The Lost Art of Listening by Michael P. Nichols Read Free Book Online

life, but since she didn’t
    think she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, she wasn’t willing
    to close off other options. If she saw Cliff occasionally without breaking
    up with Phillip, there might be complications, but she was willing to risk
    them.
    Sometimes in injury or illness we revisit our childhood feelings of
    dependency. At times like these our need for other people is self- evident
    and we experience their response to us as validating our experience or
    not.
    When Valerie got one of those migraines that struck without warning,
    she told her husband that she couldn’t go out to dinner because she had
    a headache. He said he was sorry she didn’t feel well and suggested that
    she take some aspirin and lie down. Aspirin didn’t work for her, and she’d
    rather stay downstairs and put an ice pack on her forehead. Shouldn’t he
    know that by now? Valerie was glad not to have to go out, but she felt that
    her husband’s suggestion to go upstairs and lie down was just pushing her
    away. He liked going out to dinner with her, liked having her go to the gym
    with him, liked having her listen to his problems and accomplishments, but
    it didn’t seem like he was willing to be with her when she didn’t feel well.
    Most of us eventually grow up, but we never outgrow the need to be
    taken seriously—to have our feelings recognized.
    “Hey, Look at Me!”: The Sense of a Core Self
    (Two to Seven Months)
    Between eight and twelve weeks, infants become gregarious. The social
    smile emerges; they begin to vocalize and make eye-to-eye contact. When
    the baby looks up and smiles and coos, or splashes in the bath, or giggles
    with delight, how could you not love her? Surely, we would like to think,
    all parents respond intuitively to such communications. Unfortunately,
    that isn’t so. Some parents are so preoccupied, depressed, or otherwise dis-
    tracted that they ignore their babies. And, perhaps more common, many
    parents respond to their babies not as little people with their own rhythms
    and moods but as foils for the parents’ needs.
    32 THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD
    Every infant has an optimal level of excitement. Activity beyond
    that level constitutes overstimulation, and the experience becomes upset-
    ting; below that level, stimulation is, well, unstimulating. Parents must
    learn to read their babies. By taking their children seriously as persons,
    responding to the children’s feelings rather than imposing their own,
    parents convey acceptance that children take in and transform into self-
    respect.
    The next time you see an adult interacting with a baby, notice the
    difference between responding in tune with the child’s level of excitement
    and imposing the adult’s emotions on the child. When you see a parent
    with blunted emotions ignoring a bright-eyed baby, you’re witnessing the
    beginning of a long, sad process by which unresponsive parents wither the
    enthusiasm of their children like unwatered flowers.
    Having quite enough unwatered flowers at the office, thank you, I
    wasn’t about to have any around my house. I remember tiptoeing into the
    baby’s room at eventide, right about the time she was dozing—or pretend-
    ing to. What my masculine intuition told me she really wanted was not
    rest but to be hurled violently up to the ceiling and then come crashing
    toward the floor—like a skydiver without a parachute—only to be plucked
    from the jaws of death by Daddy. Whee!
    Too choked with joy to speak, the little mite showed her pleasure
    by widening her eyes like saucers while her face turned a lovely shade of
    blue.
    Excessive enthusiasm may be less depressing, but it isn’t necessarily
    more responsive. We’ve all seen grown-ups at it—“baby love”—the ful-
    some tone of voice, the honeyed words, the endless marveling and exclaim-
    ing. When babies are little, it’s almost automatic; babies are so animated
    themselves that they drive up the intensity of our response.