Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation on the Parenting with Impact podcast. You’ve got Diane and Elaine here today, discussing topics that we know are relevant and important for members of our community.

Diane had a brilliant idea to have a conversation with each other about communication tools. We teach a lot of communication tools, right?

Diane Dempster: We do, and we’re recording this just as we’re getting ready to enter the month of November, which marks the beginning of the holiday season. There’s going to be a lot of togetherness with many people, but it’s not an easy time for everyone.

So, we wanted to offer a few reminders of some tools you can use to navigate difficult conversations with your family or friends.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or important conversations.

Diane Dempster: Important conversations or just great tools to use with your kiddos, your co-parents, and anyone else you’re talking to. And so we’re going to talk about—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I want to be clear, this is not holiday-specific. The holidays are a great time to really strengthen those communication tools.

We teach a four-week class on communication skills, so this will just be the tip of the iceberg. But we decided to pull some of our key tools that we love to teach because our community has told us they find them so useful.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. The first one I love, and it’s especially helpful with kids, is asking permission. Parents tell me this all the time: They’ve been thinking all day about something, and then the kid walks in the door, and we pounce.

It’s like, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve got to ask them about it, I don’t want to forget!” So we jump into a conversation with our kids without any introduction or anything. Asking permission is a great way to ease in and get—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Buy-in.

Diane Dempster: Buy-in and communication.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. And so, as I think about it, what you’re saying is, yes, absolutely—one of the things about asking permission is that we often start talking to our kids about something we’ve been thinking about, but they haven’t been thinking about.

So that’s one reason to ask permission. Another is to get their engagement and buy-in, and to make sure they’re willing to be in the conversation. We talk a lot about transferring agency and ownership to our kids.

Whether they’re children, teens, young adults, or toddlers, asking permission is a way of recognizing or acknowledging their independence, no matter their age. It lets them see that we view them as independent decision-makers, because what we’re trying to cultivate is adults. And they need to learn the process of problem-solving and decision-making in life.

Asking permission to give advice, make suggestions, share something, teach something—whatever it is—is a way of letting them say, “Yes, I’d like to learn that, hear that, be involved with that,” and it gives them a sense of agency.

Diane Dempster: I’ve heard you say before, and I know it’s true, that you end up using a different part of your brain when you’ve said, “Yes, I’m open to information at this moment,” as opposed to someone just starting to talk. This difference between knowledge and information—how would you describe it?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: When people process information, it’s external, and they see it as something outside of themselves. This ties back to psychology theories like Erickson’s, with the idea that information is outside of us, and we get to vote.

We get to choose: Do I like it? Do I not like it? Do I want to use it or not? When we ask a question, or even ask permission, and someone says yes or gives a response, it’s no longer just information—it becomes insight.

When I say, “I have an idea, would you like to hear it?” and my kid says yes, they’re now asking for something that gives them insight, rather than just hearing, “I think you should do this,” because they would just hear that as something from someone else.

By asking permission, they experience it with more ownership.

Diane Dempster: And let’s back up for a minute and give people a couple of examples of what it sounds like to ask permission, because I think there are a lot of people who might be thinking, “I don’t want to be a doormat. My kid would just say, ‘No, you can’t tell me anything. It’s none of your business,’ or something like that.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That’s not the goal. The goal is to establish a healthy relationship, and that’s where the value of relationship comes in.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, so one example is, “Hey, I’ve got some ideas. Do you mind if I share?” Or the difference between "Would you like to?" or "Do you mind if?" There’s a subtle distinction there.

It’s really important that we talk about it, like, “What time will work for you?” as opposed to just saying, “Let’s talk now.” You’re engaging them in the process of deciding when the conversation will happen, instead of just pouncing into the conversation. Do you—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Sometimes it’s about planning the conversation. We talk a lot in our coaching groups about deciding what conversation we want to have and how we set ourselves up for success with it.

So sometimes, like you said, it’s about planning, and sometimes it’s about the actual content of the conversation. We don’t like it when our friends dive right into giving us advice, and our kids don’t like it when we dive into giving them advice.

Diane Dempster: Or when we inadvertently interrupt them. A lot of our kids have executive function challenges, and they’re dealing with transition issues. And all of a sudden, we’re in the middle of a conversation.

