Listening to the Heart of Your Kids

I remember one of our daughters having a massive meltdown. And I was trying to listen, but I found myself getting defensive. And finally Steve came in and he said, Can I take over? And I was like, by all means.

Thank you, husband. And he just pulled that child on his lap. And he just said, Tell me more. And really, her meltdown had nothing to do with me.

It had everything to do with the pressure she was facing at school, pressure from girlfriends, pressure for all the things. And Steve just kept saying, Tell me more, hun. I love you.

Tell me more. Becky Harling is with us today on Focus on the Family, and she's going to offer insights on how you can better listen to your children. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, here's a newsflash. As a parent, you know each of your children are different, right?

They have different events. I was just thinking about that very thing. How'd that happen? Jean and I had that with Trent and Troy. Trent was that strong-willed kid, you know, take out the garbage. Why?

Why do we need to take out the garbage? Troy would go, Okay, thanks. I'll do it. Sure, Dad. No problem.

Anything else I could do for you? I mean, just two different personalities. They're all just wired so very differently. But they have another thing in common, I think more so, and that is the desire to be heard. They wouldn't phrase it that way, but to be heard and respected. And some adults might say, Hey, kids don't need to hear that.

They don't need to express themselves. They just need to do what I tell them to do, right? Actually, Mom and Dad, that's not the way to go. Today, we're going to talk about how to listen so your kids will talk with you. Yeah, this is Communication 101.

It really bears repeating if you've heard this kind of thing before, but most of us, we just don't intuitively lean in. That's why we have Becky Harling here with us to do that. She's a speaker, author, a mom, a grandmother of 14 grandkids, and she's a certified coach with the John Maxwell team and has written a number of books. Today, we'll be exploring some of the content in her book, How to Listen So Your Kids Will Talk, and we encourage you to get a copy of that.

The link is in the episode notes or give us a call, 800, the letter A, and the word family. Becky, welcome to Focus on the Family. Hey, it's great to be here with you. First timers, right? I was here quite a few years ago now, but not as a guest on the show.

I was recording some content for moody publishers. Well, that's fantastic. Hey, you're the mother of four kids, so I'm sure you got this listening thing down. You've written a book now, so that makes you an expert. Well, supposedly.

But you also say in the book, it's not always smooth and easy, even for a person who is trying to do it perfectly. So your daughter Stephanie, she kind of challenged you right out of the gate, and you were at your wits end. Now every mom's leaning in.

Now it sounds more like my life. So what happened with Stephanie, and why did you reach the end of your rope with her? Well, and, you know, Steph was this adorable little girl, big blue eyes.

That's the first problem, isn't it? Oh, you're so cute! She was darling! And she just was what I call our negotiator, you know?

I do know that kid. And so I would say one thing, and she would say, well, what about this, you know? And I just remember there was one week where she was negotiating a lot, and I was blowing it as a parent. I mean, I want to be clear to say that I didn't do this perfectly, and that's why I wrote the book, you know?

We write to our deepest need. Really? And, you know, I just remember there were times where I said no too quickly because I didn't have time. You know, we'd be on our way out the door, and Steph would have a brilliant idea, and it'd be like, no, we have to go to school now, you know?

Oh, interesting. But at four, that one week, it had just been a rough week, and I didn't feel like I had handled it well. And I just remember going before the Lord saying, Lord, I am messing up this child. She's going to need a lifetime of therapy because of me.

You've got to show me what to do. And as I got quiet, the Lord spoke an interesting message to me. He said, give her a voice. And at that point, I remember thinking… As a four-year-old? Yeah.

Lord, are you sure about this? Yeah. I remember saying, Lord, I'm pretty sure she has a voice. And he was like, give her a voice.

Wow. And I realized I needed to change, not Steph. God had wired Steph with a strong personality because he had big plans for her.

You know, I hadn't thought about this looking at the book and the prep by the team, but man, it sounds like the Lord. You know, don't prevent these kids from coming to me. Yes. I mean, he even told that to the disciples. Let them come to me. Let them talk with me. Yeah.

Because the disciples were trying to keep the kids away from him. Isn't that funny? Yeah. And here's the Lord telling you, yeah, give her a voice. Let her come to you.

