A listening method for the evenings when asking more gets you less
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When every question makes your child say less
"How was school?"
"Fine."
"What happened at lunch?"
"Nothing."
"Did your friends say anything today?"
"They didn't say anything."
Then the plate goes in the sink, the stairs creak, and you are standing in the kitchen holding the question you did not get to ask.
How to Listen So Your Child Actually Talks
The five-step listening method for the evenings when asking more gets you less.
Fifteen minutes to read. Thirteen dollars. Start with the first step tonight.
How to Listen So Your Child Actually Talks
$13.00
Fifteen minutes to read. Thirteen dollars. The download arrives by email.
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A question is a request
Sometimes it is a demand wearing a softer coat.
You ask because you care. A child who is protecting something hears the demand first and the care second, so the harder you ask, the less you get.
You ran the experiment yourself, probably this week. You picked a better moment, kept your voice down, asked a gentler question, and got less than the day before.
That is a pattern doing what patterns do.
It looks different in different houses. One word. A changed subject. A closed door. An argument that starts before the conversation does.
A mother I have worked with for years told me what most parents tell me first: I think I am being shut out of my own child's life.
So I asked her what she was feeling. Not what her daughter was doing. What she was feeling.
She stopped for a long moment. Then she said:
I am not angry. I am frightened. I feel helpless, and I do not know what to do with this. I do not know who to ask.
I know that sentence from the inside.
When my own daughter was a teenager, I had the same thoughts. What did I say wrong. Why will she not tell me. Is she angry with me again. I had been teaching this work for years by then.
The first time I came home from a training determined to speak differently, I stood in my own hallway and could not start. So I told my family what I was trying, and asked them to be patient with me. I still got it wrong. Knowing what to do and doing it at nine at night are two different skills.
I am Gabriella Vardai, a Communication Coach. More than twenty years, mostly in other people's kitchens and living rooms, mostly in the evening, mostly after something had already gone wrong that day.
For years, parents brought me their children. Fix my kid, they were saying. The child could usually go and play. It was the parent who needed to sit down.
Underneath a slammed door there is something nobody has said out loud yet. Naming it gives you a different place to begin.
That is the I Am Here Method™. Five steps. Not a script, and nothing to memorise.
What should I ask next?
becomes
What should I notice first?
I will not tell you what your child will do. I have never met your child, and anyone promising you a specific outcome in another human being is selling you something they cannot deliver.
Tonight, at dinner, you will know what to say first instead of guessing.
And when it does not land, you will know that getting it wrong belongs to the practice. It is not proof that you are bad at this.
That is the whole promise. It is small, and it holds.
Thirty day guarantee
A father I know had all of this from me already. Not from a guide. From conversations, over months, for free, because we are friends.
He put it on a shelf. He did not disagree with a word of it. He knew he could call me whenever he wanted, so there was never a reason to open it this week.
It sat there for a year.
When he finally used it, I told him nothing new. Sit with her. Do not fix anything. Do something ordinary next to her.
He and his teenage daughter spent three days colouring and watching basketball.
He told me afterwards that he had been waiting for a technique. What worked was the part that looked like nothing.
What parents have told me
When I chose this course, all I knew was that I wanted things to be different. I wanted to get out of those small daily arguments that make life bitter. It worried me that I was shouting at my eleven year old daughter for no good reason. In the very first session I realised that I am the one with the problem, that I am the one who is dissatisfied. I kept going because I wanted to know how to say what I have to say without offending other people. And I managed it. I still make mistakes, it does not always come out right, but Gabriella told me not to give up, to keep trying, because assertive communication only comes with practice. I am still practising, and I love that my husband signed up with Gabi too. To me that means something here works.
Andrea
When I came to the course my first question was: how do I get my girls to listen to me? Nobody laughed at me, and that surprised me. Gabriella asked me why I felt I was not being listened to. In that moment I started paying real attention. There were games and exercises, and I improved my style with constant help from Gabriella. On the last day I managed it with no help at all. I have spoken that way ever since. For me it is not a technique, it has become a way of speaking.
Raul
The first time I came to Gabi, I expected instructions and solutions, someone to tell me what to do next. I got none of that. I got listening, attention, and very subtle guidance. Now I know I was lucky, because I made changes and became happy in my family. It was not easy, but it was worth it. And I did all of it myself. Thank you for helping me find the courage.
R.C.
These are from parents I have worked with in my assertive communication courses. They are not reviews of this guide. Shared with permission.
This guide leaves your child alone. There is no clever sentence in it that makes a teenager talk. Every step is something you do on your own side of the table, which is the half you can reach.
Your purchase is backed by an unconditional 30-day guarantee
Thirteen dollars is still your money, and you worked for it.
Read the guide, try the first step, and if it is not what you needed, write to [email protected] within thirty days. You get the thirteen dollars back and you keep the guide.
No form to fill in, and no reason required.
Gabriella Vardai
Communication Coach · 20+ years working with families
That inbox is mine. If this is not what you needed, write to me and I will send your $13 back.
You do not need another hundred questions to ask your child.
You need somewhere better to begin.
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