Communicating Well At Home
Cheat Sheet
Emi Garzitto
- TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF FIRST. Make sure you are calm and kind. Your thoughts matter. Go with the intention to hold relationship.
- ASK FOR PERMISSION “Do you have 20 minutes to talk to me? I’d like to talk about what happened at recess on the playground.
- GET CURIOUS: This is what I see…. This is what I feel…. “I notice you never passed the ball to me at the soccer game, even when I asked you to a few times. And then you called me names and made fun of me. That didn’t feel great at all. What’s up?”
- LISTEN – MATCHING Face the person, gently match their physical patterns.
- LISTEN – PARAPHRASE Repeat what they are saying in your own words to check for understanding.
- LISTEN – WHAT ELSE? When you they have finished telling their side of the story, keep asking more questions?
SAMPLE STARTERS:
- “So what I hear you saying is….”
- “Hold on, let me just make sure I am getting this right….”
- What else?
- Is there something more you need to tell me?
- Is there anything else I need to know?
- Ok, and…?
- Yeah and…?
- MAKE A REQUEST – “What can we do to solve this problem?” “Where do we go from here?” Come up with a way to work on this and make this better so that it won’t happen.
- CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES. Remind yourself you are doing courageous work. Whenever you teach someone to treat you with kindness, you are building up your courage muscles and your compassion muscles.