Last week’s Newsy Bits post focused on learning to listen as a key capacity for developing strong family bonds. This week we are exploring a closely related capacity, but one that is far trickier to achieve. This 4th installment in the 10-week series focuses on strengthening parenting and partnership practices by increasing our ability to perspective-take.
In parenting and marriage, being able to understand the perspective of your children and of your partner is essential to building strong family bonds. There are many skills and capacities required to keep relationships healthy, but a key ensemble of healthy social-emotional functioning with your kids and partner consists of this quartet of abilities:
learning to listen
seeing an issue, problem, or feeling from their perspective, aka, perspective-taking
validating their feelings regarding the matter
empathizing with their feelings about the matter at hand*
Harville Hendrix in his book, Getting the Love You Want, provides a framework for couples to engage in these skills which he calls the “Couples Dialogue.” It routinely crops up in couple support work.
The Couple’s Dialogue activates this quartet of healthy social-emotional functioning in marriage or partnership by helping partners to feel seen and heard by one another. It is designed to increase perspective-taking skills and empathy for one another in order to strengthen feelings of connection.
In parenting, this quartet of caring capacities does not manifest as a formal framework like it does in the Couples Dialogue. Instead, parents learn how to do these things on the fly and over time, adapting to each new developmental stage of their child’s life while deepening their listening, perspective-taking, validating and empathizing capacities.
The good news is that these skills can be cultivated - and usually must be - in order to remain connected with your kid(s), particularly as they hit the teen years, but also for the whole ride.
When parents learn how to put these skills into practice with their kids, they help them to feel seen, heard and soothed, which fosters secure attachment. When parents develop overall consistency with these practices, it creates feelings of trust and safety in the relationship. Children come to understand that you “get” them, that you’ve got their back, and that you can be a resource for them. It enables them to turn towards you for support and guidance when they need it. This safe bond is a big gift to both of you as it will enable you, as the parent, to continue to guide your child and collaborate with them to help them achieve their goals and your hopes for them.
Perspective-taking as a capacity is related to Theory of Mind** and empathy. It is usually defined in terms of two dimensions: perceptual and conceptual. Perceptual refers to our ability to understand how another person may experience something from a visual or auditory perspective that is different from our own visual or auditory perspective. Conceptual refers to the ability to understand another person’s experience, including their thoughts, feelings and attitudes about the matter, and it involves "stretching" to fully “get” the other’s unique experience.
Hendrix refers to the work of getting to the place where you can see things from your spouse’s perspective as “stretching.” Importantly, he points out that you don’t have to actually agree with them – you may see things differently… in fact, we usually do - but you do need to get to the point where you can understand how they see something from where they stand in terms of their experience, beliefs, attitudes and feelings about it.
We can do the same thing with our kids, and doing so diffuses a lot of angst for them and often leads kids to solving their own problems. Know though that it’s a good idea to leave the fact that you disagree with them out of the conversation (for both spouse and kids). It doesn’t help, and it will likely undermine overall feelings of safety in the relationship.
Psychologists and other researchers view perspective-taking ability as fundamental to human development and vitally important for our survival as a species. Yet it is quite challenging to do, particularly when the grind of family life has us stressed, anxious, moody or worse. It may come more naturally and easily to some people, while others may struggle mightily with it.
All of us, however, can improve upon it with greater understanding of what it is and how to do it, even if it doesn’t come naturally. There are tools for this practice.
Mind you, the ability to perspective-take with your kids does not mean you can’t set limits with them; it just means that they learn that you get how they feel and that you understand their experience, which can make all the difference in the world for your relationship. It will also help improve outcomes for your kids overall in terms of their own choices, behaviors and their recovery from mistakes.
With spouses, this process can take more time and practice to be sure. So start getting in the habit of putting your perspective-taking glasses on, and take time to learn the Couples Dialogue. There is a link for it below. It is an invaluable tool to help get you through difficult terrain.
* Last week’s Newsy Bits focused on listening; next week’s will focus on validating and empathizing.
**Theory of Mind, a theory promulgated by Simon Baron-Cohen, purports that key to typical human development is the capacity to understand and predict the behavior of other people and to attribute mental states, feelings, intentions, etc. to other people. Though it has come under increasing scrutiny, it is a key theory used to help research and understand individuals with autism.
Explore More
Tuesdays@Noon, Drop-In Parenting Chat Group - Join for a quick 25 minute drop-in chat to begin learning about Positive Discipline parenting tools and approaches – $10
Thursdays@Noon, Drop-In Couples Chat Group - Join for a quick
25 minute drop-in chat to begin learning about couple tools and approaches taught in Positive Discipline's "Keeping the Joy in Relationships" teachings - $10
Further Learning
Hendrix, Harville, Getting the Love You Want (2005)
Baron-Cohen, Simone, Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind (1995)
What Is Imago Dialogue, aka The Couples Dialogue, Harville Hendrix on You Tube
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