Parenting and Families

A Mother and Son's Journey in Consciously Connecting

Running to get out the door to work I notice my 15 year-old on the couch in his pj's reading comics from yesterday's newspaper. Asking him why he is not on his way, he tells me, "It doesn't matter. It's a spare."

Ah!, I stop. "Excuse me!"

Only last week I was with him in the school office while he presented his case to me to drop Spanish class. Having the support of the school counsellor they explained to me the pros's and con's of dropping Spanish. A supervision class is available for my son to attend! I requested that this be the condition I agree to in order for him to have a spare for the rest of the year. We are each in agreement it will help him catch up his work.

Hearing him this morning I remind him of our agreement and mention that I will follow up with the school counsellor to find out what is going on.

As I continue to get ready, he flies around to get out the door himself and as we leave together he says, "Mom, I know I have an agreement with you and I didn't keep it."

I say, "It is about accountability."

He replies, "Yes, I know it's about accountability." Off he goes.

My thoughts go back to a number of years before at the start of our NVC way of communicating together, my son and I. I was fresh from a presentation of Marshall Rosenberg's where he role-played exactly the same situation I faced when I got home from the retreat where I saw my son lying face down on the couch refusing to move or to talk. He was shutting everything and everyone out.

Having seen Marshall role-play me interacting with my son and witnessed the quality of the connection he made with the person playing my son, it allowed me to take a chance and try a new way of connecting. When I returned home after the retreat I sat by my son as he lay face-down on the couch and I watched this young boy's back for any sign of movement as I began to guess his feelings. After a long time and many attempts, I was about to give up and I, for the first time, watched my frustration rise up in me and I gave myself empathy. Making this connection to myself I just sat in my own quality of sadness. In sitting there I saw a few deep heaves in my son's breathing. There was a shift.

After some time this boy came around and began to talk to me using the faces that Marion Little had prepared for us participants at the retreat. Marion had produced a series of feeling faces when needs are met and when needs are unmet. It hangs on our fridge door to this day many years later! My son still walks to the fridge on occasion for support.

We were beginning to find a new way of connecting through our good and our difficult experiences together, which included a marriage breakdown.

Not long after this incident when I was picking up papers off the floor I came across a note penned by my son which expressed desperation and a statement that he would rather be dead. This had been written sometime prior to me actually finding it.

This began a serious involvement for both of us as we started expressing ourselves in a way that took courage for both of us. Our dialogue was not based upon it looking a particular way with the right way to express ourselves, nor was it about me teaching him NVC. It was about experiencing the consciousness through trying to establish connection to the struggle and pain that was being experienced. It was about holding the space for each other and holding each other physically, letting everything else lose it's importance.

That was four years ago. Connecting at this level became a survival technique. Trying to find outside help through different means, it never matched the quality of connection to exactly what was alive in the moment. It became about labeling and strategies rather than being in connection through dialogue, listening and actually hear each other. The deeper our experience of expressing using this model of Marshall's the value of it began to show itself through deepening. Other ways and means began to pale in comparison.

Last year my son came across his note and read it. He told me, "Mom I was one screwed up kid!" He didn't remember it.

We've attempted to use this method of communicating through most of our days in one way or another. We have had all types of strategies to get our way in the moment, without the balance of meeting the needs we've connected on. Only to find that the process of connecting, too, was becoming a strategy in itself and the end result was still nothing was changing! The times we aren't able stay with expressing needs clearly with understanding, we each know we will come back and discuss whatever comes up. The times between doing this are increasingly shorter.

So this is new this morning, my son says, "Mom, I realize it's about being accountable!"

"Wow", I tell myself and then know that this is far more important to me than any achievement he might make in school.

By Renee Lindstrom, GCFP
Conscious Learning for Health Institute