‘Whaddya Mean I Can’t Listen?’ Teaching Bud to Listen Up

Nobody else looks like Bud. Big, burly and boisterous, he is the bull in the china shop of his delicate wife’s world. He talks loudly and only half-listens to Annette when she tells him what is going on with their three children, Della, 9, Bart,  14, and Ben, 15.  
Actually, Bud gets impatient with her and has been known to bellow, “You talk too much psycho-babble.  Kids this age need discipline. If you talk to them too much, they think they can get away with stuff, and that is no good!”
Annette, a petite blond who dresses carefully and prides herself on being “neat as a pin,” is worried that Bart, their tall, strapping nearly 14-year-old, is taking macho lessons from his Dad and older brother.
Dad does not mind if he drinks beer in the house as long as Annette is at work. Annette’s sharp intellect provides her insight into human relationships, and she correctly fears that Bart will get into the wrong crowd at school.
She knows that beer flows liberally at parties and that the police are quick to pick up on situations of concern. She correctly thinks that Bart and Ben can get picked up with beer in a car and that trouble will be on the way.
Bud rarely talks to Annette about how he feels. He problem solves and pronounces what he and Annette should do. When Annette counters his stubbornness, he bellows then withdraws into a black cloud. Annette reports that “Bud is a great guy. He is fun, and he cuddles like a huge bear.  But his inability to listen keeps me on edge all the time.  I can’t trust him with our boys.  Desperate to improve things, she dragged Bud to a couples’ session, where he plunked himself on the couch and remained nearly motionless for an hour.
“Bud, you just have to listen up,” she said.  “The boys are headed for trouble, and you don’t see it.  PLEASE listen up!” 
Bud reluctantly sat and said he would try to listen to her for the 30 minutes left in their appointment.   
King of the monosyllable, Bud boomed, “OK…show me how to listen. She talks so much it should be easy enough to understand her.”
Annette stayed firm. “Bud, you bully me and the kids and, as much as we love you, the way you treat us is despicable.  It has to change.” Her china-blue eyes glared at his flat, expressionless face.
Taking advantage of his request, I pulled out a sheet with tips on how to speak from the heart and listen deeply to another. I handed a copy to each of them. Bud smirked and glared at me.
I continued, “I want you to learn how to listen to each other with your heart and soul. Don’t laugh. It is one of our greatest gifts to listen to one another.” And I am relieved to report that Bud actually began to listen up.
Bud and Annette will be attending a three-hour workshop on communication skills to learn to love one another skillfully. Each has committed to re-learning how to discuss emotions and how to listen to a partner.  
I am very delighted for each of them and their children.
Dr. Carl Rogers developed three interpersonal conditions that encourage deep human relationships:
Three conditions to facilitate meaning and learning between people:
1.     Realness and genuineness. When we are authentic and interact without a façade, relationships naturally move to deeper levels of interpersonal meaning.  We can come into a direct and personal encounter with each other, on a person-to-person basis.
2.     Prizing, acceptance, trust. When we prize one another, we appreciate the feelings, intellect, humor, opinions and person of those we love. We accept and respect each other as individuals, and trust that those we love are fundamentally trustworthy.
3.     Empathic understanding.  When we try to understand someone we love from their own perspective, great thing happen: we can create relationships with a level of spontaneity and deep meaning. Everyone feels deeply appreciated when simply understood – not evaluated, not judged, simply understood from their own point of view.
As Bud can now tell, it only seems easy to park one’s pride and try to listen to the heart of another person. So far, his boys have not gotten into any trouble with the law. And he intends to keep it that way.
To consider: How would you and your family benefit from a quick review of the skills in talking about emotions and listening? 
To read: Carl Rogers, Ph.D. “The Facilitation of Significant Learning.” In Contemporary Theories of Instruction. Ed. L. Siegel. San Francisco: Chandler, 1967.  304-311.
Dr. Judith Coche is a clinical psychologist who owns The Coche Center, in Stone Harbor and at Rittenhouse Square. Join Dr. Coche for a couples’ communications workshop this fall. To reach her, www.cochecenter.com.