FamilyLife Today®

Jim Davis: There is something between the ages of about 13 to 25 where our kids seem less inclined to listen to us, and that is when we need other people in their lives saying the same things because I can say something to my teenage boys or girl and I might get an eye roll. Our youth director says the same thing, and he's the wisest person to ever walk the earth.

What does it look like to live in a community where it's not all the pressure's on me to have this one really amazing, large talk with my kids about these things, but where we're in a community where these kinds of conversations happen more naturally?

Dave Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Dave Wilson.

Ann Wilson: And I'm Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave Wilson: Okay, we got Jim and Angela Davis back in the studio today talking about curious listening and how that applies to marriage and parenting.

Ann Wilson: And friendships too. Jim's a pastor, Angela's a therapist.

Dave Wilson: All I'm going to say is if you do what we talk about today with your kids and in your marriage, it will transform your home. That's a big promise, but it is true. This is going to be a good day.

Jim Davis: Well, I'm thinking of Genesis 3 and the Fall. Think about that. God knows exactly what happened, what Adam and Eve had done, and yet He comes at them and here's what He says: "Where are you? Who told you you were naked? And what have you done?" He already knows everything.

Dave Wilson: I've always wondered why God said that. Why did He ask those three questions?

Jim Davis: It was revealing. I believe He did that for our benefit, not for His benefit. But He is asking questions to reveal more significantly the gravity of the situation, the "why" behind their choices, and He uses questions.

Ann Wilson: Angela, how do you apply that with your kids? Do you guys ask a lot of questions now more than you ever have?

Angela Davis: We try to.

Jim Davis: We want to. Can I be very vulnerable here? When we were first asked to come on the show, they said, "Would you come and give us wisdom on parenting teenagers and discipling them?" Angela and I talked and we said, "We feel like we're in a season where we're seeing shortcomings and we're working on them, but we didn't feel like we could authentically come and do a whole episode on what you can learn from Jim and Angela on parenting and discipling teenagers."

So this is an area that we're leaning into.

Dave Wilson: But what are the shortcomings? You said you have them. Talk about that.

Jim Davis: Your question was something about asking our kids good questions. We're wanting to get better at that and part of it is with four kids and two jobs, it's just tense. There's this tense feeling in our home and we're trying to figure out how do we make our home a nice, calm place.

Dave Wilson: What you just said, probably 80% of parents are resonating. "Yes, that's exactly what it is in our home too."

Ann Wilson: Even with five-year-olds, it's tense. You add a bunch of hormones with the attitudes of teenagers, and sometimes you feel like you're walking on eggshells. You just want to have a normal conversation, but it's like, "How do I even get in there?"

Jim Davis: And you love them. You think they're amazing, but it's just this navigation process. So you hear things through the grapevine as parents and you're like, "I really want to talk to my kid about that." I've got a judgment already and I want to just tell them what I think, that this was a bad idea.

That happened a couple weeks ago and I wanted to come in and just be like, "Hey, this was a bad idea." But instead, I was just like, "Tell me about this and that." I didn't even act like I knew anything. Just coming in with questions. "How did this go? Tell me about that day and what were you doing?"

It changed my tone. I wanted to come in with that mom judgment tone and instead I was like, "Okay, no, we're going to come in just with curious questions."

Dave Wilson: Did they talk?

Angela Davis: Yes. Now I didn't get everything, and that's okay.

Ann Wilson: Well, we had a son come in. I knew he wasn't doing well spiritually. He came in from prom, been out all night at a buddy's house, reeking of alcohol. Let me tell you, my mind went off any kind of track of "I'm so curious." I'm like, "You are so dead right now."

I'm like, "What in the world? You come in here reeking of alcohol?" This was not typical of him or our other kids too, and I just lost control. Then he's like, "I just need to go to bed." Bed? You think you're going to go sleep this off? You're going to be doing work all day.

I had him in the front yard. He's digging holes because I'm having him plant bushes. He's digging these holes and then these tears are falling off his face into the ground. That was one of those total remorse moments. I should have gone to be with Jesus for a while and just to get myself back on track.

Dave Wilson: You have to regulate yourself so that you can talk.

Ann Wilson: As a parent listening, it worked. We literally sat in his church yesterday and listened to him preach. He grew up, obviously. But I had to apologize later for my reaction or response to the situation.

Jim Davis: An apology is powerful. That's not to be dismissed.

Dave Wilson: Do you remember For Parents Only by Shaunti Feldhahn? She has this little gem. Again, it's a smaller book and it's really something about raising teenagers. She interviews all these teenagers, all based on research. She's a Harvard-trained researcher and says, "Parents, here's what you need to know."

Ann Wilson: She curiously listened to them all.

Dave Wilson: Exactly, that's what she did. She says in the book, the number one complaint of teenagers about their parents is guess what?

Jim Davis: They don't listen.

Dave Wilson: They don't listen. So why do you think teenagers say that? You think it's really true?

Jim Davis: They're people with the same core needs that we have to be seen, to be soothed, to be safe, and secure. That's the one I always forget. If we can learn it in one day, you should be able to know this married to the woman.

