Talking to the Lazy Child by Judy Lyden

Engaging in a conversation with a lazy or selfish child is about as interesting as slogging through wet concrete and about as easy. Younger, lesser conversant children will often ignore the adult who is trying to make conversation. Letting go of his or her "own time" is a real pain. Older children will silently or inaudibly respond or answer in a single word answer simply to be free of the invader of his or her space. Drawing this child out is many times simply not possible.

When the lazy child finally allows conversation, it is nearly always about them, their needs, their wants, and their minutia. They report a full gamut of information to be sucked in by the listener, and then when they are done, they promptly end the conversation. The listener, who is looking for a time to respond is defrauded of his personhood in the dupe of the selfish lazy child who can't, for the life of him or her, return a question or be interested in the listener to any extent.

Lazy, selfish children often have few friends because the conversational exchange is nil. What pleasure is it to be used as a sounding board if the response is a no interest dead pan look?

Re-training a selfish child is not easy. What is easy is to become irritated early in the conversation. When the adult becomes angry and punishes the lazy child, this only tightens the grip on self. The point is to demonstrate that the child will gain something by engaging the listener in a whole other perspective. He will gain information he can use. He will get to laugh. He will know someone better.

When listening to the selfish child, the adult needs to ask questions that bring second and third people into what the selfish child is talking about. "What did Roberta think when you...?" "What do you think Roberta thought when you...?" "Don't you wonder what Roberta thought when you...?" "Is there something wrong with what Roberta might have thought when you...?

By bringing to the selfish lazy child's attention that there are other points of view, and that those points of view are indeed interesting, and do this over and over and over again, the hope is that this conversational training will produce a more outgoing less selfish child.

Bringing to the selfish lazy child's attention that he or she is responsible in the "care" of the conversation, and not just the "use" of the conversation for his or her own needs is tantamount in training someone who can communicate well.

When you hear an adult who is a "babbler" speak, it's a mile a minute about self, and there is little if any need for a listener. You get the impression that if you suddenly turned into a life sized poster it would be OK. This is what we want to avoid with our children. This motor mouth is really quite dull and grasping, and we could all name a few adults who were allowed to be lazy about others and selfish about self.

The child who rattles on and on without a break needs to be told quite abruptly that this is not allowed. "Stop," says the loving parent. "Rachel, who are you speaking to?" This question is often met with confusion. "Are you speaking WITH me or are you using me to rattle off your stream of consciousness? I am a person and it is now MY turn!"

Teaching conversational skills means turning off all the audios in the room and sitting down with a child and really engaging him in conversation. It doesn't have to be long. Parents need to expect a decent response that should grow in time. Expect him to exchange ideas with you. He can go first, but he is expected to ask about the listeners. It's called taking turns. It's called conversation. The rattle is called monologue.

Selfishness is all about me. And in a world as small and filled as we find ours, we need to lesson the selfishness and the laziness in our children for their sakes.