03/13/98

Help Me Keep Quiet!

Silence means different things to different people, from the absence of it in the most hectic families, to the peace of it at sunset, to the power of it in parenting, to its sounds in music.

• Your examples of silence in dealing with kids made me think of the Cleavers in Leave it to Beaver. How would you advise applying the silent treatment to a more typical, semi-dysfunctional family? Take a husband and wife with marital problems. Add a depressed twelve-year-old boy, a ten-year-old brother with Tourette's Syndrome and ADHD, and a very active four-year-old brother. Do you really think silence is the answer?

  I have tried it and it does not work in our situation, although I would relish the volume change. I think it is the exception rather than the rule to expect silence with kids to be the answer. I really wish it could be though. --- Not Enough Silence

• You're so right about the importance and the communication in strategic silences. Composer John Cage says, "The music is in the silence between the notes." Poet Kahlil Gibran says, "In speaking, thinking is half-murdered." A humorous proverb says: "Better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." --- Strategic Silences

• People don't pause often enough to let thoughts sink in; they move so quickly to the next sentence. We learn more readily through our actions. Having run a Montessori school for children beginning at age two-and-a-half, it was fascinating to see children of that age learn, without speech, that in order to have and keep a china cup you need to take great care with it. If it broke then the logical consequences were that first you needed to clean up the mess, and second that there was no drink for that day! Both my children, now 20 and 22, were raised with logical consequences of their actions doing the talking. They're fun and responsible kids today. -- Let Actions Do the Talking

• I am practicing silence with my son who has "decided" to get two unsatisfactory and one "F" on his school progress report. I have written him a letter about the possible things he might do to improve the situation and have given him a time limit. After that time limit, I will arrange a meeting with him and his teachers. I find that this silence works well. It "pushes" him to be responsible for his actions. -- Silence Within Limits

• I was recently asked at a job interview if I always talk so much. I could only answer, "Yes." I talk all the time and never shut up. I realize that this is annoying, but I've been doing it so long I don't know how to stop. -- Help Me Be Quiet!

Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.