Do You Hear What I Hear?
Some interactions with my teen daughter have got me asking this question lately. I suppose it would be better to put it this way……do you hear what I meant to say? We’ve apparently been having a miscommunication issue. As in, she hears one thing, but what I meant was something else entirely. I can think of several examples lately. A few weeks ago, she was watching a daytime talk show, and they were asking viewers to call or email in if “Your Parents Think You Must Be Perfect All the Time”. So, I jokingly turned to Elizabeth and said, “Elizabeth, you must be perfect all the time”. “That’s not funny” she says. What! Is she implying that I really think she must be perfect all the time? Hmmm…….must have hit a sore spot with her. Example #2 — Elizabeth was flying out on Christmas Eve to spend the holiday with her dad in Texas. A family member asked her why her grandmother was taking her to the airport instead of me. Elizabeth says, “Because mom didn’t want to”. What!!! How did that get communicated at all? I corrected my daughter….her stepdad and I had other plans and weren’t able to take her. Sheesh.
Relationship expert and therapist Dr. John Gottman has studied interactions between married couples to see if he can predict whether or not a couple will divorce. According to Gottman, one key component is the number of positive to negative interactions. Couples who have healthy relationships will have a positive to negative ratio of about 5:1. Couples who are headed for divorce have a ratio of .8:1.
I think these statistics could be applied to any relationship, including parents and teens. Count how many interactions a day you are having with your teen. Are they positive or negative? Are there more positive interactions than negative ones?
I can recall several other incidents with my daughter in which one or the other of us clearly mistook what the other one was saying. Guess that’s something I need to work on.
Valerie Owings is a parenting consultant striving to improve the lives of families. You can visit her site at www.parentingwithpeace.com.
