Parenting Advice: How Listening Can Strengthen Bonds - Guest Blog Post by Julie Reid McCalpin

Noah Kahan sings,  “I’m still angry at my parents for what their parents did to them”

My mother was always so angry at her parents, especially her mother, so this line resonates with me. I’d like to think each generation gets it a little closer to right. For my part, I am working hard as a parent to hear what my three children are saying.

Parenting Advice: The Importance of Listening Over Advising

As a parent of a young adult, it’s important to make a careful choice regarding when to simply listen closely or when to give advice. It’s pretty easy to start offering input and jump in telling your kids that you know better, and what you think they ought to do. That may not be what your young adult child needs. It’s easy to assume that your own years of wisdom and experience make you better qualified to have answers and solutions to the issues your adult children might be facing. But, is that true? It’s worth some thought. Take some time to ask yourself. At the very least, slow down, and listen first.

I am the parent of three, and am soon to have an empty nest.  My youngest will leave the confines of these four walls, for college at the end of this summer.  I’m beginning to feel well versed in the practice of listening carefully before I speak up. Some of my feelings on this come from my adult relationship with my own dad.  Even in my fifties, I’m still happy to call him for advice. Sometimes I take it, and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes he’s patient. Sometimes he really gets in a rush.  Our relationship has really grown and matured over the last 20 years since my mother passed away. She was such a powerful listening resource to me throughout my own young adulthood. I was emotionally eviscerated after she was gone. She was always on my side and was my biggest cheerleader. Who was going to hear me, if not Mom? But Dad has really come through for me.  Perhaps I haven’t really given him much choice. I just kept calling him up when I needed a soft place to land, so he grew some cushions he didn’t know he had.

Parenting Advice: The Importance of Listening Over Advising

With my own “kids”… (I’m always trying to find a less condescending word to use, but “kids” just works so well. I’ll work on it.) With my own kids, I’ve tried to be a listener, and not a nagger, or a solver. However, I know I need to keep trying, because during finals week, at the end of the spring semester, one of them said to me that they were feeling overwhelmed, and in over their head. We had quite a phone chat that night before the big ugly final. My kid didn’t feel ready, they were in panic mode, and trying to cram.

Then they said to me, “Now you’re going to tell me that I should have filled my ADHD meds, aren’t you?” Oof. I was chagrined. 

Yes, I had been thinking that it would have been good if they had done so, but I also knew it couldn’t possibly benefit to tell them that now, late at night, with an ogre of a final only hours away, the next morning. So, I told them truthfully, “No, I wasn’t going to say that, actually, I was going to say that it might be best at this point to just get a good night's sleep. You’ll probably have the best odds for a good outcome on the test now if you get some rest before you have to go take it.” In hindsight, maybe I could have done even one better and just said supportive things and not offered any advice at all. A simple, “you got this.” would have gone a long way. In hindsight I wish I had. I know I don’t have all the answers. I also know that a good night's sleep matters more to me than it does to any of them.  I remember being able to pull all nighters just fine at their age. Ha! For what it’s worth, the grades were good.

So, I wish that one, of my three, would take advantage of ADHD meds, but it’s up to them. In my opinion it would make things easier on them.  It’s their choice though. They may have reasons that they’d rather not, and they may have no interest in discussing those reasons with me. They are adults, and my nagging them isn’t going to improve how any of us feel about it. If anything, it’s just going to lend to the potential toxicity in the relationship. 

Each of my three offspring has some little thing or other that I’d like them to do, or I wish they’d do, but it’s important for me to let go, and still just demonstrate my unconditional love. They are not living my life, and I am not living theirs. I don’t need to be all up in their business. Now, if they ask for help, that’s different.

Parenting Advice: Sharing the Load

I’m so grateful that they have another parent available to them too. Their dad has a very different perspective on most things than I do, and as parents we work as a team, but each addresses them very differently. This is such an asset to them, to be able to see the world through our different lenses.  We’ve both been here interpreting things for them differently from the start. Even kids who, for whatever reason, don’t have two parents, can often find support and mentorship from adults in their community to help grow that multifaceted perspective.  A single parent, might choose to encourage your young adults to reach out to community leaders for their input in addition to yours.  Sometimes I play this role for young people in the youth community theatre I lead.  The youth participants share a lot with me. My perspective is naturally different from their parents, and gives them another lens as well. There too, it’s good to think carefully before offering solutions or advice. So often, all those young theatre people really want is someone to listen. I feel good about being able to offer them that.

So Noah Kahan sings about generational trauma. As a parent, or mentor to young people. I challenge myself to be a little bit better than I was last week.  I ask myself to listen a little more carefully, to say a little less; to advise a little less; to reflect a little more; just let them know that I hear them, and that I’ll be here to listen again when they need it next time, because what I really want, more than anything, is to keep them talking.