Let her talk with you. Yeah. That's interesting. Because as parents, you know, especially as Christian parents, sometimes we overemphasize obeying, you know, because that's what we've all been taught before we became parents, right? You teach them to obey.

But I think that the bigger thing is connection with your kids because if they have a deeper connection with you, they're actually more likely to follow Jesus. Well, that's what we're going to talk about for the whole program, really. That's the main thing.

Yeah. I'm laughing because of the negotiator thing. I remember when Troy, when he rarely got into trouble, Trent was his lawyer. I mean, Trent would come to him. I even said it at one time.

I said, Troy, are you paying Trent as your attorney? And they were both laughing. Yeah.

You know, they're probably eight and six. Yeah. But that was the way it would be. I'd be, you know, getting into Troy a little bit for something and Trent would step up and say, but dad, blah, blah, blah.

He'd lay them all out there. I said, can you leave the room? I don't want to negotiate with you about your brother's misbehavior. Yeah. And Steph would do the same for her younger sister. Right.

You know, Carrie was more compliant and Steph would negotiate on her behalf. Well, in fact, years later, you ended up asking your oldest daughter if you're a good listener. How old was she when you asked that question?

Maybe 18, 19. I don't know. Okay, that was risky. Yeah, I know, right? What are you thinking, mom? She never asked you a question.

Yeah, what were you thinking when you asked that? So that was good, though. You asked the question, my good listener, and what did she say? She said, well, there was a long pause.

Honestly, guys, I was expecting rave reviews, because I thought I had, I thought I had had this down. And she said, well, sometimes you listen well, she said, but you interrupt me a lot. You dive in with your own story sometimes. And you give me a lot of advice. And honestly, I don't want your advice.

I want to feel heard. And I remember thinking, wow, nothing like honesty. Right. And even, what's the age difference between that older daughter and Steph? Eight years.

So, okay. So did you learn a lot from that older daughter? What's her name?

Her name is Bethany. So Bethany and you and that experience, were you able to process that, digest it, and then apply it with your younger daughter's relationship? Yes, but I want to- The poor older kids get the worst of us as parents.

We do. You know, as an adult, you apologize a lot, right? You're like, we just didn't know what we were doing. But, you know, you do learn along the way, but you have to keep learning. Even now that my kids are adults, I have to learn.

Yeah, ask for forgiveness, the whole thing. You and your husband, Steve, had a couple of goals in mind as you were raising your children. I think this is really good. I resonated with this in the book. What were those two goals and how does this tie into the idea of listening? Yeah, we had two goals with our kids. We wanted them to grow up to love Jesus. Clearly, we couldn't control that. We wanted them to feel connected to us and to feel heard by us. And that meant, that was something we could control. You know, we wanted them to feel comfortable coming to us, but that meant as parents, we needed to keep evaluating and considering how we listen. You know, when you speak to that hope that your children love Jesus, that is a paradigm shift in your parenting because then you won't be as intense. We need boundaries. We talk about that at Focus. You need children to behave.

That's the proper thing, but it is an outcome. The first thing is loving the Lord. And I think that's the absolute right first goal.

And then how to get there. So it's not behavior that you're aiming for. It's the heart you're aiming for. And then out of that, hopefully, the right behavior will be there. But mom and dad, it won't be perfect. And so don't expect that perfection, but work on the heart of that child. So when they're teenagers, they're choosing more rightly than wrongly.

And then you could be proud of that. I mean, that's a good thing. But just to concentrate on the behavior is a mess.

Yes, it is. Because, you know, I always go back to the parable of the prodigal, you know, and Jesus' response or the Father's response to that wayward kid really spoke a lot to me in my parenting journey. You know, because he didn't stand back and say, man, my rules, my house, you know, he runs to the kid, you know, and forgives him and forgives him. And everything is about that connection. Getting it back to listening. It involves more than just your ears. The actual function of listening because you identify several types of nonverbal communication that's critical. And actually, I think you cite a study in there that showed that 60, 70 percent of communication is nonverbal. So for those of us that think it's only speaking and hearing, address that issue of the other nonverbals.

What are they? Yeah. And I think your child needs to see your eyes light up when you walk in a room. You know, I once did a whole research study on how joy develops in the human brain. And it turns out that from the moment that child is an infant, when that infant sees your eyes light up to see them, you're developing their joy center. And I love that. And you can keep developing their joy center. You know, that strikes me because at least in my parenting experience and even being around other young children, particularly six month old, nine month old. When you do peekaboo, isn't it amazing how consistent they giggle and laugh at that with peekaboo?

