Welcome to Connections

Your weekly pānui for tips, tricks, and strategies to deepen your connection with your tween, teen, or adolescent.

Kia ora Reader

Time and attention are our most precious commodities, so how can we fit it all in?

One way is to listen while we’re doing something else. And to a point, this works beautifully. We can listen while we drive, while we walk, while we eat and while we wipe down the kitchen bench. So yes, some of our listening can be done while we’re paying attention to something else.

Sometimes this even works in our favour because keeping our mind on the other task we’re doing at the same time, like driving while we’re talking, stops us from thinking too deeply about what we’re saying. It switches off the response mode and puts us more into the receiving mode.

First of all we hear with our ears. We receive that sound into our brains and we begin to listen with our own history and interpretation. Because we’re also thinking about the primary task we’re doing we cannot engage as heavily with the stories that pop up for us. Our listening will stay on receiving rather than moving into responding.

Our multi-tasking is working.

It will also work when we are thinking, which is why you will find a reply will also emerge when you are multi-tasking, just not straight away. The other activity you’re concentrating on will free up a bit of brain space to think and before you realise it, a response will pop up.

In order for this to work, we cannot be listening. There has to be a pause on the information flowing in.

We cannot listen while we think.

When we ‘pretend’ listen , what we’re doing is thinking as information is being received. We’ve sped our process up and the moment we hear words coming to us we’re being to create our reply. We’re not pressing pause on our attention.

And our rangatahi know it.

They can spot the difference immediately, and use it to their advantage when they’re wanting to get a quick answer from us!

This week, your handy phrase for pressing pause is, “Let me think about it.” And do exactly that. If they protest your words you can say, “I’m asking for 30 minutes, is that reasonable?”

Buy yourself some processing time Reader! It will change your listening and your connection with your rangatahi.

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Kia pai te wiki ... have a great week

Melanie

Melanie Medland is a communication coach, an author, and a course creator.​

More at www.beautifulconversations.co.nz​

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