I can confidently say I won’t be returning to that coffee shop anytime soon. After the barista awkwardly inquired if I had an “outie,” I lost my cool and blurted, “What’s wrong with you? Why would you even ask that?!” He looked taken aback and replied, “I thought we had the same car,” pointing at the Audi key in my hand.
This incident hit me like a ton of bricks: I’m not really listening. The barista is partially to blame too; every week, I give him my name, and every time, he scribbles “Jazz” on my cup. I feel oddly flattered, thinking he considers me interesting enough to carry that name. But when I recover from the awkwardness, I order again and realize I sound like I’ve just come out of a stroke. This raises a bigger question about my listening skills—not just to myself, but to those around me.
My teenage daughter often claims I don’t listen to her. But I do—at least, I try. The truth is, I often fear what I might hear because it signals that my once adoring little sidekick is venturing away from me—straight into the arms of someone like Jake or perhaps even a pop star. I want to resist this change. Letting her grow up is already challenging enough, but how do I truly listen without hearing echoes of my own fears about this transition?
Suddenly, her thoughts and mine don’t align as perfectly as they used to. Oh, the horror! Why did I encourage her to question authority? I intended it to be about organizing a second-grade petition for more playtime, not this! I find myself mourning her babyhood, wishing I could stuff her back into a Baby Bjorn—completely ignoring the young woman she’s becoming. Instead of celebrating her growth, I’m stifling her by clinging to the idea that she should remain the innocent girl she was at seven. I need to stop trying to smooth over the emotional turbulence that is essential for her development as a person separate from me.
Maybe I project my own insecurities too much onto her. There’s a clear connection between her growing independence and my heightened sensitivity to what I hear. With the onset of puberty, I irrationally freaked out at the pediatrician, demanding he clarify his questions to my daughter, worried he was crossing some invisible line. When she was younger, I didn’t listen as closely. I ignored that tiny voice questioning whether her Halloween costume was really a “bunny ballerina” or something more inappropriate. Back then, the stakes felt much lower.
Now, the stakes feel alarmingly high. Adolescence brings with it a host of dangers: relationships, technology, drugs. It’s a far cry from potty training and cute lisps, where I felt I had some control. So, I scramble to shield her from harm, often resorting to barking orders disguised as advice. And in that chaos, I forget to listen. I realize that if I don’t start truly hearing her, she might stop talking altogether.
Our conversations have become stilted as I try to penetrate her teenage force field. The pressure to be more engaging than her social media feeds is overwhelming. I imagine myself delivering a heartfelt speech, only to be met with silence as she tweets away. My friends tell me I have it easy compared to their experiences with teens, where the atmosphere can be frosty. For me, it’s not the conflict; it’s the humility of letting the child who opened my heart step away from my tightly clenched grip. Accepting that I can’t shield her from every hurt is both humbling and terrifying.
Sharing my life lessons isn’t going as smoothly as I’d hoped. I find myself offering wisdom that seems to fall flat. It’s as if I’m trying to lock the steering wheel of a Yugo with a Club lock—not ineffective, just utterly misguided. I yearn for her to heed my advice, but she interprets it as me saying, “I’ve filtered the risks for you; here’s my take.”
I need to stop obstructing her journey to independence by trying to fix her adolescent challenges, hoping she can bypass the messy parts of growing up. I forget that she is indeed listening and learning how to navigate her own life. Honestly, I’m not a perfectly balanced adult myself; I’m still figuring it out. Refusing to listen won’t halt the passage of time.
Maybe by the time my younger daughter reaches her teenage years, I’ll have mastered the art of listening. I’ll aim to hear her instead of jumping in with my own thoughts. I’ll embrace being a bit more “Jazz” and a lot less overbearing. Yet, I still find myself interpreting innocent comments as threats. For instance, when my younger daughter declared, “I only sleep with black guys,” I was momentarily shocked until I realized she meant her stuffed animals—she simply prefers the ones with black eyes.
If I can just take a moment to listen, I might hear a lot more than I expect.