Thursday, March 25, 2010
quest 2 wk3/22-27
I have had plenty of selective attention experiences. When I’m with my little brother who is fifteen, he talks to me about his friends and different social situations. I listen to him, but find myself always asking him questions about the situation he has just explained to me. He gets upset and tells me again, with the statement, “I just said that.” I feel that I might not be actively listening because the situations seem immature, petty and boring. The stories are probably boring because I have already experienced these situations and cannot exactly relate with the young mentality. I usually ask for the complete story with background information about the characters in the stories, then I’m able to listen more attentively. Sometimes my feedback works, other times it doesn’t. But at least I made the effort to listen to his experiences and he knows I tried to understand what he is going through.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
PPAT,
ReplyDeleteI have the similar experience regarding to the selective attention of my children. In Harris and Sherblom's text who say, "Choosing one message over another is called selective attention". I fully agree with the authors illustration. When my children was young, they always requested me to buy toys in the store. When we shopped in the toys departments, every single toy that they wanted to buy. Under this issue, I always used the sective attention to both of them because I understood that buying and possessing the toys were the humanity to the children. At that time, I could only do was to buy the creative toys that would be very helpful to develop the creation in their brain.
Today, my two children have been grown up. Sometime, they have the selective attention to me. Clearly, both of them have found there is a generation gap between the mother.
Thank you,
Kam
PPAT,
ReplyDeleteI very much relate to your experience. You are right; most of the time, hearing some things you already know is like hearing one joke over and over and it is very difficult to follow. It is also very upsetting for the other person. When we are on this kind of this situation, because we think it's the polite thing to do or not to offend the person we are engaged in conversation with, we try to half listen. But, more often than not, when it is clear that we were not paying attention from the get go, we will end up offending that person more. In my opinion, if we are not in the best mood to fully listen, it is a good idea to let the person know.
Ppat, I found your examples to be very interesting. I find myself doing that exact thing. When someone is talking to me, I feel like I am actively listening, but I realize I am not when I ask questions that make them retell me parts of their stories. I regret when I do this, because I get annoyed when I have to repeat myself with my mom or boyfriend who also do not always practice active listening. I have a hard time letting people know I am not ready to listen. I can see how it might be helpful, but I am sure my boyfriend would be offended if I told him I didn't want to listen to him.
ReplyDelete