If we want to change the dynamics in our relationship with our kids we need to learn how to encounter situations without pretenses and judgments. How do we do this? Learn to listen from the heart!

1. Training Up Dragons
of Life!
Powerful Parenting for World
Changers

2. Agenda
➔Welcome
➔Review of Our Ground Rules
➔Sharing our Parenting Vision &
Values and Current Check-In
➔Encountering Our Situations
◆ How to Encounter
◆ Assessing our Listening Skills
◆ Powerful Listening & Assessing
◆ Practice Powerful Listening
◆ One Skill You Learned You Want to
Live Out?
◆ Express Listening
Sessions 2-Encountering our
Situations Through Powerful
Listening

3. ● Keep Confidentiality.
(What’s said here stays here.)
● No Judgement
● Let someone finish their thought
(don’t talk over each other)
● No Yelling. No Criticism
● Honor each other, Accept each other
● No Fixing
● No Advice unless it is asked for
● Tell only your own story
● Be listening hearts with empathy and
compassion

4. Course Overview
Where There Is No Vision
Learning to Encounter by Listening
Learning to Experience by Asking
Questions
Learning to Engage by Making
Decisions
Learning to Express by Supporting

5. Here and Now
Check-in
What’s been going on in the last
month?
Five minutes to share your family
life joys and challenges in last
month
Reflect on how your ‘Family
Values’ came into play

6. Sharing Your
Parenting
Vision

7. We live in conversation and in a network of
conversations

8. What we hear + our own conversation
(filters, perspectives, judgments)
What we hear=

9. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
ABCs
Antecedent
(something
happens)
Beliefs
(meaning we
apply)
Consequence
(feelings,
pretenses,
judgements)

10. Thought
Distortions
Possible Thinking Errors to
Examine and Dispute
3. Disqualifying the positive
4. Filtering
5. Emotional reasoning
6. Fallacy of fairness
7. Fallacy of control
8. Jumping to conclusions [Mind Reading,
Fortune Telling]
9. Labeling and mislabeling
10. Magnification, minimization,
catastrophizing
11. Overgeneralization
12. Personalization

11. Encounter
The primary goal is to seek to
understand what’s going on inside
each individual and their needs in
the situation by listening.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be
consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand; to be
loved, as to love.
-St. Francis of Assisi
To enter into a situation or
circumstance with no pretense
or judgment

12. How Well Do You Listen?
➔I allow my kid to express their complete thought without interrupting.
➔When my kid speaks to me I give them 100% of my attention by eliminating
distractions like turning the TV or radio off.
➔I maintain eye contact with my kid and lean forward to really hear them.
➔I listen for the feeling(s) behind my kid’s message.
➔I pay attention to my kid’s energy level, posture, facial expressions, and tone
as well as their words.
➔I don’t rehearse what I want to say while my kid is still talking.

13. Listening Double Exercise
Speaker
Speaks in soliloquy for ~5 minutes about something with some mild emotional weight
Listener
Listener sits directly in front of Speaker and stays quiet
Double
Speaks in first person, speaking as the Speaker
Echos verbatim what the speaker says
May enhance emotional content of Speaker

14. Parent/Child Experiential Dialogue
Roles: Parent, Parent Double, Child, Stage Manager, Audience
Parent volunteer chooses someone to play Parent Double
Parent Double doubles as in previous exercise
Parent volunteer chooses someone to act as Child
Child role plays child
Stage Manager sets the scene, instructs and intervenes as appropriate
After dialogue: de-role

15. Resolving Upsets Chart
Describe the Situation
Emotional Intensity
Physical Sensations Beliefs/Values Violated Conversation/QuestionsBegin End
Emotional Intensity (Begin) Rate the intensity level of the upset on a scale of 1-10. (1 minimal, 10 maximum)
Physical Sensations Describe the physical sensations that you experience in the situation.
Beliefs/Values Violated Briefly describe your personal values/beliefs that were violated in the situation.
Conversation/Questions Review the situation and determine the key points you would like to discuss in order to resolve the upset.

16. Engage &
Express
What was one “take away” from
today’s session?
What’s one concrete action you
will take to live it out?
Declare it! “I will…”