Listening to What’s Important

At the end of this post, I’m going to divulge a super secret method as to how to determine what conversations from your kids you need to focus on and pay attention to.  It’ll blow you away how genius it is. 

So you may ask yourself, how much do I really need to focus on the story my 5-year-old is telling me in excruciating detail about how, today, in school, when she was in class, she was going to do a lesson on letters, but then saw her friend Sally doing it, and she thought Sally was doing really good, but then it was time to go outside for a break, and then she played with Johnny, but then Johnny bumped into Debbie, and when the teacher came over because Debbie was crying, the teacher was wearing a scarf just like the one that she saw grandma wear that day when we were all going to that place with the sticks and balls and…

That story, to her, is super important.  It’s a way for her to bring me into her life, sharing with me the things she sees as important enough to share.  This is key… it’s about how SHE categorizes items as important or not.
When the kids are screaming, “Daddy!  Look at me!  Look at me!” is not a call for you to turn up the volume on your music/phone/TV.  

My thought on this is that what they are experiencing at that moment is an overwhelming feeling of the accomplishment of something that is a little different than anything else… and if it’s new in their existence, it HAS to be new in yours. And, from their perspective, “Damnit, if there is something new it is SUPER important that I HAVE TO SHARE with the people that are most important to me, so they can see how frickin’ extra cool I just became!”

I don’t remember what article or book I first heard this stated, nor do I remember the exact quote (if I come across the reference I’ll come back and give it credit in the comments), but it was something like:

As kids get older, when parents wonder why their kids don’t come to them with the important stuff (imagine what YOU would determine to be important enough for a high-schooler to come to you about), it’s because the kids TRIED coming to the parents when they were little- with the things that were important to them at that time, and they became accustomed to the parents not giving it the same importance. 

So here’s the secret I referenced in the first sentence:  EVERYTHING is important to your kids. Show them that it’s important to you, too. 

It’s intuitive to think that it will pay off, but what the hell do I know, it’s just my guess… I have 4 more years to go before my oldest is a teenager!