Case Study on Communicating with the
Single Parent
Karen and Lauren have
managed to avoid discussing Lauren’s pregnancy for several months since Lauren
initially told her mother about it. Now
Lauren is starting to show a little around her tummy. Karen senses the urgency to talk but feels
uncomfortable approaching Lauren, especially after her angry blowup about her
friends coming over. Karen is also still
confused by the whole mess; she feels like she is walking on pins and needles,
but eventually draws up the inner courage to say, “Lauren, can we talk?” After
an uncomfortable silence, she presses on, “You are frustrating me because you
have not decided what you want to do about the baby.” Lauren looked at her mother with shock and
disbelief at the statement, as if there was no doubt in her mind, and she
wondered why her mother would even need to ask.
“I’m keeping her, of course,” she said, “Just like you kept me,
right?” Karen kept quiet as she looked
awkwardly down at her hands trying to think of a way to suggest placing the
baby up for adoption. Karen’s voice
sounded broken when she finally uttered the words out loud that she had been
contemplating. “Things were different
back then. I had my whole family to help
me. Now we are alone and I can’t afford
to feed the mouths that are currently in this house, let alone add one
more.” “What are you saying?” asked
Lauren sounding irritated, “this is my baby, I get to decide, not you.” Lauren’s words made Karen feel two inches
tall. Lauren had struck a nerve too
close to home, one that Karen could not deal with right now. However in actuality, Lauren was not nearly
as confident about keeping the baby as she tried to appear, deep down she was
in denial, ignoring the reality of the baby and secretly wishing the baby would
just go away. So without saying another
word Karen stood up and walked away.
Unable to find the strength to say what needed to be said, she
withdrew. Lauren observed her mother as
she walked out of the room and wondered to herself, if her mother was trying to
tell her that she needed to get an abortion.
One of Karen’s problems
with communicating with Lauren, especially about what to do about her baby, is
her own guilt. Her guilt for being a
single mom and all her mistakes since that time, all her failures as a parent,
and her guilt for the current mess they are in.
All this guilt weighs down on her making her paralyzed to confront
Lauren to use good judgment and to help her make the right choices that she
needs to make. Another problem Karen had
with communicating was her judgmental statements. Karen often feeds Lauren’s anger
unintentionally by using “you” language instead of “I” language, putting Lauren
on the defensive. For example Karen said “you frustrate me . . .” creating more
defensiveness than if she would have said, “I feel frustrated because we have
not talked about what would be best for the baby.”
Lauren made
communicating more difficult by not clarifying what she was actually thinking,
and saying other things that she did not really mean, and in the process using
very direct words that caused unease. When
talking to her mother Lauren left out important information that she assumes
that her mother should understand. Often
Lauren talks around a point making her mother fill in the missing pieces. Then with what Lauren does say, there are
often tremendous differences in what she means by a certain phrase, and the way
Karen interprets it. Karen ends up
feeling like a ship left to drift in the middle of a stormy ocean. Although she feels a lack of context from her
daughter to guide her to understand her, she is also afraid to rock the boat,
afraid she will make the sea more violent if she pressures her to clarify what
she means.
Never the less
miscommunication is a big problem not just for Lauren but for Karen also, she
gives messages that seem perfectly clear when she says them yet because she
assumes that the Lauren understands she uses abstractions or vague generalities
to express unobservable events and feelings that she often keep hidden.
Discussion Questions: