When a near stranger asked Patty Wipfler this very simple question, her entire life changed. Thank you Patty for being my first guest blogger and sharing this amazing story! I know that thousands of parents have benefited from your discovery that listening to tears changes everything. 

Soon after the arrival of my second child, I became a stressed-out mom. I didn’t think of myself that way at all, but what I did know was that I was beginning to have moments of anger. The day I almost threw my two-year-old against the wall – I stopped myself, but just – I knew that there was something very wrong. I’d vowed not to be violent and angry like my father had been, but here I was, angry and almost violent, not just once, but again and again.

I began wondering what to do to change the course of things. I thought it was something I had to figure out for myself, but no solution came. I didn’t even tell my husband that I was losing my self-control. Then one day a casual acquaintance asked me, ”what’s it like to be a mom?” and I looked at her and burst into sobs. I cried hard for a good fifteen minutes, right there with an almost total stranger. i remember every minute of that cry- what I thought, how I felt and what I told her. She listened. She was kind, but not worried. She didn’t give me advice or seem at all shocked. When I could stop sobbing, I apologised; she told me that I had done exactly what I needed to do. That crying would help, and that she’d been learning how to listen, so people could release their upsets this way, and function better afterwards.

After that big cry, I went back to my children and everything was different. My patience returned. I felt so much better about myself and about them. I wasn’t harsh with them in the least for many weeks to come. I asked her more about what she knew about listening, and found out that she was part of a group in which people helped one another by exchanging listening time.

So I began taking classes where I learned to listen, simply listen, to another parent, and then have that parent listen to me. No advice. No judgement. All confidential. A simple exchange. I found it to be a powerful way to lower the stress of parenting my sons. I found that every time my listening partner and I met, we connected on a deeper level, I learned more about myself, and I gained the safety to reach down and actually feel and release hurt from my childhood. I found that he, too, was helped by my attention, nothing more. I cried about the people I loved and the hurtful things that had happened. He, more scared than sad, trembled much of the time. I laughed, too, as I ventured to tell my listening partner about feelings and experiences I’d kept to myself for so many years. it was a compelling relationship, and utterly simple.

Early in this exploration, I had an experience that took my breath away. My two-year-old son Jacob had come down with pinkeye. Both of his eyes were crusty and oozing. The doctor prescribed eye drops to be given for several days. But Jacob was not yet three, and, knowing him, I was sure he would be frightened. How would I get those drops into his eyes? I envisioned having to pin his arms down with my knees and lean, dropped in hand, over his struggling body. If it went that way, I would be required to undermine his trust in me three times a day for several days.

When David, the baby, went down for his nap, I decided to try listening to Jacob’s feelings about getting drops in his eyes. Perhaps that could help. I had no idea how, but what was there to lose? I showed him the bottle of drops, and told him I needed to put some in each eye. He threw himself back on the bed, and cried, hard. I listened intently, right next to him. I told him the drops would help him get better. He kept crying. When he would slow down, I’d lift him gently up to a sitting position, show him the bottle again, and say, ”I need to put these in your eyes. It’s going to help you.” And every time he cried hard. I listened.

After about a half hour of this back-and-forth, I asked him if he wanted to see how the drops were squeezed out. He did. I filled the dropper, raised it and squeezed drops back into the bottle. He watched, and then threw himself back on the bed for more hard crying. it went on like this for a while – demonstration, crying; demonstration, crying – and somehow, his brother kept sleeping. I wondered how (and when!) this would resolve: there were certainly a lot of feelings on tap! And I had to get the drops in somehow. Then, Jacob asked whether he could try squeezing the dropper, and I said, ”Of course.” He tried it several times, and then I asked if he was ready for me to put the drops in his eyes. He wailed. he threw himself back and put everything he had into this outburst. I kept listening.

A few minutes later, his face cleared, he sat up, and he asked, ”Can I put them in? In a hundred years, I wouldn’t have thought of a two-year-old giving himself eye drops! I said, ”Sure, you can try. If you miss, I’ll have to help, though.” I asked him to lie down, and filled the dropper. I helped him position his hand over his eye. And I watched as he squeezed two drops into his open eye. He did the same for his other eye, then sat up, looked at me and grinned, and ran off to play. He was fine, and I was astonished! Putting drops in his eyes was as ordinary as putting socks on his feet after that. His fear had vanished.

Many things came together that day. I’d grown up with really good parents who stress level had gone beyond the beyond. I had seen the world of hurt a good parent under stress could cause. But if a parent had an emotional outlet, a safe connection with a listener, that kind of hurt could be prevented. And families could be warmer and closer, as ours had become. When I saw my son take charge of his treatment that day, it became clear that parents didn’t have to dominate their children. They could trust their child, set necessary expectations, listen and connect and the child would thrive. Offering connection through listening was a way of giving that was powerful and respectful, and in the end, it got things done. It felt great to parent this way- working with a child’s big feelings, rather than against them. Giving myself, my attention, my offer of connection, rather than words, bribes, or demands. I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

Patty Wipfler, Founder and Program Director, Hand in Hand Parenting

You can try this today! 

Think of a friend or acquaintance who you trust that you could talk to about how your life really is without censoring yourself. Arrange to have 10 minutes in person or on the phone, away from distractions and responsibilities. Simply ask each other, ‘How’s Parenting Going?” and take a five minute turn each to talk, while the other person listens with judgement or giving advice. You can talk laugh or cry, and find some renewed energy and patience for parenting. I’d love to hear how it goes!

Hand in Hand Parenting publishes a pdf booklet with full details of how to do listening partnerships. It contains all of Patty Wipfler’s wisdom from thousands of hours spent listening to and supporting parents.  You can find it in the Hand in Hand parenting store here Hand in Hand also offers courses (in person and online) where you can have listening time with experienced instructors. More details here

When I was at school I had a group of ‘friends’ who were actually more like bullies. They would do things like pull my hairband out relentlessly, and hide it, make me do chores such as collect their lunch boxes and put them away, (I could never say no). They would insult my appearance, my family, call me names. I can remember when I saved up my pocket money to buy a nice pen with fine tipped nib and one of the girls was trying it out, and pushed it so hard into the paper that it broke.

My only defence was to be silent, I’d always been quiet at school anyway. For a few years I hardly said anything except yes or no. The girls tried to make me talk by telling me to ‘start a conversation.’ They’d tell me things like ”how do you think you’ll get anywhere in life if you don’t speak?” We played the daily, ‘start a conversation’ game every lunchtime for a long time. There were other girls in my class who could see I was having a hard time and who offered to be my friend. But for some reason I felt like I wanted to stay friends with these girls, or that I couldn’t escape, I’m not sure.

I found a few coping mechanisms, one of which was to put Mexican worry dolls under my pillow each night. I would choose a doll for each of the girls, and say, ‘I’m worried  ……. will be nasty to me tomorrow’ for every girl.  It didn’t work.  The dolls became kind of tainted to me, too full of worries. The song, ‘don’t worry, be happy’ was in the charts, and I felt like I was supposed to simply do what the song told me. I lived in a state of constant worry and anxiety, that I felt completely powerless to escape. I discovered a ‘trick’ in my mind, that if there was a thought that I didn’t like, then I could just push it away, and I didn’t have to think about it. I sucked my thumb until I was 12, and had to go to sleep with the silky blanket I’d had in my cot as a baby touching my feet.

These coping mechanisms worked in the sense that they got me through, they kept my feelings hidden in a world where I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone, or change anything about my situation. I moved to secondary school, I made new, nicer friends. But in the long run I grew up still afraid of those girls, I carried their voices with me, as if they were under my skin.

When I discovered Parenting by Connection, I started a listening partnership and began telling my stories about these girls. I’d get triggered by something in my life, a woman who I felt ‘afraid’ of or a situation where I felt like I couldn’t stand up for myself. I would trace the present situation back to the past, and talk about the girls. I would always start crying when I talked about the worry dolls. There was something so sad to me about my 10 year old self putting dolls under my pillow every night, hoping that would offer me some kind of magic escape. Finally being able to cry, things started to change, I got my confidence back, I realised that there was nothing wrong with me. I could finally just be myself.

Those were tears I’d carried with me for over 20 years. And there were many other tears too. Tears about a million things big and small. We all carry tears like this. Maybe we have or maybe we haven’t experienced something that a psychologist would label as ‘traumatic.’ But we have all experienced difficult situations that we would have cried about if we’d felt safe and supported enough. Our parents didn’t always know how to listen to us. They might not have understood that when we hit our sister, or whined and moaned, that we actually needed love and attention rather than being told, ”just stop it!” or being hit or sent to our room. Our parents carried their own histories of unshed tears too.

All these unshed tears can make life feel pretty heavy. So when our children drop food on the floor, or ask the same question for a millionth time, we don’t always feel like answering with compassion. Why should we when we weren’t given empathy and our understanding when our behaviour went off track? That’s why listening to tears is not just about listening to your children, but having someone to listen to you too. Through Hand in Hand I discovered what a different being listened to makes to my parenting. When I feel exhausted, or am losing patience, or just don’t want to play anymore, I can release all these feelings, and just get back to the love I feel for my daughter. It’s so good to talk to someone understands that I don’t need advice, but simply someone to help me get to those long buried feelings. 

Our children probably won’t come home saying that they’re ”having a few issues at school.” Their difficulties are more likely to leap out as aggression, or crying because their biscuit got broken. They may not be able to use words, when they’ve experienced a situation that seems emotionally overwhelming, and training them to do so simply takes them further from the emotions, that they need our compassionate listening to help them release.

This is a little bit of the story of why I became a parenting instructor. Because I want my daughter to be able to shed her feelings about upsets when they happen or at least not too long after. So that she can tell me her thoughts, and we can figure things out together, so she can become brave and courageous to say what she wants and know what she wants instead of hiding away, until finally twenty years later, it finally feels safe enough to come out.

For more info about listening partnerships visit, Hand in Hand Parenting

And have a look here, for free upcoming Parenting by Connection Teleseminars on topics including ‘How do I stop my child from hurting other people?’ and ‘No More Bullying.’