Listening Can Be Hard: On Children and Disconnects<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It was breakfast, and Sally had shredded her biscuit and was asking for another. I was annoyed. She was insistent. As my frustration bubbled, my commitment to positive parenting was put to the test.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2012\/11\/listening-can-be-hard-on-children-and-disconnects.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Listening Can Be Hard: On Children and Disconnects\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It was breakfast, and Sally had shredded her biscuit and was asking for another. I was annoyed. She was insistent. 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{"id":10513,"date":"2012-11-20T05:59:46","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T09:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=10513"},"modified":"2012-11-19T13:05:48","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T17:05:48","slug":"listening-can-be-hard-on-children-and-disconnects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2012\/11\/listening-can-be-hard-on-children-and-disconnects.html","title":{"rendered":"Listening Can Be Hard: On Children and Disconnects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It was breakfast on a Saturday morning, and we needed to get out the door. Sally, however, had broken her biscuit into little pieces and then pushed them off her plate. The table was a mess.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want another biscuit!\u201d she announced.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat? You already had a biscuit and you broke it into pieces!\u201d I responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I want a new<\/em> one!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHoney, it tastes the same even when it\u2019s broken in pieces. I promise. Just eat it, it\u2019s almost time to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo! I need a new<\/em> biscuit!\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point I was getting annoyed. I wanted to hurry breakfast along and I was tired of eating Sally\u2019s extra food. Of course, forcing her to eat food goes against my parenting principles, and I try to only tell Sally \u201cno\u201d when I have good reason, and I knew there was no reason I couldn\u2019t just eat Sally\u2019s crumbled biscuit and get her a new one. But I felt like I was being asked to pander to her every whim and it was starting to bother me. In that moment, I felt that positive parenting was failing me.<\/p>\n

\u201cSally, if I give you another biscuit, what are you going to do with it? Break it into pieces too?\u201d My frustration was starting to show.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, I will need help<\/em> cutting it up.\u201d She looked at me plaintively, intently.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>You know how sometimes a series of images can run through your head all at once as you have a sudden realization? Well, that\u2019s exactly what happened to me in this moment. The first image was of Sally, five minutes before, carefully using a knife to methodically cut her biscuit into jagged pieces before pushing them off of her plate. The second image was of Sean\u2019s biscuit, sliced\u00a0horizontally\u00a0into two thin circles, with honey spread in between. The third image was a series of images of how Sally usually eats her biscuits, sliced like Sean\u2019s and spread with either honey or jelly.<\/p>\n

And suddenly, I understood. Sally wanted her biscuit sliced in two like normal, and she decided to use the table knife and try to do it herself. She failed. Frustrated with her broken biscuit, she pushed it off of her plate and asked for a new one. And she both realized and admitted that she needed help with the cutting. And here I was getting frustrated with her<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Communication is not easy, especially<\/em> with children. It can be easy to have a disconnect and talk past each other. And when that happens, it can be easy to become frustrated and stop even trying to listen,<\/em> to just shut it off and go into command mode. \u201cJust eat the biscuit.\u201d \u201cStop whining.\u201d \u201cYou have thirty seconds to put on your shoes.\u201d But when we let our frustration take over and stop listening, we close down the possibility of actually communicating and let the disconnects of life win. We stop trying to work with<\/em> each other and begin a pattern of talking past<\/em> each other.<\/p>\n

Breakfast on a Saturday morning doesn\u2019t usually convey a life lesson, but this one definitely did just that.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"