Responsiveness

Responsiveness is that quality of an adult-child relationship where the initiative is openly transferred to the child. The adult intentionally, and sometimes determinedly, follows the child’s actions and words.

Responsiveness is not trying to run the show, not trying to give any direction or suggestion, and not asking most kinds of questions. Instead, the adult drops their agenda to follow the child’s.

One tries to read inside the child’s head, to imagine the child’s thoughts and intentions, and to look for ways to enable the child’s expression. One stifles one’s own impulses to ask, show, or direct. The idea is not to crack open a child, but to seek to be surprised.

Usually I am busy inside my head with something obviously important to say at any given moment. I have to stop my world, put down my suitcase, settle in, and look into their eyes.

Time to be responsive to this child right now. To help myself stop, I do brain work. I remind myself that I’m in for a treat. I find it helps to try to feel my feet inside my shoes and see their eyes at the same time. Like a dandelion seed, I lift and float. I might travel far, if I am very, very light.

The door to adventure always begins with the child’s topic. If the child doesn’t verbally raise a topic, I have to look for it in the child’s actions. Whatever the child is doing, or even looking at, provides something to respond to.

Responding to Actions

Here are four ways to follow responsively when the child does something you want to support with your attention and interest. I can illustrate them with this image of a child and her shoes.

Imitation

When you replicate the child’s actions, you are responsive. Being a copy cat can be a quick fun way to communicate you are attuned directly to them.

(I sit down beside her on the welcome mat and retie my own shoes.)

Description

You can objectively describe what a child is currently attending to. By following the child’s vision you can determine what she is focused upon and describe what she sees. This says you notice what the child is noticing and you are present. This is often the best way to connect.

You’ve got one shoe to go.
Laces tight.
Running shoes.

Narration

You can act like a sportscaster delivering play-by-play announcements of what the child is doing as she does it. These statements often begin with “you…” Always about actions as they occur.

You’re getting them snug.

Pretend Dialog

Role-play talk is a game. When you talk in a different voice and establish pretend, all the normal communication rules are forgotten. You can be bossy, teachy, and ask all the questions you want.

Hey shoe! I’m talkin’ to you, Mr. Shoe.
What are you doing? You’ve got a tongue, speak up.
Don’t stick your tongue out at me!

Responding to Talking

She says, “These are the only shoes I could wear today.”

Paraphrase

Restate the child’s underlying message, confirming you understand what she means, but use totally different words. To mimic what the child says exactly is not cool: “Oh, those are the only ones you could wear, huh?” I call that parroting. It is irritating and condescending. A paraphrase, on the other hand, says the child’s thought another way in your own words from your own perspective. Often paraphrases end with a raised inflection implying that you are checking for accuracy, but not needing more than being corrected if mistaken.

No choice, huh?

Parallel Personal Comment

When a child says something to you, reply with something from your own experience or your current feelings that exactly corresponds to that same thing in your own life. It must match the topic exactly. You live in a parallel universe in which you experienced an event that possibly corresponds to the child’s. You begin these with, “I…” and keep what you say very short. It’s not your turn to talk: it’s your turn to listen.

I only have one pair of shoes I can run in.

Leading Query on the Child’s Topic

Only one narrowly defined question is responsive: a question that’s an inquiry into something you don’t know and follows the child’s topic exactly. If you shift the topic even a tiny bit, you’re no longer responsive. This, I think, is the hardest kind of response to invent quickly, even though it looks easy. The best guide I can offer is the one of journalism: ask who, what, where, when, why, and how.

What happened to your other ones?

Responsiveness Examples

In the example of Liala below, all of this teacher’s talk is responsive, with the single exception of the last statement. This teacher is one of the people I first encountered who had lovely relationships with children, the kind of relationships I aspired to. I videotaped her to see what she did.

Can you identify the responsive technique for each of her statements?

imitation — description — narration — pretend dialog
paraphrase — parallel personal comment — leading query on other’s topic

Laila, four years old, walks into school wearing what appears to be a new dress. She obviously is taking pride in it by the look on her face and the way she makes the dress move. That’s a clear message.