I remember making an agreement with my kids that if I was at my desk working and they came in, they had to say, “Mom,” and then wait for three seconds until I turned my head, so they knew they had my attention.

Because if they didn’t, by the time I realized someone was talking to me, they’d be halfway through whatever they were saying. So you want to make sure the person you’re talking to is fully involved in the conversation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. So sometimes, asking permission is like, “Can you take a moment? Can you take a break? Can we find a time to talk about something?” It’s about getting their attention. Asking permission is a great way to do that, too.

Another tool we love, which is one of the preliminary tools for a conversation, is something we call "bread crumbs." What do you want to say about bread crumbs? Because I’ve got a great story to tell.

Diane Dempster: No, I love when you tell the story about how breadcrumbs came to be.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, so we were in a coaching group for parents of teens, and I used to talk about it like the sandpiper at the edge of the ocean, running into the water and running away, running into the water and running away.

Sometimes, conversations with our kids can take a little while. We need to run in and run out, drop little pieces, and then run out again. One of our clients came up with the idea of breadcrumbs, like dropping breadcrumbs.

So we drop a little piece: “Hey, can we talk about that later?” We drop another piece: “I was thinking about something.” We drop little bits so that we enroll them in getting ready for the conversation when it happens, instead of dumping it all on them at once.

I was teaching at a school district in New Jersey a couple of weeks ago to a group of social and emotional learning staff, and one of the counselors in the room said, “Oh, wow, I realized I’ve been giving them entire loaves of bread. They just need a little breadcrumb at a time.”

Diane Dempster: And I think part of it is enrolling them in the process, and part of it is giving them space. Because some of these kids need time to think about it. Sometimes, we’ll get an answer from a kid—parents say this to me all the time—if I ask my kid a question, they’ll say, “I don’t know.” And I don’t know if that’s a legitimate answer.

I think we’ve probably done a whole podcast on “I don’t know.” And maybe it means, “I need a little bit of time to catch up with you,” or “I need a little bit of time to process this.”

So the breadcrumbs give them space and agency in the decision-making process or in the conversation process—either one of those things.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We used to have a code word with one of my kids, and it was "bubble gum." "Bubble gum" meant, “I have to tell you something you might not want to hear.”

It was like a breadcrumb that prepared them to be able to have the conversation. Because if I just launched into the “no” or “you can’t” or whatever, it would trigger them. But if I prepared them, I could ease into it.

Another example that just came to mind was when we had an accommodation in third grade where the teacher would give the student the writing prompt the day before. Even if they weren’t actively planning their essay, if they could think about the prompt beforehand, by the time they got there the next day, they weren’t suffering from blank page paralysis.

They weren’t freaking out. They had some familiarity and had a chance to process it so they could write about the topic.

Diane Dempster: So, what a great tool for kids with anxiety. That’s really very powerful.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or for language processing. This was particularly an accommodation for language processing.

Diane Dempster: The other thing that comes up as you’re saying that, Elaine, is that so many times, parents tell us, “I can’t ever get my kid into a conversation. The only time I can ever talk to them is when…”

And a lot of times, that’s when you’re in the car together, or you’re working on dinner together, or doing something more in parallel than having a “I need to talk to you” moment.

So, breadcrumbs can be a way to take the pressure off the conversation and ease into it, finding a time that works for everyone.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, absolutely. So those are two ways to get into a conversation that can be really constructive. The other two things we want to talk about are ACE and design, and those are what I would call conversation techniques.

They are ways to actually have effective conversations that defuse defensiveness, let our kids feel seen and acknowledged, and, again, all of this is about fostering buy-in and getting people to step into healthy conversation dynamics.

Diane Dempster: So why don’t I explain ACE, and you can explain design? ACE—it’s ACE-E—stands for Acknowledge, Show Compassion, Wait, and Then Explore.

Acknowledging and showing compassion is really about letting the other person know that you see them. And just a reminder: You can use these tools with people other than your kids. They work really well with your co-parents and your co-workers—everyone. This is a great tool for defusing defensiveness.

It’s also a great tool for defusing emotions. So, let’s say your kid comes home and they’re really upset about something that happened, and they’re beating themselves up—“I was so stupid. I can’t believe this happened,” or whatever it is.