That's kind of what you're talking about. That's just doing that brings joy to them. They're giggling. I mean, they can't express it. They can't speak to it.

But when you show your face and hide your face and show your face with a big smile, for some reason, they love that. Yeah. And you're building connection with them because that bonding is happening in the eye to eye contact with the infant. You know, you mentioned in your book an experience you had with your daughter where she would say, why are you so angry with me? I know. And you were like, I'm not. And then you went and looked in a mirror.

What was that? Yeah. Well, OK. That was pretty daring of you. Right. I think sometimes I can be pretty intense. Right.

I go for a goal or I write or whatever. And what I realized is that my face was expressing an emotion that I wasn't feeling. So I literally went in front of the mirror and practiced happy faces. Because we've all made jokes about that angry mother look. Right. And I didn't want to have that.

Yeah. What would you say to the parent who feels like they can't help themselves? You know, that shocked face. I think you give them the insight to get into a darker location when you're talking to your kids. Especially with teenagers. You know, if you if they're opening up to you and you appear shocked, they're going to shut down immediately. Right. So I found with our kids, when they were teens, the best place to talk to them was in the car, you know, where I would avoid a shocked face because I was looking ahead. They were looking ahead at where I was driving and they would pour out their heart.

And even if I felt shocked, you have to be careful. Right. So I. Yeah. So I you know, but you really have to work on that as a parent and so that they will open up. Yeah.

Yeah. Becky, let me ask you about your grandson, Noah. I think he had some kind of explosive reaction.

I'm glad to hear you're very normal family, by the way. What did little sweet Noah do? I know he was precious. So he was like, oh, man, I want to say three at the time. He was little.

And he has a little sister, 20 months younger. And he had worked really hard on an art project and little sister got jealous or whatever and came up and scribbled all over it. And he was so upset.

And so mom took little sister off. Noah flipped the chair and was yelling. And I was like, Noah, do you know how to say the word frustrated? And he he stopped for a minute. He looked at me and I said, say, I'm frustrated. And he said, I frustrated.

You know, I didn't think he got it. Later that day, I was explaining to him, you know, when somebody does something like that, it's OK to feel frustrated. So say you're frustrated. Let me ask you why you raising your kids. And this is a tender part of your book, Becky, while you're raising your kids.

And maybe you can let us know how old the kids were at this time. You got diagnosed with cancer. I did. This may be, you know, I was thinking of that because Jean and I have not had to face that. The uniqueness of that. My mom died of cancer when I was nine. And, you know, there was a lot of blanks for me. She didn't have the capacity to really tell me. I think back then it was like, let's not tell the little one anything.

So I was in a vacuum the whole time and she just died and nobody helped me understand what was happening. How did you speak to your kids in that way and help give them a voice when you were going through your cancer? Yeah.

So a couple of things come to mind. I remember the diagnosis very well. And my husband and I gathered the kids. The two oldest were teens. And then we had like a 12 year old and a nine year old. And so we gathered them and we explained that I had cancer.

We explained what was going to happen as far as the treatment. But I think a profound moment for me was after, you know, I had had an initial six hour surgery. That's a lot of anesthesia.

It really does a number on your brain. And I just remember feeling really, really tired after that for weeks. And I remember Carrie, our youngest, crawling up with me on the couch and just cuddling into me and saying, I miss the old mommy that had energy, you know. And in my heart, I felt really bad. I didn't have energy. You know, I wanted to say, come on, Lord, do a miracle here.

I need more energy. But I knew in that moment I really needed to honor Carrie's feelings because I wanted her to keep being able to talk. Right. You know, and so I said to her, you know what, sweetie, I miss that old mommy too. And I'm sorry this is hard. And I really had to I had a lot of follow up conversations actually with Carrie about that because she was the youngest during that cancer journey. You know, and so I had to listen to a lot of her feelings about that. No, and I so appreciate that as the recipient, as that child. Yeah. You know, I would encourage parents to in the age appropriate way, keep your children informed. It's so much better even with a health issue.

Yeah. But in an age appropriate way, you can help them emotionally process things by talking with them. Let me let me turn a little bit to the older child, kind of the teen years, maybe going into junior high.