1. 1. Teacher: I really like your pretty dress, Liala.
   2. Laila: It’s kinda new.
   3. Teacher: Oh, you haven’t had it long?
   4. Laila: (shakes her head no) I have only worn it two times.
   5. Teacher: When was the last time you wore it?
   6. Laila: To my friend’s house. She has one like it, except it’s blue.
   7. Teacher: Yours is a lovely red.
   8. Laila: I have a red hat!
   9. Teacher: Hah! You know what? So do I.
   10. Laila: Where is it?
   11. Teacher: It’s at home. I wear it when I ski in the snow.
   12. Laila: I’ve never done that before.
   13. Teacher: What have you done in the snow, Liala?
   14. Laila: I made some snowballs before and a snowman.
   15. Teacher: I really like making snowmen.
   16. Laila: My daddy helped me with mine.
   17. Teacher: It’s fun to do those things in the snow, isn’t it?
   18. Laila: I couldn’t do it all by myself. It wouldn’t work.
   19. Teacher: What part wouldn’t work for you?
   20. Laila: Putting the snow together.
   21. Teacher. Oh no! It kept falling apart, huh?
   22. Laila: Yeah.
   23. Teacher: Do you like wintertime or summertime the best? (topic change)

Number 12 is simply answering a question, which is responsive, also, even though it is not on the list. Number 17 is more than a restatement of the message, because it goes deeper; I would call it an empathic reflection. Maybe I should add two additional ways to be responsive. Answering Questions. Empathetic Reflection.

The Responding Convention

The three ways of responding to what a child says have a natural sequence from light to heavy.

1. Upon hearing a paraphrase, I imagine that little is changed in this girls’s shoe business: whatever she was thinking continues on its track, with the addition that she knows that a listener is present. A paraphrase makes connection without much altering. (abbreviated later in a coding system as para)
2. Upon hearing the parallel personal comment, I imagine she listens to another person’s experience in her current interest. She has an audience to consider in formulating her thoughts; she has a listener to talk to now. Their comment offers a drone camera view: she can look at herself now from a wider perspective, feeling noticeably affirmed. (abbreviated later as ppc)
3. Upon hearing the leading query on her topic, I imagine she has to address this other part for the listener. The question is still responsive, but it’s also demanding. She isn’t as free as before. The demand may be distracting, take her out of her current intent and sense of agency.
   What happened to your other ones? may not be what she wanted to say. She may have been thinking about preparing for the day ahead, running with friends. It’s not being responsive when the listener pushes the wrong thing. The listener doesn’t know about that without first trying the paraphrase and parallel personal comment, so it’s not a good choice for the first thing to try.
   If I started with the leading query, I might miss the juicy things she was about to say before I interfered. (abbreviated later as q/ct)

Responding Convention

Using the three in sequence, 1, 2, 3, constitutes a Responding Convention, a way to practice responding to maximize the open space for a relationship to grow. The convention becomes a guide to having a satisfying conversation, which can lead to further conversations tomorrow.

In order:
One paraphrases and waits for the child to add something, i.e., hit the ball back.
If that fails, one says something about one’s life that exactly matches, i.e, hit the ball to me.
If that fails, one pushes with a query adhering as closely as one can to the child’s topic, i.e., get the ball in the air, using who, what, where, when, why, and how.

The convention seems to work in the hundreds transcripts I have read. I consider this convention to be ‘research-based,’ as good as can be found.

One minor addition to the convention. It’s best to avoid starting with #1, the paraphrase, if the child’s topic is something rather mundane or obvious. A paraphrase in that case would be also mundane or obvious. Sometimes what a child says is already a complete thought, fully expressed, not needing development. For example,

“I’m hungry.” 
1. paraphrase: Ready to eat, huh?
2. parallel personal comment: Me, too.

If you have been working on Enterprise Talk, this should make sense. In regular life, subjective talk (sharing what you think, feel, or have experienced) is the way to relate almost all of the time. A parallel personal comment is one kind of subjective statement, one that follows a child’s initiation on the child’s topic.

I am addressing one-to-one conversation time, working on a Mutually Enriching Conversation, a particular context. If you have an open, established, conversational history with a child, you can usually respond with your parallel personal. However, if the topic is fresh or unusual, the paraphrase may be the safest place to start. You can look for the Responding Convention in the examples later and see how this works.

Reflection

Until you do this kind of analysis on yourself, you cannot expect to be your most effective self when speaking to a child. I think many adults don’t expect a conversation with a child to be too meaningful for them, but when you offer warm responses, they will blow you away with what insights they have to share. — Kate Hover

I had never realized the impact of having a conversation that I didn’t fill with questioning the child. I had never realized that I was holding the power. Do children really have the option of not answering my question? Not really. I was searching for a better way to be with my children, and this gave me new tools beyond my fondest hopes. I have been able to let go of the frustrations I lived in every day. Now it is different because I spend time listening to what the children have to say. — Amy Glamser