Neurodivergence

What you're referring to is called 'active listening'.

It's demonstrating via body language and/or vocalising that the speaker has your attention. It can go further to demonstrating you understand what's being said but that's not always the case.

No one is ND in my household as far as I'm aware, but I did have a similar issue with my partner. When he speaks to me, I put down my phone or book, or pause/mute the TV, look at him and make eye contact and at the very least make 'mm' noises, or 'really?' 'wow' 'huh' 'ok' or paraphrase what he's said to either confirm or demonstrate I understand him. It's how I was brought up. It's how I function at work.

He does none of those things and will get annoyed if I stop taking and ask if he's listening. He always says he is, but gives absolutely no visual or audible signs that he is.

So it became a point of contention in our relationship. For me what he was doing was rude. I felt stupid talking into the void with no response. Whereas he said he didn't feel that responding was necessary.

My first approach was passive aggression, I'm not proud to say. I started doing exactly what he was doing when I spoke to him. He haaaaaated it. Kept pausing to ask if I was listening. Got to the point where he'd pick up the remote and pause what I was watching before he started talking to me. It was ridiculous on both our parts and caused a tonne of fights. But the one positive was that I could say to him 'do you know how rude I felt behaving that way? Did it feel rude to you? Why? Surely you're not knowingly being rude to me?'

Anyway, the penny dropped. Now he knows he has to give me a perfunctory grunt when I start speaking to indicate he's listening. And honestly that's enough for me. If it's a serious issue or I need his input (so I'm not just rambling about something funny I read or venting about work), I'll pause, he'll notice and he'll drop whatever he's doing to give me attention.

So that's all to say, if the person genuinely is listening, they may just need to be told that they're creating frustration for both of you, and it's perceived as rude. That all they have to do is make a sound of acknowledgment. That more will be expected from them in the workplace and now might be a good time to start practicing. YMMV with ND but it's a worthwhile conversation.

Linguistics has the term backchanneling to describe verbal ways in which a listener can engage with a speaker to signal that they are listening. The most common affirmations that fall into this category are sounds like "mhm", "uhuh", or simple affirming words like "yes" or "I see". But there's a whole slew of ways you can signal this which are more complicated, such as rhetorical questions such as "really?" in response to content that is surprising or repeating some of the content back at the speaker like "he did not!"

If you're looking to step your response game up, there's a concept known as "active listening" which incorporates some of the ideas of backchanneling into more complex ideas as well as taking some of the more well studied psychology of intimacy and relationships. It's a framework or structure for listening to somebody and to show that you are listening by synthesizing and repeating some of the information back at the speaker. As an aside this helps to reduce any issues with comprehension or miscommunication as the act of synthesizing and repeating the data back at the speaker using different words can often trigger the speaker to clarify in ways they may have failed to do or highlight that you understood something differently than they expected the information they presented to be parsed.

Maybe, when nobody is trying to have a discussion, and everyone is feeling fairly neutral & not preoccupied, you could let your sibling know that the sounds which might be acknowledgement can be misinterpreted as frustration. Acknowledge that you appreciate they might not be frustration, but that you'd like some clues to tell when they are actually frustrated or disinterested in engaging, so the Elders can develop a more useful sense of how to continue. Continuing might involve insistence or boundaries, but could equally involve leaving your sibling be or finding some other approach.

As an aside, you sound very loving & I really admire your determination to find a way to help your family communicate more effectively & with less aggravation. You make your family sound very cool.

I'm coming at this from a lens of hypervigilance and mirror/model behaviors, so I hope this is helpful and am apologetic if it isn't.

There's a certain range of engagement between parties in a conversation that feels "right" to many people. Sometimes that engagement from the listener comes in the form of eye contact, facial expressions, or body positions - or in the slight changes in each of those signalling devices. Most people are more highly attuned to noticing one of these than the others, separate from how well they perceive or interpret these signals overall. There could be a number of ways for your sibling to signal that they're listening - occasionally nodding their head, making eye contact at times, allowing how they're feeling to show on their face, or just small comments like 'yes', 'no', 'okay', or 'uh-huh'.

For me, learning how to perform these smaller tasks as a listener made these kinds of interactions easier overall - I could spend a small fraction of my bandwidth getting the information I needed without having to spend the energy on an argument, especially one about whether I was listening. If your sibling gets frustrated when they are questioned about listening, framing it as a way to prevent their own frustration may be a way forward.

I wish you the best of luck

Back when I took my Anthropology class, one of the things we covered (briefly) was different styles of communicating and how the unrecognized differences between those styles causes stress and frustration between different styles. My professor said the classic example were the stereotypical differences between men and women in American culture, as evidenced in the classic complaints "my husband never listens to me!" and "my wife is always changing her mind!"

There are people who communicate that they're listening: they nod their head, they said "uhm-hmm", make eye contact, etc. And there are people who ... don't. When a person who does this style of communication doesn't get that feedback, they feel unheard and get frustrated. And when a person who doesn't do that style of feedback receives that feedback, they think the other person is agreeing with them, so they're blindsided and frustrated when the other person 'changes their mind'.

I'd suggest explaining this communication difference style to your sibling, because while it's a frustrating thing to your family right now, I've no doubt that your sibling finds (or will find) being on the other side of the divide just as frustrating.

I'd also explain that for some people, making or maintaining eye contact can be difficult, but you can get away with looking at people's chins or ears; and if even that's difficult, that's fine, but then other means of communicating that you're listening (nodding, going "uhn-hunh" or whatever) becomes even more important.

I don't know if this is happening in this situation, but sometimes I get into a place where I really can't do like, the whole interacting with people thing. It's not that I can't or even won't talk, but it ends up getting stressful when I feel like people are demanding that my attention focus in a particular place, especially if they're not getting to the point.

I don't mean this in like a motivational sense of just not liking talking to people or being irritable, it feels physically uncomfortable. My muscles tighten, my skin gets prickly, the world shifts focus and my brain feels like a car stuck between gears with another car behind it blaring the horn demanding that i move immediately.

This is why the words 'we need to talk' are a sure fire bet that I won't be talking to you. It's why I don't do voicemail and why I don't really pick up my phone.

Usually it happens when I'm in the middle of something and am keeping track of something elaborate in my head, or trying to work through some bullshit so I can get back to work. I'm better about setting boundaries and communicating about it now, but I wasn't so much when i was younger, and in the past I'd sometimes totally shut down because of it.

Anyway, if it isn't something like that, maybe just slip some questions in and try not to monologue?

A trick you can use is to say something outrageous and see if they react or not. Like say "I'm gonna take your playstation and sell it on ebay, is that ok?"

And it's also fine in any conversation to occasionally ask "Are you hearing me?" or "Are you following what I'm saying?"