Are You Listening?

My daughter called me this evening and she was frustrated with the communication in her family. She is married and has a step-daughter age 11 and two boys 5 and 15 months. She was frustrated with her husband’s and 5-year-old son’s listening skills, or lack of. She also felt like they were indicating that she was the one that was unrealistic with her expectations.

We talked at length about why she has the expectations that she has and of course I don’t think they are unrealistic, but they are different from her husband’s for obvious reasons. She grew up with a hearing impaired parent and he did not. We practiced communication courtesies that other households can get by without.

When my girls were growing up, as my hearing worsened over the years, we, as a family, had to make adjustments. It became impossible for me to understand what a person was saying if I could not see his or her face. We stopped the practice of a raised voice trying to get someone’s attention from another room. Although the girls sometimes tried to get me to come to them with a loud, “MOM,” we worked on enforcing the rule that if they had something to say to me, they had to come to me. In return, when I could, I stopped what I was doing and listened.

Going to another room in the house or up the stairs to talk with someone may not sound like such a big deal, or stopping to listen, but if you have to stop what you are doing every time one of your 3 children needs to talk to you, a simple task like cleaning up the dinner dishes can take 3 times longer than it would if you could talk while you work. I remember many evenings when the dinner conversation continued on into clean up time and stopping half way to the dishwasher with dishes in my hands to look at the daughter that was speaking to me. Sometimes, it felt like this simple chore took up half the evening.

There is a plus side though. The benefits of our focused communication far outweighed the increased time it took to get some things done. My girls knew when they had my attention, because I would be looking right at them. Wondering if I heard what they said was rare because they usually had to confirm it during the conversation. Distractions were not allowed because then I would not be able to hear, so the TV was muted or off and there was no background music playing on the radio or cd player. One complaint or argument you never heard in our household was, “You never listen to me!” We listened intently.

Our children’s teen years were not without problems. We were just like everyone else, but I think more tuned in. This allowed us to recognize problems early on. My keen sense of body language allowed me to realize when there were health issues that needed attention and might have gone unnoticed in a family with different dynamics. In this respect, my hearing loss was a blessing.

I’m sure you have heard it before and I’m sure you will hear it again, “communication is key in healthy relationships.” It is not too much to expect to be listened to.