But for us, one of the things that more recently I've talked about is the defensive side of parenting and the offensive side. There are times a kid comes home having been drinking alcohol or whatever. That's some defensive parenting, and not to say curious listening can't happen, but you also have boundaries that we need and consequences. That's good, right, and normal.

But we've been thinking through not only how can our house be less tense at times, but how can we create spaces for individual times where we can listen. Since my heart attack, I walk more. I have this routine of walking in the beginning of the day, the end of the day, whatever. My daughter likes to walk with me.

I love that and I've really intentionally thought, "This is not going to be advice time if she doesn't ask for it. I am only listening. I am only asking questions." That's been a really sweet kind of time for that. With my 18-year-old, we've been more recently started having weekly lunches. He can leave his school as a senior, so I'll take him out to a lunch that he enjoys and I try to do the same thing.

Car time, we don't drive our kids around as much anymore, but when we get to, that can feel like a pain and it is in many ways, but the less I'm driving my kids, the more I miss it because we have that built-in time to ask questions.

Angela Davis: And then I think one of the biggest times is the wee hours of the night when they open up and they start wanting to talk. We have to be willing to stay up for that.

Jim Davis: Are you saying this to Dave and Ann or are you saying this to me?

Angela Davis: There's really only one of us that does that. But that's okay, you've got your other built-in places.

Ann Wilson: Dave and I are night people so that was easier for us. I always had food on the counter. If there's food, we could sit and talk.

Jim Davis: That's really good. I'm going to add that to my routine because I don't add the food. It's there and they probably go get it, but just to have it out.

Ann Wilson: They'll just sit there and their friends, too, they'll sit and just talk. But I love, Jim, that you have put that in your schedule, like that walking piece. If my dad would have walked with me and just asked me questions.

My dad ended up taking me out to lunch for the first time when I was 16 years old. I was the youngest of four, and he never really asked me anything in my life. The only reason he took me out was because my mom was taking her brother to chemo. I remember we were done eating and it was just so awkward, like let's just finish. I'm 16, I don't know my dad.

He orders another cup of coffee. I'm like, "Oh." And then he's like, "Let's get dessert," which my mom would never do. So we sat there eating this cake and he started asking me questions. One of the sweetest things that I can ever remember is him just wanting to know about me. So for our kids, for our parents to be curious.

Dave Wilson: That's still making you cry right now.

Ann Wilson: Totally is.

Jim Davis: What a core emotional moment for you.

Ann Wilson: And he would do that then.

Dave Wilson: Did you see how she listened? She's a good counselor. She's curious. But I think that's really important for us as parents just to not have the agenda. And it gets worse when they get to be adults and they're married. You have so many things you could tell them about how their lives could be amazing if they would only listen to you. And yet what they're wanting is just to talk and say, "Here's what's going on for us." To ask those questions.

Ann Wilson: Really ask a lot of questions. We're adult to adult now. Our kids are in their 40s.

Jim Davis: Our oldest just turned 40.

Angela Davis: You guys don't look like you have a 40-year-old.

Ann Wilson: I don't know, we feel it. But all of them, they just love it when we ask questions. Even like, "What'd you do today? What's going on with your job?" Anything. It's just really interesting. They're not interested in hearing us talk anymore.

Jim Davis: Our kids grow and their needs are always changing, but that need does not change. It's one of the few things.

Dave Wilson: Let me ask you this about teenagers. Again, one of the things I found that worked with my boys is if I wanted to dive into something pretty touchy, sensitive—girls, sexual temptation—I found I could do it with a couple buddies rather than just my one son.

There were a couple guys over at midnight and I know them, they're in our church, they're good guys. I'd say, "Hey Tim and CJ, how hard of a struggle is porn these days?" They were more apt to talk because they were like two on one or three on one.

Jim Davis: I do feel like we have, I'm trying to be very general because these are kids and I don't want anybody to be able to identify, there are certain kids we've done better jobs with than others. It's kind of like all of the above. It's an accumulation. It's not one big talk. It's an accumulation.

I say that in areas that I feel like I've done that well, and I'm hearing that in certain areas that I don't feel like I've done as good a job. But it's an accumulation of all these talks: smaller things, maybe some larger ones, certainly when things come up, having conversations about it.

I was listening to an atheist psychologist. This atheist psychologist said because of evolution, our kids are wired to leave the home and because of that, they don't want to listen to their parents between the ages of about 13 and 25. That's why you need other people saying the same things to them.

I thought, "I disagree with how you got there, but I really agree with where you got." I would just say God's design is that kids leave the home. That design has been marred by sin and there is something between the ages of about 13 to 25 where our kids seem less inclined to listen to us.

That is when we need other people in their lives saying the same things because I can say something to my teenage boys or girl and I might get an eye roll. Our youth director says the same thing, and he's the wisest person to ever walk the earth. What does it look like to live in a community where it's not all the pressure's on me to have this one really amazing, large talk with my kids about these things, but where we're in a community where these kinds of conversations happen more naturally?