There’s a lot of emotion underneath that. Acknowledging and showing compassion sounds like, “Wow, I can tell that was really hard for you. It sounds like you’re really upset about that. I can understand why you’d feel that way. I know that for me, I get upset when XYZ.” So you’re acknowledging and seeing it from their perspective.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And feeling compassion for it—not judging it. Not saying, “I know it’s hard for you, but…” The language and your tone really matter here.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, it’s like, “I know you want to be with your friends, but you’ve got a test tomorrow.”

No, we’re saying, “Wow, I know it’s hard to break away from being with your friends, and you really want to spend more time with them. It makes perfect sense.” Then you pause because you want to get them—

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And you let them feel seen and acknowledged. One of the things we’ve discovered over the years of using this tool is that sometimes you may have to stay in that pause—AC, AC, AC.

You might want to stay there for a while, because if they’re really struggling with something, they need to be with it and process it before you move into problem-solving.

Diane Dempster: And the place where I love this first part is that a lot of times, our kids say pretty ugly things about themselves. Like, “I hate myself,” or “I can’t believe I did this. I’m so stupid.” This happens all the time.

And as parents, we want to flip it. We don’t want our kids to feel these negative emotions, so we try to turn it around, like, “Oh, no, you’re so smart.” But if we use ACE and really see and feel what they’re going through, it helps.

Wow, this is a person who’s really feeling down on themselves right now. They’re not likely to just flip their feelings because we tell them they’re wrong. They want someone to help them de-escalate the emotional intensity, which is what the AC and the waiting do.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So I just want to address what you’re saying because I love what you just said, and here’s the thing. We want to say to them, “Don’t feel that way, you’re not stupid, you’re not lazy, you’re not an idiot,” whatever it is.

And, of course, that’s not going to be very constructive. But we can say, “I can see how you’re feeling that way,” or “I can tell that you do feel that way,” and we still have space to say, “I don’t see it that way,” and “I’m hoping you won’t see it that way eventually,” but I can see that right now, that’s how you’re feeling.

You can validate their feeling without validating that what they’re feeling is correct.

Diane Dempster: And that’s a great caveat for this tool, Elaine, because a lot of times people say, “I can’t have compassion.”

I’m going back to the holiday season, sorry. “I can’t have compassion for this person because I completely disagree, and I don’t want to make it sound like I’m agreeing with what they’re saying.”

Compassion is not saying, “I agree with what you’re saying.” Compassion is saying, “I can see how you would see it that way,” and there’s a really important distinction there.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And maybe I have some experience of my own that allows me to see what you’re seeing, even if I don’t agree. I think that’s really important. I’m not sure we got to the E. So AC is the acknowledgment and compassion pause. Stay there as long as you need to, and then the E.

Diane Dempster: E is for explore. It’s an inquiry. It’s a question. “What have you thought? Is there something I can do to help? What do you think you might want to do? I have some ideas. Would you like some help? Is this important to tackle now, or should we wait?”

It’s an inquiry and an exploration that you invite them to, which ties back to these other communication tools that we were talking about.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, I often describe the E as “explore your options,” whatever that may be. Sometimes there may be an explanation required. There are a lot of other things that E could stand for. Basically, that’s when you move into problem-solving.

And as parents, we have a tendency, as people, to move into problem-solving way too quickly. So this tool is designed to slow us down and meet people where they are before we jump into problem-solving.

Diane Dempster: And especially with that excellent explanation thing, we want to make sure that our kids’ brains are engaged and available for our perspective before we just jump in.

It’s like so many times, we sit there and explain why something’s important, and our kids aren’t ready to even hear it yet. That’s why the acknowledgment, compassion, and waiting are important to the process.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So the E there could be exploring the options, or it could be asking permission to explore the options—going back to those other tools. All of these tools really work with each other. Okay, the last tool we wanted to touch on today is designing conversations, and this comes from a classic coaching framework.

There are three pieces to this tool: I call it the gift, the ask, and the check-in. It could also be the offer, the request, and the check-in. So, you start with a gift or an offer. It might be an acknowledgment, like, “I can see that you’re in the middle of something.” It can be a gift, like, “You can count on me to let you know when it’s Monday night and time to take out the trash.”

