Parents with good intentions often try to RESS-Q their children at the first sign of a problem.

Awareness is the first step in avoiding inappropriate RESS-Q.

Replace RESS-Q with Active Listening–the powerful tool that grows your child’s emotional health.

“RESS-Qing” the child from disclosing painful feelings, or causing her to express peace and happiness as a result of pain, fear, or struggles because these feelings are too uncomfortable for the parent to hear curtails communication from your child and leaves her with negative feelings and frustration.

It takes practice not to use RESS-Q

First, allow yourself time to increase your Active Listening skills. The more you use Active Listening, the more natural it will become for you to use when needed in everyday situations, and subsequently, the easier it will be to stifle inappropriate RESS-Qing.

When you trust and allow Active Listening as your first response, you will get a “feel” for if and when other forms of communication will be appropriate.

Preventing a RESS-Q response means you do not:

• Reassure
• Explain
• Solve
• Share
• Question

Why? A potential negative impact exists for each form of RESS-Q. See why…

REASSURE

This form of communication may send the message that the child should be fully capable of handling the situation and suggests it is time to move on.

Examples:

• It’s going to be all right; I’m sure.
• You can handle this.
• Things like this happen. You’ll feel better tomorrow.

EXPLAIN

This form of communication places the focus on the situation and suggests the person consider things at an intellectual level rather than a feeling level. It also tells her she should consider why things are this way in order to encourage her to give up on her feelings about it.

Examples:

• The reason this might have happened is…
• You must learn to turn the other cheek.
• Maybe the other children were having a tough morning.

SOLVE

This form of communication denies the importance of venting feelings. As with explaining, it directs the person to think rather than allowing her to feel. Unsolicited suggestions almost always feel like a criticism. It may tell her she is not capable of handling the situation.

Examples:

• A way to handle this is…
• Have you thought about trying to…
• The first thing you do when a fight is about to start is…

SHARE

This form of communication shifts the attention from the person speaking to the person who was supposedly Listening, changing the focus and the flow of conversation. It can then be difficult for the speaker to shift back to talking about himself, so he may stop authentically sharing and processing.

Examples:

• I know just how you feel. That happened to me…
• It certainly would make me feel upset. I know I’d want to make sure something was done about it.

QUESTION

This form of communication shifts the control of the conversation from the speaker to the listener. It can interrupt the process in several ways: it makes the speaker accountable to the listener, it can change the direction of the conversation, and it can make the speaker move from a feeling mode to a thinking mode.

Examples:

• Why did you do that?
• How do you feel about that?
• Why didn’t you avoid them in the first place?

Note that each part of RESS-Q is a healthy hat of communication. When something other than Listening is needed, there are appropriate times to Reassure and affirm, Explain or teach, Solve or suggest, Share as a way to connect, and ask Questions to invite someone to explore.

The value of being heard

There are infinite responses to most situations. The Listener’s job is to focus on those responses that will be the most meaningful and helpful to the speaker.

RESS-Qing is much less effective in allowing the speaker to feel heard, understood, accepted and appreciated. So you can see how you benefit from knowing RESS-Q in order to do Active Listening well.

When you send messages of acceptance and availability to your child, your relationship with her has its best opportunity to develop and grow.

PARENTING ACTION STEPS:

1. First use Observer Role to become aware of your inner pull to solve or quickly cover your child’s pain
2. Be clear about the five potential RESS-Q responses you need to avoid
3. Determine which type of Active Listening is needed
4. Allow the child to own her feelings without having to solve an immediate problem

Expert information from IPED

This information is brought to you by Lakeside Educational Network’s IPED Program. The Institute for Professional and Educational Development Program informs, equips and inspires educators, counselors, early childhood practitioners and human services professionals dealing with many difficult and complex issues each day.

Our exclusive curriculum, available directly from Lakeside’s IPED, is comprehensive in topics that promote emotional and relational health in children and families. Successful outcomes consistently occur as a result.

With more than 50 years of outstanding service through its many programs, Lakeside is proud to be an international advocate and resource for kids and families.

© All rights reserved, Diane Wagenhals, IPED, 2009.

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