This article is adapted from Davidson Institute’s “Twice-Exceptionality: A Resource Guide for Parents”, part of our collection of free guidebooks for gifted and 2e families. For a deeper dive into supporting your twice-exceptional child, we encourage you to explore the full guide.
Talking to your child about difficult topics is something many parents find challenging. In How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish offer exercises and examples to explain several strategies for discussing both everyday and important topics with children.
The first step is to really listen to your child and accept the feelings they are expressing. This can be helpful in getting your child to open up fully so that you have a better understanding of what is occurring in your child’s life. Faber and Mazlish offer these four strategies to make that first step:
1. Listen with full attention.
While the world demands parents multi-task a lot of the time, setting aside what you’re doing and looking your child in the eyes will send the message that what your child is saying is important to you.
2. Acknowledge their feelings with a word such as “oh” or “I see.”
As Faber and Mazlish state, “There’s a lot of help to be had from a simple ‘Oh…mmm…’ or ‘I see.’ Words like these, coupled with a caring attitude, are invitations to a child to explore their own thoughts and feelings, and possibly come up with her own solutions” (2012, p. 13).
3. Give their feelings a name.
Faber and Mazlish acknowledge that “[p]arents don’t usually give this kind of response, because they fear that by giving a name to the feeling they’ll make it worse. Just the opposite is true. The child who hears the words for what she is experiencing is deeply comforted. Someone has acknowledged her inner experience” (2012, p. 15).
4. Give them their wishes in fantasy:
“I wish that could be true, too!” Faber and Mazlish explain, “Sometimes just having someone understand how much you want something makes reality easier to bear” (2012, p.17).
Once a child feels heard and acknowledged, they may be more open to working with you to address the issue. This chart can help you and your child reflect on issues affecting your child.
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