Ann Wilson: That's really good and it's true. It's hard to be as curious when it's an emotional topic. So we were very intentional about surrounding our kids with other people that were saying the same thing. It just drove us crazy. We'd go to bed and like, "We said this same thing for the last four years!" But they finally heard it, and who cares? Who cares how?

Dave Wilson: I want to read something you put in your book proposal. Curious listening is marked by five practices. We've talked about a couple, but: non-judgment, open-mindedness, patience, empathy, and presence. Any one of those you want to hit?

Jim Davis: I've curated those from other sources. We didn't create these things. We need to come up with a better acronym, but right now it's NOPE P. That's how I remember it. So it's non-judgmental. It's not that we don't have views, but we're suspending our judgments just to understand the person.

Open-ended questions, we talked about this. Not yes or no questions, but questions that are going to give us a little more insight. We're patient, we're okay with awkward silences, we're trying to draw them out, we're trying to create an atmosphere without distractions. Well, that's actually presence.

Angela Davis: We're not getting defensive when we're patient.

Jim Davis: We're not getting defensive when we're patient. That's a big one. We're not thinking to respond when we're patient. But then empathy's an interesting one because in certain circles, empathy is being painted as a bad thing. I don't know how much you all have observed this, but empathy, it's like, "No, we can't be empathetic because then we're going to feel what they feel and be led astray."

They would say things like we need to be courageous, we need to be bold. Well, it's a "yes and" for all of these things, but we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. In Hebrews, when the author of Hebrews says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses," that word sympathize literally in Greek means suffer with.

That's what empathy is. We're suffering with somebody, we're trying to feel what they feel. So empathy is such an important part of it. And then I feel like presence is what you do every day.

Angela Davis: Well, let me say too, I think that's what Jesus displayed. That empathy piece. He wasn't condoning their sin, but he was still empathetic with what they were going through. I think it's both. It's very important and I think it's really important for our kids to see that because if we're not empathetic, I think our kids can see us as just being judgmental. Especially teenagers. So both have to be on display.

Jim Davis: And we have to know. Again, back to that quote, you can't be curious and critical at the same time. I think just being aware, which one am I? There's no half and half, there's no 60/40. Where am I right now?

The other thing that I've done, and this works in the tense moments and it works when I'm just tired of hearing somebody talk. It might be somebody outside the family and we have those moments. But I ask myself, "Jim, what would it look like to be curious right now?"

It sounds so simple, but that one question kind of reshapes my mind, gives me new questions, and then I have this desire to be empathetic that I didn't have before.

Angela Davis: I like that. And then what about the last one, being present? I think it's just giving someone your full attention, like they have your face. Your facial expressions are mirroring them. That makes you ask good questions and that makes the person feel like you're present with them.

You're not looking at your phone or glancing over here or there. Like you actually have my 100% undivided attention. That goes so far these days because our attention spans are just so short now with our phones. To be locked in and really give you my eye contact, it's a rare thing these days.

Jim Davis: Even if you are a good multitasker.

Angela Davis: Yes, as women I feel like we think we can be present and still be cooking or doing whatever, but it's different.

Dave Wilson: Well, it's interesting, we just did a marriage, we call them Summits, at our church and we did three talks. The first talk is on cell phones and marriage. I'm like, we'll do this one quick and then we'll get to the other two because the third one was on God's plan for sex and then identity and how we try to find our identity from our spouse, not from God.

After the conference, I was roaming around the lobby and there's hundreds of couples. I talked to like four or five couples and I'm curious listening: "Hey, what'd you think? Which session'd you like the best?" Every person I talked to said cell phones.

Cell phones are like we are so distracted. You said whatever you pay your attention to, you're attracted to. I am not attracted to my spouse because my attention is on this little device. That is a thing. Ann calls this my other girlfriend. "Oh, you're looking at your other girlfriend right now."

But that presence, think about that with our kids. Have you ever seen Simon Sinek's little thing about this? He basically says we have a real issue with this. If you have this in your hand, you're saying to anybody you're with, "You're not the most important person to me."

He even says this: if you put it on the table, even turned over at lunch, you have just said to your friend, "You don't matter." He goes, "Get rid of the phone!" This is a guy saying you need spaces in your life where you're present in somebody's life and the phone is not even near you.

Angela Davis: Well, that's what counseling is, right? We go in a room and we have somebody's undivided attention and they're just focused on me, asking me questions. It feels really good. We need those spaces outside of a counseling room. We need people in our lives who are doing that.

Jim Davis: One thing that I've started to really realize is the gift that you're giving somebody. What a gift it is just to listen. This goes into marriage, parenting, occupation, body posture, everything. Think about the billions of dollars that are spent in America in the therapy realm.

In 2015, we joined the FamilyLife speaker team and I started in 2016 asking any time I'd meet a mental health specialist this question: "If all your clients had somebody in their life that loved them, listened well, and asked good questions, how many of those people would still be your clients?"

In the general therapy range—I'm not, there's certain psychiatrists and things that would be different—but general therapy, I got somewhere between zero and 20% of those people would still be my clients because they don't have that in their life. That resonates with you for sure. And it just made me realize how important it is.