Teaching Kids to Really Communicate

Parents need to teach their children how to have REAL Conversations.

1.) RECOGNIZE, NOT REACT TO THE EMOTIONS OF OTHERS. This is where we
teach our children the importance that our emotions play in our everyday
interactions. When people show emotions like anger, sadness, scared,
embarrassment or exhaustion, they are simply communicating externally
what they are feeling internally. By verbally recognizing or restating the
emotions of others, instead of reacting to their emotions, we validate the
people around us and invite them to more effectively share their feelings with
us. It might sound something like “Jon, you seem mad about what your
sister said to you!” or “Kim, you sound so happy about your first day of
summer!”

2.) EXPLORE THE STORIES OF OTHERS BEFORE SHARING YOUR OWN. Effective
communication is about the effective exploration and management of our
stories. One of my favorite relationship quotes is simply, “In order to
positively influence another person, you must first be influenced by them.”
We should be teaching our children that the best way to truly help others is
to better understand their stories before sharing your own. This takes
immense discipline and care, and yet when done, fosters a lot of trust as
people sense that you sincerely care about their feelings more than you care
about being right or only getting to your side of the story. The easier way to
explore another’s story is to simply invite them to share it. When combined
with the recognizing example given earlier, it might sound like, “Jon, you
seem mad about what your sister said to you…tell me what you are feeling!”
or “Kim, you sound so happy about your first day of summer…what are you
going to be doing?!”

3.) ATTEND TO THE STARVED STUFF OR REAL SOURCE OF THEIR PAIN. By
attending to the STARVED Stuff, we no longer chase the smoke or
meaningless content of the argument, and instead look down into the real
emotional pain that is driving the discussion. We need to teach our children
that every human has basic needs that need to be met like safety, trust,
appreciation, respect, validation, encouragement and dedication… the
STARVED Stuff … and when these needs are not met, they cause all of the
other arguements that people have. So let’s stop fighting to be right and
start attending to the deeper needs of others.

4.) LIFTING, NOT LOWERING CONVERSATIONS. The final communication
lessons we should teach our children is the art of lifting conversations
instead of lowering them. Every person, when communicating, gets to decide
what direction they take the conversation. We can go positive, neutral or
negative, and we can go to the past, present or future. Most innefective
conversations tend to be filled with people arguing about their past and all of
the negative things that happened. By teaching our children to notice the
direction of the conversations, we can help them to learn to redirect the
discussion or lift the conversations upward. This means that we focus on the
past, present and future by discussing what has worked, what is working and
what will work, instead of on what is broken. In the end, it will always be
more helpful to know what works, instead of focusing on everything that
doesn’t work. Lifting conversations is one of the greatest gifts we can gift
the people around us. It also ensures that in the end, we’ll have more people
that want to be around us.