What does Sergio Romo have to do with your kids and communication?

I gave a parenting class today at a middle school – the topic was communication.  The idea is that we all want to be able to influence our kids, meaning we would like to know how.  Aside from wanting them to do what we want, we would like for them to be open to our advice, suggestions and great wisdom.  The trick is making sure they don’t “close the door” on us.  In the class we reviewed all the communication strategies that don’t work and which only result in our kids “closing the door” but let’s get straight to the good part!  Let’s look at what works.

To know how to influence someone, actually anyone, it’s a good idea to remember what we all want.  In my opinion, we all want 3 things.  We want to belong, we want to be loved and we want to be understood. 

One of the great secrets to influencing someone, is to focus on understanding them, i.e., seek to understand.  This is not easy, because when we have some great pearl of wisdom or some great piece of advice, we can hardly wait to share it, to convey our message, to explain what we have to say.  But I just said that what we all want is to be understood, right?  So if we are focused on sending our message, we are not focused on receiving the message from our kids so they feel understood.  Since the SF Giants won last year, I’m going to use a baseball example (and no, I don’t know much about sports).  

Focusing on sending our message is like wanting to be like Sergio Romo, the pitcher.   However, to influence our kids, we need to make sure they feel understood.  What I am saying is that we need to be more like Buster Posey, the catcher!  I know…it’s not easy.  Who wants to be squatting for hours and who wants to be on the receiing end of a ball that’s coming at you at 90 mph.   

 No, it’s not easy to hold back on giving your advice, your suggestions and/or your wisdom.  We all want to go first….not second.  But we already have lots of experience with all the strategies that don’t work, so let’s try something different. Let's focus on "catching" (hearing/understanding) their message, first. These are not easy concepts, but they are effective. 

 

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