Techniques are for training

Why communication skills need to become second nature

She’s upset. But I’m not sure about what.

I’m sitting on the floor with my three-year-old daughter, and it’s been a long day for both of us.

I want to get this right.

So I reach for what I know how to do. Reflecting her feelings back to her. Asking supportive questions. Everything that normally makes such a difference in my parenting.

She suddenly walks away and hugs her mom.

Only then did I notice it: in trying to get it right, I wasn’t really with her. I was falling back on what I’d been taught instead of responding naturally.

Kids show you the way

Connection depends on attention.

Because I was thinking about how to communicate perfectly—grasping for tools and techniques—I didn’t have my full attention on my daughter.

I recognize the feeling from early in my coaching career, fresh out of training.

For the first time without instructors or feedback, I leaned heavily on technique. Preparing questions. Following frameworks. Trying to “provide value” and do it right. I didn’t start actually coaching until I stopped doing that.

Young kids are simply the first to expose this.

They notice your tone, your posture, your attention. They feel whether you’re actually with them, or whether part of you is busy trying to manage the moment.

That urge usually comes from feeling pressured, not lack of care. In those moments, it’s easy to slip out of relating.

While you’re still thinking about how to communicate, they’ve already sensed that your attention is divided—and they show you clearly what’s going on.

Forget techniques

The problem isn’t learning communication techniques—I think every parent should. It’s reaching for them in the wrong situations.

They’re not meant to be applied in the moment. They’re meant to change the person who practices them long before the moment ever arrives.

What I learned in coaching wasn’t a set of tools to use, but a way of becoming someone different in conversation: more empathic, more attuned, more available.

Most of the time, that makes my relationship with my daughter feel simple and surprisingly effortless.

Over time, practice builds an attitude. A way of being. A belief about the other person that lives underneath the words we use.

That attunement is what I temporarily lost in the moment with my daughter, and luckily, she reminded me.

Techniques are meant to be used—and then lost.

Train yourself

Usually, parenting doesn’t feel like technique to me at all.

It feels simple. I’m with my daughter. I listen. I respond. I’m myself. There’s very little friction.

That ease didn’t come from knowing the right things to say. It came from years of practice shaping how I show up, so that in the moment, there’s nothing to reach for.

Like a jazz musician practicing scales so they can make music on stage. Their hands know where to go. They can listen, respond, and actually play.

Communicating and relating works the same way. In parenting or anywhere else.

Techniques are for training. Your presence is what remains.

And that’s what kids respond to.