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Listening more than telling
Module 05 · Talking to children · Article 08 · v2 · all ages
Friday afternoon, 16:42. Your 10-year-old has just got off the school bus. Something happened, you can tell from the way she's holding her bag. She walks past you without taking her shoes off, drops the bag in the hall, sits on the bottom step of the stairs. You ask if she's okay. She shakes her head. You sit down next to her on the step. You don't say anything else.
This article is about that moment, and most of the moments in the first year of separation that matter. The moments when the most useful thing the parent can do is, simply, not talk.
The instinct to fill the silence
The parental instinct in difficult moments, especially in the year of separation, is to fill silence with words. Reassurance. Explanation. Stories. Comparisons. Questions. Hope. The parent thinks they are helping. Often, they are managing their own anxiety by filling the room with their voice.
This is one of the most consequential patterns in the talking-to-children territory. Parents who manage their own anxiety by talking, when their children are processing, miss what their children are saying. They miss the silences that contain the actual feeling. They miss the questions that the child was about to ask, that got buried under the third reassurance. They miss the texture of the moment.
The shift, in this module, from telling well to listening well is one of the harder shifts a separating parent has to make. Most of the articles in this module are about what to say. This one is about when to stop.
What listening actually is
Listening is not waiting for your turn to talk.
Listening is not silent advice-formation.
Listening is not mentally rehearsing your response while keeping a neutral face.
Listening is presence. A specific kind of presence, with a few components:
The body says you're here. You're sitting, not standing over them. You're at their height or below it. You're turned toward them. Your phone is down. The dog is not on your lap. The other child is not interrupting. The dishes can wait.
The face is unguarded. Not performing concern. Not pre-shaping a response. Resting in whatever you actually feel. Children read faces clearly. A face that's doing too much reads as not-listening.
The mouth is closed. This is the hardest part. The mouth wants to ask a question. To offer a reassurance. To clarify a detail. To say that reminds me of when I was your age. To suggest a solution. The mouth has to stay closed long enough for the child to get to whatever they're actually trying to say.
The attention is on them. Not on what you're going to say next. Not on what time it is. Not on whether your Co-Parent will be cross if dinner is late. On them.
This sounds simple. In practice, it requires a lot of internal discipline, especially when what the child is saying is hard to hear, or when your own emotional state is activated.
What gets in the way
Most parents, including good ones, get in the way of their children's processing in predictable patterns. Knowing the patterns is half the work.
Premature reassurance. The child says I'm sad. The parent says Oh sweetheart, you don't need to be sad, everything's going to be fine. The child has now received the message that their sadness is unwelcome, that they should hide it, that they are causing the parent discomfort by expressing it. They will be sadder, and they will tell you about it less.
Problem-solving. The child says I miss Daddy's house when I'm here. The parent says We can call Daddy now if you want. Or I can ask if you can go a day early next week. The child wasn't asking for a solution. They were telling you something. The solution closes the door on the conversation.
Comparing. When I was your age, my dad and I. Your cousin went through something similar. Lots of kids have parents in two houses. These are sometimes meant well. They almost always land as your experience is not unique enough to deserve attention.
Re-explaining. Remember, sweetheart, we told you, Mama and I weren't happy together, so we decided to have two houses, and that's actually a really good thing because. The child knows. They've heard it. They're not processing the explanation right now. They're processing a feeling. Re-explaining is reassurance dressed up as information.
Questions, too many. The well-meaning parent who hears I'm sad and responds with what are you sad about, when did it start, is it about Mama, do you want to tell me what happened. Each question is a small interruption. The child cannot answer four questions at once. By the third question, the original feeling is buried.
Speech-making. The parent who has been waiting for the conversation, has rehearsed what they want to say, and now delivers it. I want you to know that no matter what, Daddy and I both love you, and this is something we've thought about very carefully, and your wellbeing is our absolute priority. This is the parent's speech. It's not a conversation. The child stops listening around the second sentence.
Making it about you. This is really hard for me too. Sometimes true. Usually not what the child needs to hear in the moment. The job of the parent is to make space for the child's experience. The parent's experience can be voiced elsewhere.
Checking your phone. A small thing that's almost always present. The child sees it. The child feels the partial attention. The child closes the door.
What listening sounds like, when it happens
It sounds mostly like silence, with occasional small interventions that keep the conversation moving without redirecting it.
Mm.
Yeah.
Tell me more about that.
That sounds hard.
Is there more?
What was the worst part?
