Thank you Keith, I loved the hopefulness inherent in this piece. Yes, people like to be heard and being given the chance to elaborate can get them to say more of what they want to say. As graduate in Speech, we used a technique called Paraphrasing, which was less obvious than simply repeating the last few words of the last statement. As your wife did, the person can usually recognize a pattern. Paraphrasing is a more difficult task that puts the statements into different words, really seems to say that you have been listening.