Summary of 9-11-2004 Meeting Posted by:Ken Sutton--Saturday, September 11, 2004

Six parents (representing five families) joined us for coffee, cream cheese and bagels on September 11th. Most of the families either have a teenager in inpatient drug treatment or on Probation.

The parents came up with the topic: What do you say to the other kids in the family, when they point out that the sibling with the Drug/Alcohol problem gets all the attention? Most of our role-plays seem to end with a parent taking a “regardless” or “nevertheless,” stance. Not these. These two role-plays brought out a parental response that highlighted active listening skills.

A first-time member suggested the first role-play. It included a parent (me) getting a phone call that from the police that one of my teenagers had been arrested and, once again, placed at Shuman Center. At or about the same time that this phone call came in, one of my younger teenagers was complaining that her brother always gets all the attention. She was really tired of that.

She went on and on about how she did what she was supposed to do, got good grades, didn’t break the law, and came home at curfew. Even so, she can’t get a paper signed by a parent that she needs to take back to school. Now that her brother is arrested again, it would be the same old run-to-Shuman and visit, talk about his criminal case, etc. I attempted to “actively listen,” which was difficult to do given (1) that I had just gotten that horrible phone call about my “problem teenager”, and (2) that my other child was really fed up and screaming for attention. In the end, I think my daughter knew that I had some idea of how she was feeling. Finally, after a lot of listening, I asked her what I could do to make things right. She did not hesitate in suggesting that I not visit her older brother at Shuman tonight and that instead I take her shopping for some things that she needs.

I’m sorry if it might look like shopping is the answer but I felt that a trip to buy a “few things,” that she needed was in order. I looked at it more like a chance to spend time rather than money. And I agreed to pass up the visit at Shuman for the night. Once I tried the active listening, her case was too convincing. It is also important is that sometimes teenagers are right and there is nothing wrong with admitting that we parents have made a mistakes. After all, my teenager at Shuman was safe. Now was time to take care of the one I still had at home.

Parent1 suggested the second role-play. She played her son who does not have a D&A problem and I played her. In this role-play I felt like I was hit with a ton of bricks. He accused me of not giving him attention. He also blamed me for his brother’s D&A problem. He said that it was my failure to act that caused this to happen. He said that if I only would have listened to him earlier when he was trying to tell me that his brother had a problem, that all this trouble could have been avoided.

Then he seemed to blame me for something that had happened to his father too. So it was my fault that anyone in the family at all had any problems. Well this was challenging to say the least. I attempted to actively listen and he kept actively dumping everything on me. Well somewhere in my active listening responses I must have mentioned that I was sure that, in fact, I did not do everything right. He (Parent1) appeared ecstatic and said, “it’s good to hear you admit that it’s all your fault, finally you’ve admitted it.”

As in the first role-play, when it appeared that he had vented most of his feelings I ask him if there was something that I could do to help. I can’t remember for sure but I think he said he’d get back to me on that one. This was a very challenging role-play for me and I’m sure that if it was really one of my own teenagers who was saying these things that it would have been much more difficult.

Let’s review the basics of active listening.

1. The basic formula is simple: “you feel _____ because of ________.” However, usually it is not said in those exact words, as it sounds too mechanical.
2. Active listening doesn’t work unless the listener can match the emotional tone of the speaker. The importance of this cannot be overstated. If someone is ranting and raving, therefore making it difficult to match that particular tone, one can still say, “you know I can’t even imagine how upset you are over this whole ________.
3. Don’t say, “I understand.” No one ever believes that you understand and people don’t like to hear that being said. Instead, demonstrate that you understand by restating or reframing what they’ve said into your own words. If you “get it” they will let you know. If you don’t “get it,” they will certainly let you know that as well.
4. If at first you don’t “get it,” don’t give up. Keep trying. People love to tell you that you don’t understand. Accept that. Keep making responses until you either “get it” or admit that you’re having trouble listening. You know if anyone’s heartbeat is up to a certain rate, research shows that it is practically impossible to listen. You may need to calm down and talk about it later.
5. It is natural to want to know why teenagers feel that way. There is good news and bad news about the whole question of why.
a. The bad news: the word “why” should be shot. Throw it out of your vocabulary. It only makes people defensive. Most of the time teenagers (and often adults) don’t even know why.
b. The good news: by using active listening skills you’ll find out more information than you probably wanted to know.
6. Even in situations where “nevertheless” and “regardless” are used, it is sometimes helpful to do some active listening first. It depends on how pushy and manipulative your teenager is at the moment because you don’t want to encourage some extreme behavior with active listening.
7. We can demonstrate that we “hear” someone without agreeing with him or her. Just because we understand how they feel or how they perceive the situation, does not necessarily mean that we agree.
8. Active listening means that we don’t say, “you shouldn’t feel that way because ________.” We don’t tell them how to feel; we just tell them what behavior is acceptable and what behavior is not.




Sincerely,


Lloyd Woodward
Aftercare Specialist Probation Officer
(412) 247-6365