Let's just pick the most difficult part of life. How do you begin to shift like when dealing with your nine year old daughter now, the 13 year old or the 12 year old preadolescent? How are you encouraging them to have a voice when, you know, they can kind of care less if mom listens? Yes. Did I do that well?

You did. Whatever. Yes, whatever the role, the eye roll. You know, I think there again, it goes back, your central goal as a parent is not to correct behavior. It's to develop connection so that that child and to pray for your child so that they hopefully will grow up with an openness to a connection with Jesus. And so you have to keep that at the forefront of your thinking, because, I mean, we all know junior high years are wonky years.

Right. And kids go up and down. And I remember one of our daughters having a massive meltdown.

It was the beginning of high school, I think, so a little older than junior high. And I was trying to listen, but I found myself getting defensive and it was just escalating. She was having this massive meltdown. And I kept saying, but I didn't mean to come across that way. I meant to come across this way. And finally, Steve came in and he said, can I take over? And I was like, by all means. Thank you, husband.

Yes. And he just pulled that child on his lap and he just said, tell me more. And really, her meltdown had nothing to do with me.

It had everything to do with the pressure she was facing at school, pressure from girlfriends, pressure for all the things. And Steve just kept saying, tell me more, hun. I love you. Tell me more.

And she did. And I think that's an important concept for parents to get. Yeah.

And I mean, you're really hitting where I wanted the conversation to go. At some point in time, we have to let go and let our children make mistakes. I think that's always the fear of our parenting, because I think we feel like it reflects upon us, right? How well they behave is our identity. Yeah.

But in that context, we do have to let go. Your son, JJ, experienced, I think, something similar with his homework. Let's go to the next thing, homework in junior high. Yeah.

What happened? Well, and JJ was so, you know, you talked at the beginning of the show about how kids are all different. So we had our firstborn, Bethany, who, you know, did everything by the rules.

Yes, that's that firstborn. And straight A's, you know, 9,800. And we had JJ, he was just more like, yeah, why would I kill myself for those good grades?

Like Bethany does when I can get by getting a 90 with two minutes of work, you know? He was the party organizer. Right, right. And so, you know, I just remember there was a season where he was really loving soccer and football, and recess is everything for a kid. And, you know, if you forgot your homework, you had to give up part of recess. And, you know, I didn't want my kids to suffer like any parent out there, right? I always wanted to dive in and rescue them, you know? Yes, mom.

That comes out of my childhood. Anyway, so I took his homework. And on the third day, I took his homework. To school.

Yeah. For him. To school, for him, so that he would get to go out to recess. I felt bad for him. I'm like, okay, everybody knows that a 10-year-old boy needs recess. But then Steve said, no, no, we're not going to take it anymore. He leaves it on the table.

He gives up recess, you know? And it wasn't harsh at all. It was just letting him suffer the consequences of his choices. And, you know, after that, he didn't forget. And that's, again, that's a great picture of what we do. Speak to that same idea as the kids get older, you know, that 15-year-old now. Yes. The stakes are higher.

John has now entered the conversation. What does that look like through the different ages and stages, especially the teen years? You know, you have to be present enough to hear what's going on. I remember our youngest daughter going to a party, you know, and she was old enough to be driving. So she drove herself to the party, and then parents apparently weren't home. And a bunch of guys came in with a keg of beer. And the next morning, she told me, well, they brought in beer. And I said, you know, again, watching my face to not act shocked. I said, well, what did you do?

She said, I grabbed my keys and said, I'm out of here. And I'm like, we're going to the mall. You can skip school today.

You can buy any shirt you want. Oh, my goodness. It's reward time. Absolutely. That's behavior where you want a reward. I'm like, you must have felt under so much pressure, but you did the right thing, and I'm so proud of you. And I want to reward this because you could have given in, you know, and she didn't. And I think we do want to reward those kind of behaviors. Well, you know, there's going to be the parents listening right now that maybe their daughter, their son didn't choose the right thing.

Right. Did you have one of those experiences? You know, we didn't as far as drinking, which I'm very, very thankful for. But reflecting on it, you know, and writing the book and putting yourself in that position, even if your kids didn't.

How would you respond or how do you think you would have responded? I think what's important for parents to know is that God loves your child even more than you do. And he will not let go. There are going to be consequences if your child drinks and they drive. Right.

