Case Study on Listening with Raising Grandchildren

              Grandpa Joe needed to run an errand into the hardware store this afternoon so he asked Jeffery if he wanted come along.  Jeffery didn’t have anything better to do and he hoped that he could be of some help to his grandpa if he needed him so he went along.  On the drive into town Joe began to ask Jeffery if he ever thought about painting for a living.  “I have a friend who paints houses and he can teach you everything you need to know about the paint business.”  Jeffery thought to himself, “I know I have a purpose for my life, but I haven’t figured out what it is yet, although I’m 99% sure it’s not painting.”  Jeffery didn’t want to hear the lecture so he acted a little interested.  Grandpa Joe was encouraged by Jeffery’s somewhat half interest and began to tell more details.  Deep down Jeffery was saying to himself, “I have heard all this before,” So even though he tried to appear like he was listening, in truth he wasn’t hearing anything at all.  Actually, if Jeffery had been listening he would have heard things explained about this friend of his Grandpas that might have made him reconsider trying painting.  But rather than listening to his grandpa, he was listening to a voice in his head reminding him how poorly he had done in school, how difficult it has always been to learn new things and follow directions.  How difficult it is not to get angry when bossy people tell him he’s done something wrong and how angry he gets when they make him do it over.  Jeffery thought, “I know that I just can’t work for someone, I need to work for myself.  I need to find something I can do on my own that I’m good at and at the same time will give me personal fulfillment.” 

              One of Jeffery’s greatest life obstacles involves listening to his negative self-talk.  Self-talk is your inner conversation with yourself.  It is not really an emotion a feeling or an attitude.  However, repetitious self-talk can eventually turn into your attitudes, values and beliefs.  Self-talk initiates from the things you concentrate on the most, like in Jeffery’s case his past failures.  So when you feed your self talk from your storehouse of negative memories and experiences then your self-talk will automatically begin to influence how you choose to live out your life.  What you say, how you say it, the things you do or do not do, even how you relate to other people, all are influenced by your self-talk. Jeffery’s biggest problem has been that he believes what he hears from his negative self-talk to the point that it drowns out anything valuable that others might say.  Most of Jeffery’s emotions like anger, depression, guilt and worry are initiated and escalated by his self-talk.  Much of Jeffery’s negative self-talk might have been retrained if he had heard more positive self-talk.  But he needed someone that he could vent out his negative feelings of anger, guilt and worry toward.  Jeffery needed someone who could have reinterpreted his bad memories into positive experiences by looking at things from a different perspective.  But the only people Jeffery had to listen to was his Grandma and Grandpa, and they were not able to listen to him. 

              Unfortunately, Joe and Sylvia have never been capable of listening to Jeffery vent in the slightest way.  Joe and Sylvia actually avoid hearing any topic that they would rather not deal with.   When Jeffery has tried in the past to tell his grandparents about why he has feelings of anger or the roots of his depression they would cut him off.  Possibly it reminded them of their own problems and their own guilt or similar feelings that they did not want to deal with. So they insulated what they heard and failed to acknowledge it, even to the point of forgetting what was just said. 

              Grandpa Joe and Jeffery went to the hardware store, bought some pipes, screws and lumber for one of Grandpa’s projects. There was a lot of talking on the way to the hardware store and back.  But there was very little listening.  Jeffery assumed he had heard it all before and turned off the channel that his grandpa was on.  Then he turned on the channel with all his negative self-talk that just reinforced his fears that he couldn’t do what ever Grandpa was talking about.  Grandpa didn’t have the opportunity to respond to Jeffery’s fears, because Jeffery knew from past experiences that it wouldn’t do any good to express his fears because his Grandpa would avoid hearing them.  Yes, a lot of talking this afternoon, but very little listening.

Discussion Questions:

1.  What were some of the messages you hear from your negative self-talk? 

2.  What are some steps you can take to change your negative self-talk into positive self-talk?

3.  How does your walk with Christ affect what you say to yourself?

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