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Good Communication Takes Practice

This is one of my favorite pictures of Arya- -my sweet granddaughter. In the past few months she has started "talking". It is fun watching her trying so hard to mimic the mouth movements. I like to watch her when I repeat LaLaLa. She tries really hard to move her tongue. She gets the biggest smile on her face when she thinks she's conquered it. 

Most recently she has started to giggle. It is the sweetest sound I have heard.  Pure joy to my ears and hers, she seems so proud of herself.

So what happens between learning how to mimic mouth movements, to making sound, to learning how to talk, to actually talking and communicating.  You would think that by the times we are adults we should have mastered the art of communicating.

In fact just this morning Matt and I had a disagreement that had everything to do with miscommunication. I had woke up about 30 minutes prior to him waking up. I was laying in bed reading the news when he got up, left the bed without saying anything and went and took a shower.  I immediately thought awesome, he's in a bad mood and I get to deal with it today.  NOTHING was said. but that was the problem nothing was said.  He could have said good morning, or what is the plan for the day.  ANYTHING would have been better then saying NOTHING.  After he got out of the shower and dressed I ask him what his problem was this morning and what was he so ornery.  He looked at me and said what on earth are you talking about. I haven't said anything this morning.  Thus the discussion started.  Well come to find out he had a miserable nights sleep and needed to get into work this morning to catch up on his counseling with one of his kids at JCC.  He was in extreme pain and knew that if he got in the hot shower he could relax his leg enough to relieve some pain until his pills kicked in.  I took his lack of talking as; "just leave me alone this morning, I am not awake and don't want to be bothered."  Matt is not what one would call a great morning person. We were able to discuss the misunderstanding and move on with our day.

Earlier in our marriage this actually would have cause us to fight, me insisting that he was mad, him insisting that he wasn't mad. Being able to talk to each other and find out what a "problem" might be has taken time and a lot of practice. One of the things that I have learned that really helps me not misunderstand a situation is to actually say: "help me understand what your saying, or help me understand what is going on." Pretty simple words that clear up a lot of confusion and frustration. 



 

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