That's it. Five or six lines, used sparingly, are enough to let a child talk for half an hour about something they couldn't say in two minutes if you were asking real questions.
The phrase tell me more about that is among the most useful sentences a parent can learn. It contains no judgement, no direction, no problem-solving impulse. It just opens space.
The phrase that sounds hard is the second most useful. It acknowledges the feeling without trying to fix it or move past it.
The skill is using these sparingly. Not constantly. A child who hears that sounds hard every four sentences will start to feel performed-at. Use one of these every couple of minutes. Spend the rest of the time saying nothing.
When the child says something you didn't expect
The hardest version of listening is when the child says something you weren't ready to hear. I don't like it at Daddy's anymore. I wish I lived just with you. I don't want to do the schedule anymore. I think Mama is sad all the time and it's because of me.
The instinct is immediate. You want to respond. You want to fix it. You want to correct the misperception, or escalate to action, or get on the phone to the Co-Parent, or schedule a different arrangement.
Don't do any of this in the moment. The first response is, still, listening.
Tell me more.
What's making it feel that way?
When did this start?
Then you sit with what they say. Don't make decisions in the conversation. Don't promise anything. Don't dismiss it. Don't escalate it. Just hear it.
After the conversation, you can act. You can think about what you've heard. You can talk to the Co-Parent if it's relevant. You can adjust things if they need adjusting. But the action belongs to a different moment. The listening moment is its own thing.
What you sometimes find
When parents listen well, they often discover that what they thought was happening for the child isn't what's actually happening.
The child who was sulky at handovers turns out to not be upset about the handover but about a friendship problem they haven't had room to talk about. The child who seemed reluctant about the schedule turns out to be processing a teacher they don't like. The child who said they hated their bedroom at the second home turns out to be reacting to a smell. The child whose behaviour seemed connected to the separation has been wrestling with something unrelated.
You only find this when you listen long enough for the child to get to the actual thing. The first few sentences out of a child's mouth are rarely the actual thing. The actual thing usually surfaces after some time.
The age range
Listening matters at every age, but the texture differs.
The 3-to-7 child mostly doesn't have the verbal architecture for sustained talking. Listening looks like sitting next to them while they play. Watching them. Available. Not asking. Letting the play be the communication. The occasional brief comment. That looks like you're making two houses. Then quiet again.
The 8-to-12 child can talk in longer arcs, but often sideways. While doing something else. The listening is being present during the sideways moments and not making them the main event. Don't sit down across from them and announce let's talk. Walk the dog. Drive somewhere. Do a puzzle. Talk while doing.
The teenager is the hardest, because they communicate selectively and in unexpected windows. The listening is being available without pursuing. Sitting in the kitchen at 11pm when they wander down, not on your phone. Not following them up the stairs after a hard exchange. Being there when they decide to come back.
When listening isn't enough
There are moments when listening alone isn't the right response. When a child reports something dangerous (their safety, someone else's safety, harm). When they describe a sustained low mood. When they raise something that needs immediate action.
In these moments, listening is the first response, but not the only one. You listen first. Then you act. Don't skip the listening, even if the situation is urgent. The child needs to know they were heard before they trust the action that follows.
Module 17 covers the situations where a child raises something serious. Module 04 covers teen mental health. Both build on this listening foundation.
What listening teaches the child
A child who is consistently listened to learns a few things that will carry for the rest of their life.
They learn that their interior experience is worth attention. They learn that adults can hold difficult things without breaking. They learn that talking helps. They learn that they don't have to perform a feeling to be taken seriously. They learn that their own emerging sense of what's happening to them is trustworthy.
A child who is consistently not listened to learns a different set of things. That talking is not safe. That feelings are inconvenient. That they should manage their parent's reaction before expressing their own experience. That what's happening to them is not interesting enough to deserve sustained attention.
The cost of getting this wrong is high. The cost of getting it mostly right is one of the most important gifts a separating parent can give.
Closing
The work in this article is small and hard. Be present. Don't fill silence. Ask less. Listen more. Sit on the stair next to the child without saying anything for ten minutes.
You don't have to do it perfectly. The child does not need every moment to be a masterpiece of attunement. They need most moments, over time, to feel like moments in which they were heard. The cumulative texture is what they carry.
Friday afternoon, 16:42. The bottom step of the stairs. The 10-year-old, leaning slightly against your shoulder, not crying yet. You sit. You don't say anything. After a few minutes, she starts to talk. You listen. The rest of the evening can wait.