They're going to get a DUI. Right. And I had a friend whose daughter as a teen made the wrong choice, drank and ended up having to spend a night in the jail.

And my friend didn't recognize the number, so never picked up her phone. But that experience changed her daughter's life. In a positive way. Yeah. Yeah. But God will never stop pursuing your child, no matter how dark it looks. And in that way, that brings me to the point and the important point to teach your kids that God is listening.

Yes. And they can connect with the Lord. How do you feel you built that awareness in your children? You know, we prayed all the time about everything. In fact, to this day, I have four adult kids and they'll they know that every morning I'm on my knees at 5 a.m. And so they're texting me prayer requests and, you know, or they're calling saying, hey, mom, can you pray about this?

So we we modeled that and and we encouraged them. You can talk to God about anything. I remember going back to the cancer journey that Carrie, you know, I remember seeing her journal on the floor the night that we told them I had cancer and she had written in her journal. Dear God, I always thought nothing bad could happen to my mom. And now she has cancer.

How could you let this happen? And it was such a profound prayer on my little nine year old part. And I remember laying in bed with her saying, you know, God is not going to leave us. It may feel like he's not listening right now, but he is listening and teaching your kids that God is the God who bends down to listen, that he's always there. He's always ready to listen.

Let's end here. I said at the beginning that listening involves more than just our ears. It's that nonverbal that we talked about and all of these other methods that you've mentioned along the way. It's really about listening with our hearts, right? That's the way to think of it, that our heart is the main mechanism for listening, not just the biology of the ear. Speak to the mom or dad who feel like they may have blown it.

You know, the kids are older, maybe in their 20s now. And if they ask that question that you were honest enough to answer, you know, how good a listener am I? That child, adult child that might say you were a horrible listener. I never felt like you listened to me at all. All you did was lecture me.

Wow. I mean, that would be a hard thing to hear as a parent. What would you say to them?

How can they change it? First of all, I think open the conversation. You know, Steve and I sat down with our four adult kids and all their spouses like maybe a year and a half ago and said, OK, guys, what did we do right? What did we do wrong to a kid? I mean, they told us honestly, but to a kid, you know what we did right in their eyes the best? We apologized when we were wrong. Right. So that's great.

Yeah. You are going to make mistakes. So if you ask your kids, how did I do as a listener and they come back with I never felt heard by you. You didn't spend enough time with me.

You were always preoccupied. What I would say is ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to apologize and then say to that child or that adult, this relationship is so important to me. I'm going to work on this because I want you to know I love and cherish you. And yes, I'm sorry for what I did.

But this relationship is so important to me that I'll do whatever it takes to mend that connection with you. That is so good. A recent conversation I had with my oldest, Trent, he said to me, which was an awesome thing to hear. He just said, Dad, I'm so excited about our new relationship being 21 and how you treat me like an adult.

Yeah. He said it's really fun to have these conversations with you. That's that's terrific. That he feels my respect for him and my love for him. And man, at the end of the day, that's what every parent wants to be able to express, I hope, to their certainly their adult children that I love you. I care about you. And I'm proud of you.

Yeah, that's exactly it. Becky, this has been so good. I know it's a bit lighthearted, but it's so serious in its end goal to help you learn how to listen to your children. And your book, How to Listen So Your Kids Will Talk, is a great resource for parents with children of any age to start digging in and making sure they're doing it as best as they possibly can.

Not only for their benefit in the relationship, but for their child's relationship with the Lord, which is the goal. So thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, for the viewers and for the listeners. Get a copy of this great book by Becky. It's one of those resources. You know, we say this often, John, but it's because the team is scouring through thousands of books and manuscripts looking for the best of the best. And they do a wonderful job identifying those things that they know and we know you really need to have in your arsenal.

And this is one of those resources. So support the ministry. Give us a gift of any amount. We'll send you a copy of Becky's book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry to help other parents do a good job. And you can do that monthly, which is terrific or a one time gift.

It doesn't matter. And I hope you can do that today. Donate as you can and request your copy of how to listen so your kids will talk. All the details are in the show notes or give us a call.

Eight hundred, the letter A in the word family. Join us again tomorrow as Dr. Oz Guinness helps you learn how to rediscover your faith in our chaotic culture. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.

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