https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/active-listening-skills-steven-norton
Arguments occasionally happen in our lives, which is not any different for me at home. In my opinion, my father lacks in acquiring good listening skills when having a conversation. I feel that this could be one of the reasons to those occasional arguments between my parents. Before I continue, I have prepared a video below that might aid you to further understand on active listening and non-verbal communications, and how they affect the conversations in our daily lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsxVK_DypBc
After observing several arguments between my parents, I realized that my father does not maintain eye contact with my mother when she is trying to give an explanation. This would normally cause frustration in my mother and creates tension between them due to the lack of attention from my father. She would assume that he was just passively listening to her explanations. My mother assumptions were further proven when my father could not answer a question pertaining to the issue.
As of this writing, my father is 53 years old and I believe that due to his age, he prefers brief conversations as lengthy ones might divert his attention away.
As of this writing, my father is 53 years old and I believe that due to his age, he prefers brief conversations as lengthy ones might divert his attention away.
Another observation I made was that I realized my father would frequently interrupt my mother when a discussion is taking place. He has created a communication barrier between them which prevents my mother from fully expressing her opinions relating to the matter. He would disregard her limited opinions and would retaliate by bringing up his past experiences, hence the conversation would always be one-sided. These kinds of conversations would usually happen when my parents are trying to make a decision together or when they are being defensive towards themselves.
In conclusion, based on the observations I had made on others relating to today's topic, I learned the importance of acquiring good listening skills. I can avoid the potential mistakes when engaging in a conversation with others. This lesson has helped me with one of my objectives mentioned in my second post of being a good listener rather than being talkative.
Well hello hanzalah! From your story it seems that you father is the type of person that feels that he is very much superior to others, that he is always in the right and others are always in the wrong. Perhaps you could talk to your father calmly once in a while and advice him that conversation goes both ways between family and he should respect what she says.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, i believe that you should try to help and calm them down when they argue, so as to prevent further conflicts.
-Ernest
Hi Hanzalah,
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that arguments do happen in our lives occasionally and most of it are due to bad non-verbal communication skills and active listening skills. I am experiencing similar situation as you but I don’t think mine is as serious. I suggest that maybe you can talk to both of your parents calmly and try to resolve the issue that you see. One suggestion that you can give to your mother is that ask her to get straight to the point. I know everyone is very busy with their own work and do not like people to beat around the bush all the time. As for your father, you can tell him what you saw and give him the advice needed. For example, you tell him that he is always interrupting people during a conversation and ask him if that happen to him what would he feels. I did that to my parents and it works quite well. You can give it a try and I hope that it will improve the communication between your mother and father.
Hello Hanzalah,
ReplyDeleteI do empathise with you on this. It is not nice for me to comment on what happens in your family. However, I can share with you how will i see this situation and how would i help smooth out this tension at home.
I realised that, such issue often arise when, either one of them comes home really tired or they had a bad day at work. When they reach home and all they want is to have some peace and quiet time to rest and relax, but they are not able to as they are often plague with the need of the others family members and constant ranting from their partner. I feel that as their children, we should play the role as the listener and the bridge between their communication. This will allow them to have outlet to vent their frustration and help reduced the tension at time. I also feel that this is a good bonding session with your parents, as you get to know what is happening in their life too.
Hong Kai
Hello Hanzalah,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your blog, i can sense that you were able to make very in-depth observation on the cause of the arguments. I would assume that the arguments are pretty frequent, if not i would praise your keen observation skills here. However, i think that basing the reason behind age may not be good. From reading your blog, i feel that the reason behind his actions might have been due to more of his up-bring or in this case the culture in which he was brought up in. The reason he lacked attention is most probably due to the fact that his parents did not display very good active listening skills in front of him. Therefore, resulted in him mimicking the similar style of active listening skills from his parents.
While I do empathize with the fact that you have to deal with these situations, I think that the takeaway messages from this observations will help you to grow better. I would highly suggestion approach both of your parents individually and explain with accordance to your observation the reason they were unable to communicate with each other.
Jason Chua