Dear Aunt B,
Why won’t my family listen to me? I have really good ideas and they just blow them off. Later they come home and tell me about something great they just heard and it was the exact thing I was trying to tell them.
No Respect
Dear No Respect,
This is so familiar to all of us and especially with our children. They seem to not listen to us. But believe me, they listen. They just listen more to what we do than what we say.
No one can hear things until they are ready to hear them. This readiness often comes later than we would like. We all have to find our way or lack of it before we listen to others. A friend of mine says,” sometimes they just need to be spanked before they want to listen.” Of course that is spanked by life. I think we are all open to learning more wisdom after life spanks us.
Oftentimes we don’t talk in a language that promotes listening to. Recently I have been studying about the different generations. I used to believe that was just a description to divide us instead of uniting us, but it is a lot more. Maybe I will share a little about these differences some time. Let me know if you are interested.
People need to hear something more than one time for it to sink in. The first time around, it just lays a foundation. Have you ever notice that once you hear about something, you start hearing about the same thing from different people? I believe that is once we are aware of something, we just notice more.
People don’t listen to advice they didn’t ask for. This is a hard one. People really don’t care how wise you are until they ask. Period.
We often give more credence to things that are spoken by people we don’t have a close relationship with. This even shows up when we see an expert from another area come into town and they say things that just seem more important or wise.
Most important, ask yourself why it needs to come from you. Take a little time and be thankful that they heard wisdom anywhere it comes from. I also love to be the deliverer of wisdom (hence this column) but I love wisdom wherever it comes from, and I am thankful when anyone I love - or heck, anyone - steps into what they need to hear.
Love,
Aunt B
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