The truth hurts--especially when you hear it from a nine-year-old. But having the error of our ways pointed out by a child also had its benefits. It forced me to think about the art of conversing and, in particular, talking with children. Most of the time, it is too easy just to leave kids out of adult conversations. We either assume they won't be interested, or we figure it will be too much trouble to stay interested ourselves. (Who hasn't tried in vain to keep track of a long and involved movie plot as explained by an eight-year-old?)
Finding common ground between grown-up conversation and kidspeak isn't easy, but it's certainly worth the extra effort. When you allow the connection to be made, an exciting dynamic reveals itself. Adults bring to a conversation confidence in their knowledge and wisdom won through experience. Kids contribute a sense of wonder and curiosity. They also have an ability to ask offhand questions and make revealing observations that challenge our assumptions about the world. Through their willingness to merely ask "Why," children can force adults to the long-overdue admission of "I don't know."
For me, thinking about conversation is an old and favorite habit. I come from a family of talkers. It's what we do. Around our dinner table, seven eager-to-be-heard family members were forced early on to work out issues of listening, taking turns, interrupting, questioning and being respectful. Naturally, I looked for a talker in a husband, and I found one. In our long-distance courtship, Taylor impressed me by making a list of topics he wanted to be sure to raise during our long evening telephone calls. Since we've been married, we often find ourselves talking about conversation. We live in a town of roughly 500 people, and the small sphere of our world makes conversation inescapable: at the grocery store, the post office or even on a walk around the block. Between the opportunities for extended conversations and the small-town pace that gives you time to think about them, you start to notice things about the way people interact.
For fun, Taylor and I even started keeping a running list of invitees to our nightmare dinner party. There's the guy who never stops talking; the woman who always hits you up with a series of going-nowhere questions; the know-it-all; the nontalker; the guy with no concept of personal space; and, worst of all, the person who never seems to hear what you are saying. But after we laughed about the stereotypes, we also found ourselves wondering, "How do people get this way?"
After the exchange Edeen and I had with Adam, and after long talks with many other friends and their children, I think I've found an answer to our question. My theory is both startlingly obvious and compelling, namely, bad conversation breeds bad conversation.
As in so many things, our children do as we do. When we ignore a nine-year-old and give him no chance to enter into a conversation, he learns that the only way to be heard is to dominate the discussion. The alternative is that he becomes a passive nontalker so used to being excluded he doesn't even engage in what is being said.
Children who either don't want to talk or talk too much are bad enough. But as I explored the literature on conversation, I learned that the results of passing down such bad conversational skills are more troubling than putting your child at risk for fewer cocktail party invitations as an adult.
According to Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., an educational psychologist and author of HOW TO HAVE INTELLIGENT AND CREATIVE CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR KIDS (Doubleday), children who are poor conversationalists with others probably converse poorly with themselves. Such inner dialogue is critical for problem-solving, reading comprehension and developing initiative and creativity. Think about it. Even as you read these words, you are listening, evaluating and responding to what you are reading--in other words, having a conversation with me in your head. Imagine trying to read, write or think through problems without this kind of internal discussion.
Yet this is the legacy we might be passing on to our children. In a world increasingly full of nonverbal distractions, from cable television to video games, Healy believes the upcoming generation's ability to communicate, both internally and externally, is being lost. It's a process that starts at home. "Brains grow around what they do and what they are exposed to," says Healy. "More and more, children are coming into our schools without the skills to communicate with their peers, much less with adults." If this is true, my list of nightmare dinner party attendees is going to get a lot longer.
My friend's son, Alex Dabney, who is nine, knows exactly what he likes and what he doesn't like about conversation with his parents. He can't stand it, he says, when he asks questions in the car and his parents don't answer him. But he loves it when he gets uninterrupted time alone to talk to his mom and dad. "After a good talk with my parents," says Alex, "I feel like I just went and jumped on the trampoline."
Good conversation is good conversation, no matter what the age difference of the parties. And more often than not, the same things that bug us during conversations with other adults bug our children in conversations with us. If you make a habit of talking to your kids the way you would like to be talked to, they'll most likely respond in kind. Of course, when we actively pursue and teach good conversation to our kids, there's always the possibility that they'll occasionally shame us with our own lessons.
My ten-year-old friend Lily Turner-Carpenter and her parents live a few houses away, so Lily often stops by for a chat. According to Lily, the family's no-interruption rule isn't always as hard and fast as she would like. "Sometimes I'm telling my mom something and everybody is supposed to be listening, and my dad will just burst in, like, 'Oh, yeah, I was going to tell you...'" says Lily. "And I have to say, 'Excuse me, Dad, but I was talking.'"
Nowadays, when Edeen and I go for a walk with Adam, we make sure to include him in our conversation. We may miss getting each other up to speed on our personal lives, but we can always make time for that later. Instead, we allow Adam to help shape the flow and flavor of the conversation, which often leads our discourse to places we might never otherwise have found. From Adam's point of view, we've gone from talking about "your own things" to talking about "our own things." We discuss pinecones and mountain bikes, and we laugh about the interaction between our dogs. The point is, all three of us talk together. And that has made all the difference.
Barbara Rowley is a contributing editor to FAMILYFUN.
