Crafty listening

Listen in a crafty way

Good listening is a rare gift! It shows people that their thoughts and feelings matter to you. Crafty listening is much more than good listening because you focus all your attention on another person. It involves self-awareness, self-management, empathy, courage, intuition and generosity of spirit.

Crafty listening creates space for people to think more clearly and time to reflect more deeply. As it encourages better connections in any relationship, it will serve you, your child and your family later on.

Be aware of non-verbal communication

Body language often speaks more loudly than words. Assuming that your child can see, hear and feel, they could experience up to 90 per cent of your communications visually. Pitch, intonation, volume all matter. Nod your head occasionally when listening and offer frequent eye contact to show your interest. Try to be on eye level with your child, rather than standing above or behind them. Be attentive and thoughtful about how your own thoughts, feelings and emotions can influence your listening ability.

Stay in control

Remember:

• Cheering your child up when they are sad does not take away the sadness, it simply teaches them to lock the tears away.
• When your child is scared, asking them to ‘buck up’, telling them there is nothing to be afraid of or saying they are silly or stupid, does not help them to be authentic and healthy.
• Shouting at an angry child simply demonstrates that displays of aggression are OK if you are big enough!

Sometimes the listener wants to ‘rescue’ the speaker from the sadness, anger or fear they are trying to share. 'Rescuing' inhibits the sharing of deep-rooted anxieties and concerns, and this prevents old hurts from healing.

Rescuers believe they are doing it for others, but are in fact meeting their own needs.

What you do is what you teach, so be a role model! You absolutely do not let your child control the situation, the family or you. To prevent this, be in control of yourself. Later, when everyone is calmer, when your child has wept in your arms and is not so overwhelmed with the emotion, then is the time to help them to think more clearly about the underlying issues.

Respond in a helpful way

Most adopted children have mild to severe attachment difficulties, and it is likely to be the case for your child. This has significant implications for your family. A child with attachment issues may be overwhelmed by feelings of shame, guilt, inferiority, confusion, isolation, stagnation and despair. They may never let you close. Everything they do seems designed to push you away, or to force you to reject them. This may be in an effort to protect themselves, but it can cause resentment and regret in you that re-stimulates your own deep hurts. Your greatest challenge may be how to love someone who doesn’t let you love them.

There are no easy answers to attachment difficulties, so what can you do?

• When your child treats you as if you are an enemy, who cannot be trusted, and pushes you away, that is when you need to reach out and move towards them.
• When your child is overwhelmed with shame, be pro-active rather than reactive.
• When your child’s chronic guilt makes you wonder if it’s all pointless, maintain a sense of purpose – and crafty listening is purposeful.
• If your child’s sense of inferiority makes you feel utterly incompetent, remember that you are still a competent adult.
• If your child hides away (maybe in their room) make sure they remain included in the family – even if they let you know in no uncertain terms, that everything you represent is beneath contempt!
• If your child starts to stagnate, you need to be even more caring – difficult when you feel anything but loving, pro-active, competent and inclusive.
• If you reflect and echo your child’s attachment difficulties, there is a danger that both of you will end up in mutual despair.

Crafty listening won’t prevent all of this happening, but it can create a climate and a context in which your child begins to feel that you are able to hold them safe in a dangerous world.

If this strikes alarm or disbelief, you need to talk – or rather, listen – to your social worker and to other adoptive parents who didn’t believe it either!

Be persistent

Be warned! Crafty listening can be more uncomfortable than ordinary listening because, for some, it doesn’t seem like listening at all. It lacks the usual interruptions and challenges.

When the listener isn’t demanding justification, isn’t discounting beliefs they disagree with, isn’t interrupting all the time, many speakers struggle to handle that quality of attention! With crafty listening, feelings rise to the surface more easily. It will directly influence your child’s ability to share and desire to trust. By momentarily setting aside your own feelings and giving total attention (instead of rescuing), crafty listening encourages your child’s willingness to communicate deeper pains.

So what is Crafty listening?

Crafty listening is listening with:

Curiosity
A sense of wonder. Yes, it can be difficult to keep on wondering what your child will say or do next when they are so full of sadness, fear, rage, confusion and frustration. Remember, in face-to-face communication, words are only part of the communication.

Respect
Respecting your child’s feelings can be difficult, especially if your own feelings are churned up, but if you try to stop your child sharing more of their troubles and traumas, they may believe you won’t hold their painful memories and deeper hurts.

Attentiveness
Pay attention to what’s going on for you when your child is distressed. Listen to your own inner voice, breathe deeply, be aware of the bigger picture and develop the will and the skill to elicit information gently, skilfully and sensitively.

Fascination
With crafty listening, you will not be bored by your child’s boredom or whinging. You will probe deeper and be genuinely interested and fascinated by their efforts to communicate. When a child knows that they are a fascinating being even when they are not entertaining, amusing, pleasing or compliant, even if they are shy, timid, angry, sad or scared, their selfesteem and sense of belonging will be re-inforced.

Thoughtfulness
Hold your child’s pain and potential in your mind and think deeply about how you respond when you are together so that your responses can assist their journey from Hurt, through Hate, on to Healing and beyond – to Wholeness.

YES!
An affirmative assumption that you, your child, your partner if you have one, and, ideally, all your family, are in it together! You approach each conflict, argument, struggle, obstacle and setback believing that, together, you will come through.

Michael Mallows has a lifetime’s personal experience of adoption and has been involved professionally for 25 years as an independent adoption consultant, trainer and counsellor. He publishes Adoption Issues, an online newsletter for parents, adopted adults and adolescents, and professionals. Michael also works with the Post-Adoption Centre.

Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in January 2005.

This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.

Last updated: 14 August 07

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