhaps they can’t truly listen because they’ve never learned how.
Listening is more than just hearing. True listening is loving someone enough to give him or her your full attention.
As parents we are bombarded with books and articles that tell us how to talk to our kids. But not a lot has been written or taught on how to listen.
A part of really loving someone is to give your attention by listening intently to what is said. While children learn to read and write, few of them have been taught to speak and fewer to listen.
M. Scott Peck, in his book The Road Less Traveled, says:
We spend an enormous amount of time listening, most of which we waste, because on the whole most of us listen very poorly … we would be wise to give our children some instruction in the process of listening—not so that listening can be made easy but rather that they will understand how difficult it is to listen well. Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.[1]
Have you ever gone to a lecture or tuned in to a program in which you were especially interested in the topic and really listened to what was being said? Listening intently for hours or even a few minutes can give a person a tension headache and muscle spasms in the neck. Listening is not just a job for our ears. It’s a difficult and time-consuming task that requires full concentration.
I know, because I’m one of the guilty people who has at times been too lazy to listen fully. A conversation with my daughter several years ago brought this important principle into focus for me.
“Mom.” Caryl entered the kitchen and plopped herself on a stool near the counter.
“What, honey?” I didn’t look at her; I was measuring flour into a bowl. One cup. Two… .
“Guess what? Marie and I are going to try out for rally squad. Can we practice over here Monday nights?”
“Hmmmm. That’s nice.” What did she say, rally squad practice? Oh, did I forget the salt?
“Mom, can we?”
“Can you what?”
Caryl sighed audibly and wandered into the living room to flip on the television set. “Never mind.” I could hear the pout in her voice. “You never listen.”
“I’m listening, really I am.” Who am I kidding? How could I have been listening when I can’t remember what she said?
I apologized. She forgave me. I set aside my biscuits, then sat beside her—my hands (and head) empty of other things, and listened.
How many of us grow up never learning how to really listen, because no one ever cared enough to hear what we had to say?
“My dad never listens to me,” a thirteen-year-old girl told me. “He pretends to, but how could he be? Before I’m even finished talking he’s giving me his opinion. It’s as if he’s thinking while I’m talking because he has already made up his mind that what I have to say isn’t important.”
Listening to children, especially younger ones, can be quite a challenge. After all, trying to listen intently to the incessant chatter of a four-year-old could drive you crazy. In some instances it’s permitted to only half listen, as long as we are careful not to develop a habit of using the practice all the time.
On the other hand, when we take the time and effort to listen carefully to everything the child is saying to us, we are telling him or her without words, “You are valuable to me. What you say is important.”
As you truly listen to your child, you begin to see a unique person who will undoubtedly have some interesting observations. Out of their innocence, children often have great insight and wisdom. We can learn a great deal from them when we work to gain access to their inner core. Listening helps us to know our children better, which will enable us to teach them more effectively. Another side benefit is that when you make the effort to actively listen, your child will most likely listen to you.
“True listening, total concentration on the other,” says Dr. Peck, “is always a manifestation of love. An essential part of true listening is the … temporary giving up or setting aside of one’s own prejudices, frames of references and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker’s world from the inside, stepping inside his or her shoes.”[2]
Through effective communication, we can better love, accept, and understand our kids. By talking and listening intently we can find treasures in our children’s minds—like color, crystal, rainbows, and light in the heart of the stone.