Listening to Yourself
By Dan Coulter
Who do you listen to?
We generally listen to people we
respect.
Which makes it kind of ironic that we
don't always listen to ourselves.
A few days ago, my wife pointed out
an article about listening written last year by teacher Andy Dousis,
who noticed his fourth grade students excluding a classmate from
their activities. This classmate had trouble making conversation,
so he sometimes pushed or grabbed others. He had other challenges,
too, and often sobbed in frustration.
While the other students were
initially patient with this child, they became less and less
tolerant as the year progressed.
In looking at his own behavior, this
teacher realized that the good example he’d set at the beginning of
the school year had slipped away from him. In September, he had put
considerable effort into integrating this “difficult” classmate into
the class, and his students had responded. But as the year wore on
and he’d gotten busier, he'd become impatient and spoken sharply to
correct the child’s inappropriate behaviors. The students were
simply picking up their cues from their teacher. A good person and
a good teacher, all it took to start fixing his approach was to
listen to himself and realize what he was doing. Things got better
for the lonely student and everyone in the class benefited.
This story brought to mind a
conversation I had with a mother of a grown son with Asperger
Syndrome at a conference in Philadelphia where my wife and I spoke.
The mother explained how no one had known about Asperger Syndrome
when her son was younger. She now looked back sadly at the way she
had initially reacted to her son’s difficult behaviors without
meaning to. One day her four year old daughter, after continually
hearing Mom speak sharply to her older brother, looked up at her
mother and said, “If you'll be nice to Jim, I'll be nice to you.”
In that moment, her world changed.
Even before a diagnosis helped her better understand her son’s
condition, her daughter helped her listen to herself, and be more of
the mother her son needed.
This mother wasn’t alone. When my
kids were little, my wife pointed out to me that I spoke to our son
with AS in a very different, and less patient, tone than I used with
our daughter. I confirmed this listening to myself on some home
movies. It’s easy to respond with the first thing that comes to mind
to fix an immediate problem, but in a way you might regret later. I
learned to change my responses.
This also was when I learned to
patiently explain to my son how I expected him to act before he went
into a situation, and even practice beforehand. The change wasn’t
instantaneous, but he did start doing much better. In fact, he’d
often work hard to follow our instructions, then look up at us with
an excited face and say, “I did it right, didn’t I?”
This can be such a basic fix. Just
listening to ourselves and making any changes necessary to say what
we really want to say.
One of the best feelings in the world
has got to be listening to yourself talk to a child, and liking what
you hear.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dan Coulter is the
producer of the videos, “Understanding Brothers and Sisters with
Asperger Syndrome” and “Understanding Brothers and Sisters on the
Autism Spectrum.” You can read more articles on his website:
www.coultervideo.com
(Links to Andy Dousis’ article in the
Responsive Classroom Newsletter and in Education World)
http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/newsletter/19_2nl_1.html
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/responsiveclassroom/responsiveclassroom015.shtml
Copyright 2008 Dan Coulter Used By
Permission All Rights Reserved