The task might be a request. Let’s use that last example: “When I let you know that it’s time, I’m asking if you would stop what you’re doing and go ahead and do it then.”

This way, we don’t get into a nagging situation. And then the check-in is, “How does that sound to you?” or “Is that okay with you?” or “Are you open to that?” or “Does that feel good?” It’s the acknowledgment of the request and then the check-in to put the control back on their plate. Go ahead.

Diane Dempster: What I think about is that so many times, when we make requests, it’s just like a one-way street.

This is a way to make a request energetically reciprocal and turn it into an agreement. So many times, we’ll say, “Okay, you have to do this, this, and this,” instead of, “Hey, this is what needs to happen. How do we make this happen? This is the role I can play, or what role do you need me to play?

This is what I need from you, but it’s also what I need from you with a role for yourself in the process.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But here’s the catch: I practice this whenever I start working with private clients. I start with a design, and I have them design with me.

If it’s a couple, I have them design with each other to practice this tool because it really does take some practice. What’s interesting to me is how common it is for people to start with the task. So, what’s important about this tool is that you start by making an offer.

You can count on me. I worked with one couple and their 15-year-old son. They said, “You can count on us to take a step back this year and let you take the lead on your schoolwork, but we want to ask you to check in with us.

Could we maybe do a Sunday check-in or something so that we can stay up to date and not be out of left field, but still give you the freedom to take the lead here?” How does that sound to you? It was a really great tool for this kid because it gave him a sense of ownership, but the parents were still able to ask for some engagement and investment.

Diane Dempster: Going back to the example you gave earlier, “I can see you’re in the middle of something, and it’s important that we talk about this. Can I come back in half an hour and we’ll talk about it then?”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Is this a good time for you, or should we talk when you get to a stopping point? How will you know? Those are just talking points, maybe for another conversation. But the idea is that all of these tools are about engaging them in conversation, so that we’re sharing the agenda.

We’re not enforcing our agenda on our kids, but bringing them into a collaborative series of conversations with us to share the agenda for whatever needs to be done.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. And if you’re noticing, just like as you were saying that, Elaine, I was thinking about the fact that we always have to go back and remind ourselves that if things aren’t working the way we think they should, we should get curious and ask ourselves, “Maybe I’m bumping up against an executive function challenge here.”

Maybe even though this kid said, “Yeah, that’s okay, I’ll make that agreement with you,” they don’t have the executive function to follow through on the agreement.

So, we shouldn’t just assume that they didn’t want to, or that they were just giving us lip service, but recognize that there really is a commitment and reciprocation that comes from the conversation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, I love that. I was talking to a friend this weekend, I was at a wedding. And he's got young, young, young, young kids.

And we're talking about parenting and what an adventure. It is, and all of that, and, and what I heard myself say to him was, if you trust yourself, and stay connected to your kids, the rest of it will all work out.

You can't guarantee what the outcome is going to be when you raise a kid but if you trust your ability to stay connected to your kids, and stay in relationship with them, and don't let that fear and panic of parenting take over, the rest of it will work out.

And these communication tools bring us back into a place of trust and connection with our kids.

Diane Dempster: And I think that’s the key. If you're in a place where your trust and relationship with your child isn’t what you wish it was, if it’s challenged—which so many of us are—then that becomes the place to begin working.

So often, we focus on getting stuff done or making sure we’re taking care of other things. But the invitation is always to go back and ask, “How do I reconnect with this person? How do I strengthen the relationship so that we can problem-solve together?”

Because ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to do: collaborate with our kids to solve the problems at hand and set them up to become the problem-solvers they’ll need to be when they’re adults.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: All right, everybody. Nice talk, Di. Love.

Diane Dempster: That was a great conversation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That sounds great. And as I said, that’s the four-week class encapsulated. We got four tools. There are a lot more communication tools, but for now, what do you take away? What’s your insight? What’s your “aha” moment? What do you want to practice or put into action in the coming week?

Diane Dempster: Thanks for everything you’re doing for yourself and your kids. At the end of the day, you make the difference.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Take care, everybody. Have a great week.

 

Helpful Links:

-Parent Expectations: 2 Steps to Success 

-Parenting is Leadership Guide