Empathetic listening skills in particular impacted one family, changing how the parents responded to their daughter's mistakes. The parents chose to encourage their daughter for her efforts instead of scolding and blaming her for her failures. This change in behavior enabled the parents to better "nurture, protect, and guide" their child.
“One of my daughters was being scolded and blamed everyday by my wife and the rest of my family for her repeated mistakes. However, I could see this method to correct her was not the right way; I saw no improvement at all. I told them not to scold her but we should try to understand and find out what was the reason behind her mistakes. I explained to them all about the situation she would find and how hard she worked for the family. They gradually changed the way of thinking towards her and she was being encouraged on and on. This is a good example of practicing the lesson from CCMT.”
Another case reflected that the CCMT lessons on avoidance encouraged him in his previous conviction to allow time and space for strong emotions to calm down, thus allowing the children to experience nurture and protection in the home rather than fear due to parental conflicts.
“Since I was a child, I talked to myself never to behave over the children as my parents did. That's why while I argued with my wife; I never let my children know. I pretended to go to the farm or did something else to overcome it."
Similar stories were included in the 2009 evaluation. One father spoke about how he was transformed: in the past, he would have responded with violence (“hitting”) but now he responded by listening.
#8
My 5-year old son killed a baby chick and hid it under a bowl. When my wife came home she found it and was furious- yelling and screaming and wanting to know who had killed it. Of course none of the children wanted to admit it because they feared getting beaten. A few hours later my young son came to find me and said, “Pa, there is something I want to tell you but please don’t tell Ma.” I knew what he was going to say but I just waited and said, “What is it?” “I killed the chick. I was just playing with it and I don’t know why but it just died. Please don’t tell.” In the past I would have punished him by hitting him or bringing him right to his mother for punishment but that time, I thanked him for telling the truth and told him that he wouldn’t be beaten and that I’d need to tell his mom but would wait until later when I was sure she would be less angry and I would also tell her how sad he was and how fearful he was to tell her the truth. “In the future,” I asked, “will you play roughly with a baby chick?” “No,” he replied. And when I asked why and he said because he didn’t want his mother to hit him, I said to him, “No, let the reason for not playing too roughly be that you have to be gentler, not that you may get in trouble for doing something wrong.”
These changes are even more significant when one considers that CCMT does not directly teach on any aspects of parenting.
