The Five Secrets are made up of three listening skills and two expressive skills: the disarming technique, thought empathy, feeling empathy, inquiry, assertiveness, and affirmation.
In today’s episode, I give tips for using The Five Secrets of Effective Communication to increase connection and trust in your relationship with your child.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
Have a parenting question? Email Dr. Coor at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a voicemail at 646-926-3243.
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To wrap up my month-long series on using elements of various communication approaches to improve your parent-child relationship, this week I’m talking about The Five Secrets of Effective Communication.
Welcome back to Project Parenthood! I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor—clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll help you repair and deepen your parent-child connection, increase self-compassion and cooperation from your kids, and cultivate joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.
The Five Secrets of Effective Communication, which I’ll call “The Five Secrets” from here on out, is a set of communication tools developed by Dr. David Burns that focus on developing a deeper relationship with a person you’re trying to connect with—particularly when they are hurt, angry, complaining, rigid, bossy, critical, or they have a personality you find challenging. This makes the Five Secrets offer a powerful framework for parents to deepen their connection with their children.
The Five Secrets are made up of three listening skills and two expressive skills: the disarming technique, thought empathy, feeling empathy, inquiry, assertiveness, and affirmation.
The disarming technique is about finding the grain of truth in what your child is saying—no matter how illogical or unfair it may seem to you. You empathize with your child’s thoughts by repeating back what they’ve said, and you empathize with their feelings by guessing at what they might be feeling given what they’ve said. Inquiry is when you invite your child to tell you more about their thoughts and feelings related to what they’re saying. Assertiveness involves you using an “I feel” statement to express the emotions arising in you in response to hearing and understanding your child’s thoughts and feelings. And finally, affirmation is when you offer your child a sincere compliment that expresses your warmth and care for them.
Today I’m talking about the mindset you need to have to use the Five Secrets skillfully, as well as the disarming technique and giving affirmations—both of which can be challenging to do in emotionally heated situations.
The Five Secrets are based on the premise that you’re actually creating the interpersonal conflict that you complain or stress about. But fortunately, the power you have to create your reality is the same power you have to change it. While it’s typical to have the urge to blame whatever problems might exist in your relationship with your child on their behavior or their diagnosis, what’s really important is to pinpoint your own role in the problem. Dr. Burns suggests that you focus all of your “blaming” energy on changing yourself, rather than trying to change your child. This is what it means to “sit with open hands.”
Part of changing yourself means looking inward for the source of the problem or conflict—which can be painful because it requires you to let go of your “helping” or “rescuing” ego. You’ll need to let go of being right, let go of the idea that you know what’s best for your child, let go of trying to impose your will and push your agenda, let go of trying to change your child in any way. In service of connection with them, it requires you to suppress the habits of arguing, blaming, and defending your position—even when you’re at odds with your child. Your goal is to simply understand and support them in their suffering.
Imagine your 8-year-old child says they don't want to play a certain game anymore. Instead of insisting, you'd say, "I hear you. If you're not enjoying it, we can find something else you like." This approach prevents conflicts and blame, fostering healthy relationships. It's like saying, "I value your choices and feelings." Remember, using communication skills like The Five Secrets isn't about controlling your child, it's about embracing their preferences and letting go when necessary.
When your child’s body and mind are in fight-flight-freeze mode, the things they say are often a distortion of the truth as they try to persuade you to see things their way at the same time that they’re overcome with big emotions. Instead of looking past all that and zeroing in on their truth, it’s easy to get sidetracked by the “shiny objects” that are the irrational or just plain wrong things your child is saying. Of course, you’d feel compelled to “set the record straight.” But resist—and instead, strongly and directly side with their truth about what they’re saying.
The skill of disarming is challenging to undertake, and yet it just might be the key to a better relationship with your child. It’s about temporarily letting go of your own version of “the truth” so that you can see the truth in your child’s criticism, complaint, or despair. And don’t reflect back a sugar-coated version of the thoughts and feelings they’re expressing—even if it’s dark and disturbing to you. Let their feelings exist in the space between you—just as they are.
In the spirit of mutual exploration and learning, start with the words, “You’re right,” then follow it up with a statement affirming the truth in what your child has just said. Putting disarming together with assertiveness and inquiry, you might say something like, “You’re right. I feel embarrassed to say that I have been trying to control you and I haven’t been listening to what you’ve been saying. Can you tell me more about what that’s been like for you?”
Even when you’re angry with them or offended by what they’re saying, your child is still deserving of respect. You may need to dig deep to find it, but no matter what upsetting thing your child has done or is saying, they still have amazing and appealing parts of themselves that you can acknowledge. Try talking about the qualities they bring to your relationship that you’re grateful for.
The affirmation element of the Five Secrets is about offering positive feedback and conveying caring, fondness, admiration, and respect for your child—even in the heat of battle. And it’s important not to do this in a formulaic way, but rather in a genuinely affectionate way. You might say things like “I care about you and I’m really concerned that you’re struggling like this,” or “What you’re saying is so important, and I really want to understand more.”
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When you don’t know how to respond to your child’s angry, bereft, complaining, or otherwise agitated statements, trying to use all Five Secrets can not only diffuse the situation, but also help you to connect to, hold space for, or deepen the relationship with your kiddo.
But because it requires not only an intense desire to change your behavior but also humility, the willingness to take action to change your behavior, and a whole lot of practice, Dr. Burns suggests trying each of the five secrets, individually, in five different interactions every day. You might practice with one of the skills for a day, and after five days, start combining two skills and practicing those five times a day! Expect to not get it right a lot of the time, and embrace the idea of what Burns calls “joyous failure”—view your errors as opportunities for growth and learning—not a time for you to get caught up in shame and defensiveness!
Using this other-centered kind of listening, where you don’t try to help your child or save them, and instead focus entirely on what they are saying, helps you connect with them in a meaningful way and can ultimately lead to deeper and more loving relationships with your kids. The Five Secrets help you stop talking at your child during challenging moments, and start being with them in a loving way. And remember to forgive yourself for the mistakes you make, because using The Five Secrets is also a great way to repair relationships after you’ve made one!
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That’s all for today’s episode of Project Parenthood—thanks for listening, and I hope you found this helpful! Be sure to join me live on Instagram @bkparents on Monday, September 18 at 12:45pm when you can “Ask Me Anything..” about school drop off! You can get your questions answered in real-time!
If you have a question for me about parent-child relationships, respectful parenting tips and/or parental mental health that you’d like me to cover in a future episode, shoot me an email at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com, leave a message at 646-926-3243 or leave a message on Instagram @bkparents. And you can learn about my private practice working with parents living in New York State at www.brooklynparenttherapy.com.
Catch you next week!
Burns, D. (2010). Feeling good together: The secret to making troubled relationships work. Random House.