Today guest blogger Becky Hallberg relates a recent development at her house. She knows that unless she contains the problem, miscommunication will run rampant. Here’s her account of how she’s learned about how to monitor what her children hear and help them process it accurately.

The Importance of What They Hear

Our three children all take piano lessons and each week our home is filled with hours of music. On the days when everyone has time to practice as they should, we have about five hours of music. Their piano teacher instructs them to read the music, to learn the notes, to play the classics in the manner that the composers wrote them, and their music sounds wonderful! Our oldest and youngest don’t stray far from the written notes. They are learning to follow the instructions, to read what’s written, to play some beautiful music. And then, there’s our middle guy—the one who will always do things a little differently, and I’m learning to appreciate that as he continues to grow and show his independence.

Our middle son is filled with zest for life, humor, a quick wit, sincerity, a love for doing things in the way that seems right to him, and a little something that most call Asperger Syndrome. He plays the piano as his brother and sister do, but he adds a little flair that’s all his own. He plays as he is taught, learning the classics, the theory, some beautiful technique, yet he brings a lot more of himself to the music. Just recently, he’s shown another dynamic that we hadn’t seen before.  He has started to play songs by ear. He doesn’t just start on a note and then work the music out from there, he starts on the right note—whatever note the written music started on.

Even more recently, this playing by ear has started spilling over into other parts of his life. He now hears and processes more of what we say around him. He reacts based on what he hears, sometimes without asking us for any input or clarification of what he heard. I like that because he is showing that he can think through some of these things on his own and respond in appropriate ways. But it’s driving home that we need to be careful of what we say around him, and even more diligent in monitoring what he hears in general—from games to TV, friends and even family.

He may hear us say, “…baseball game,” at the end of a sentence and think that we plan to take him to a game. He’ll start to ask what to pack, when we’re going, and who is playing. Unfortunately, he may not realize that the beginning of the sentence was, “No, I don’t want to watch the baseball game.” He heard one part and started reacting to it, in a manner that wasn’t bad, but ended up causing some stress for him when we had to say, “No, we aren’t going.”

Or he may hear us say, “We aren’t going to church,” and then he goes running off to tell his brother and sister that we aren’t going to church on Sunday, and maybe never again. Well, that isn’t at all what we were talking about. We were talking about not going because we didn’t need to be at that particular meeting. But he reacted based on what he heard. And he did hear correctly.

Of course we can’t control what particular part of a sentence or conversation that he hears. But the greater point here is that if he hears something inappropriate, he is likely to go and repeat that to someone. He may share a bad word that he heard in a video game—yup, that’s happened, and it’s been highly frustrating and embarrassing—or he may ask someone what a particular word means from a book he reads, or repeat the word. (That’s why I dislike how the Peanuts comic strips use the word “stupid” so much.)

Our kids hear so much more than we think they do, and my son tends to run with it, whether he knows what he’s saying or not. I’ve been challenged to really guard what he’s hearing, as that’s his current new method of processing information—both in an attempt to make sure he is having good conversations with others, but also because these are the things we want him to know.

Philippians 4:8–9 are the verses I often go to, as I try to monitor things for all three of our children, but especially now, for what our middle son hears. Let’s keep this high standard with our kids, a standard of excellence with a promise of the peace of God!

What’s Your Latest Challenge?

What’s the new challenge at your house lately? What are you learning about how to handle it? Leave a comment so we can be ready, too!

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop-up box and the second at the bottom of this page.

Photo Credit: Stuart Miles at www.freedigitalphotos.net