MOTHER TAUGHT THE ART OF LISTENING, CARING AND HELPING
May 11, 2001
To prepare myself to be a counselor I have taken a lot of
college courses. I have read. I have studied. I have attended seminars and workshops. I have taught Parenting
Workshops and I have done family counseling for 25 years. I have spent some eight years in college
trying to develop some knowledge and skills to help people.
But after a lot of reflection I realized that the skills and
techniques I learned in college were not the ones that were most effective in
helping people. The skills that really
worked were the skills that I learned from my mother. Instead of going to college and taking all of those courses I
should have stayed home and studied with my mother.
My mother is a very special person. Her name is Mrs. Vera McGurn.
She lives in North Billerica.
And she now is 90 years old.
My mother has been helping
people for as long as I can remember.
Over the years I have watched her help family members, friends and
neighbors. At the age of 90 she still
is in great demand. People seem to go
to great effort just to be around her.
You would think that with 90 years of living she would have a
lot of wisdom and give a lot of great advice.
Well, she does have a lot of wisdom.
But she seldom gives advice.
And now that I am aware of her helping techniques I always listen and
observe as she talks with people. Her
style is so predictable. First she
listens. Then she accepts the person. Then she shows her caring. She never judges. She never labels. She
never criticizes. She doesn’t give
advice. And her ending line is always
the same: “If that’s what you want to
do, then I think that you should go ahead and do it.”
I know that our family and friends know exactly what my mother
is going to say when they talk with her. And you would think that people would
get bored hearing her. But no. The more the word gets around about her
style the more people seem to want to be around her.
My mother never had much money. And she never accumulated a lot of material things. But usually when I visit she has just
happened to be cleaning the attic.
And she just happened to find
something I might be interested in.
She usually has found an old
picture, an old letter or a newspaper clipping about me when I was a boy. And what she gives me never has any
monetary value. But her gift usually
turns out to become something I treasure.
I don’t know how she manages to do this. I think she may have a series of family
files stored in her attic. Because my
brothers and sisters tell me the same story.
It’s amazing how much my mother’s way of giving has influenced
my emphasis on not using money and material goods to reinforce behavior. My mother taught me the power of giving thru
listening and caring and helping.
My mother never went to college and never took a course in
counseling technique. But she instinctively knows how to make people go away
feeling better.
In our society today it seems like advice is so easy to come
by. But to find a person like my mother
who can listen to you and to care about you is so precious and so rare.
It seems that in our society listening has become a lost
art. It seems so many people have
become uncomfortable with the silence of listening. And so many people see the telling role much more powerful than
the role of listener. We seem to have
forgotten about the power of listening and caring.
We pay a lot of money to have a therapist listen to us. But you don’t have to be a therapist to help
people. You just have to be a good
listener like my mother.
And if you want to have a lot of friends call you on the phone
and come to visit you. And if you want
to have a lot of people take you out to lunch.
Just start using my mother’s
technique: Listen, show caring, accept
people, don’t judge, don’t label, don’t criticize and don’t give a lot of
quick advice. And remember to use her
ending line: “If that’s what you really
want to do, then I think you should go ahead and do it.”
Thank you Mom for being my best teacher.