“We don't ever talk anymore. All we do is exchange information.” I hear this complaint more and more in family counseling sessions. Communication is confined to schedule planning. Busy schedules prohibit family members from finding opportunities to share their hopes, dreams, and needs. Conversations with children tend to more closely resemble performance evaluations at a corporate meeting rather than “heart-to-hearts.” And when it comes to husbands and wives having time to talk, as one client of mine put it, “I think I have a husband, I'm just not sure where I put him — or what he looks like.”
This problem afflicts all families. But those that recognize that families are meant to be “schools of love” try to maintain a healthy dialog about each family member’s hopes, dreams and needs. These families tend to understand that life is about more than what's on the schedule for today. They recognize that every interaction between family members is another opportunity to help each other grow in love, confidence, security and inner peace.
If your family is struggling to find ways to interact on a deeper level; to achieve greater rapport and more meaningful, loving communication, the following tips might offer you a good place to start.
Develop a Family Mission Statement
Developing a “family mission statement” (i.e. the values, ideals, and goals for which your family stands and toward which your family is working) can be a huge help to generating meaningful discussion. For example, once your family explicitly states that you want to be “a household of love,” or that you are seeking to pursue unity, wisdom and understanding, then you have some weighty issues to discuss. What choices does that compel you to make? If you were going to be more loving toward one another, what would you have to do? How do each of you find meaning in the everyday events of your lives?
Getting the kids involved in this discussion is an essential and eye-opening process. To get things started, ask them what they like about other families they know and how your family might incorporate some of these benefits. You might also wish to use this opportunity to talk about such virtues as charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity, and what living these out more fully in your family would mean. Share your struggles to live out your mission statement over dinner or during a regularly scheduled family time. Take turns asking each other “What could I do to be a better example of the ideals our family stands for?” The intimate conversations which result from such questions will help your family become what it is, an instrument for perfecting each other.
Besides clarifying your family mission statement, there are three other simple ways to make communication more meaningful in your home-life.
Ask Specific, Open-Ended Questions
You need to stay away from yes or no questions. “Did you have a good time at school today?” is a polite enough query, but you'll be lucky to get more than a grunt in response as your child makes his or her way to the fridge. Instead, try to ask open-ended questions, i.e., questions that can't be answered with a simple yes or no. The rule of thumb is the more specific an open-ended question, the better.
The following are examples of common open-ended questions that are just too vague to elicit any good information.
Parent: “What did you learn in school today?”
Child: “Nothing.”
Wife: “How was work today?”
Husband: “Fine.”
Compare the above to the more specific, open-ended questions which follow.
Parent to child: “So you've been studying the Civil War in your History class. What battles have you guys covered?”
One spouse to another: “Tell me about that (thing) you've been working on.”
Asking questions in this sends the message that you are paying attention and that you care. It is not uncommon for me to talk to an adolescent who says, “My parents don't care about what I do.” When I share this with the parents, they typically say, “How can Joey think that? We ask him every day about what's going on in his life. He usually says, ‘nothing.’ How am I supposed to respond to that?”
These parents do mean well, and to be fair, they have a point — children need to try a bit too. But an important part of adolescence is playing “hard to get.” On the one hand, this protects the adolescent's boundaries as he seeks an identity separate from his family's. On the other hand, he is also saying to his parent, “If you really cared, you would ask more than the obligatory, polite questions.”
Children, especially adolescents, despise hypocrisy. Rightly or wrongly, they often experience polite questions about their day as the parent's way of appearing to care while not investing the energy it would take to really care. The child's attitude is, “I'll give you the insincere response your insincere question invites.” But when parents take the time to ask specific, open-ended questions, the child cannot mistake the parent's sincerity and often responds in kind.
Really Listen
Alex was frustrated about his son's school performance. I suggested he talk to his son about the situation and let me know what happened in the following session. The following week, Alex told me, “I talked to him. I told him that if he didn't pull it together, he was going to have to repeat the year at school, and if that happened he could do it at the public school because I wasn't about to pay for a second year in eighth grade at Catholic school.” When I asked what the child had to say about all this, Alex responded, “He just shrugged. But he looked really upset with himself. I think I got through this time.”
Of course, Alex had no way of knowing whether or not he had gotten through to his son. He didn't know if his “intervention” was effective because he never took the time to listen. Too often, we assume that our children need us to light a fire under them when what they really need is for us to kindle the fire of love in them — by listening.
When I sent Alex home to try again, he had this to say: “I told Coy that even though I meant the things I said, I was sorry for not listening to him. I asked him to tell me what was going on. He said that the other kids were giving him a hard time and it was difficult to pay attention in class. At first I thought he was just making excuses, but when I talked to his teacher about it, she agreed. There's a new boy in his class who's making a point of tormenting Coy and he doesn't know how to respond.”
Alex was able to work with both his son and his son's teacher to address the problem, but this would never have happened had Alex not given his son a chance to talk, and then taken the trouble to check out the story.
There is a lesson here for all of us. There's nothing wrong with an occasional lecture, but make sure that you have taken the trouble to listen first.
Work Together
Most real communication goes on while families are working side-by-side on various projects. Make a point of doing household chores and service projects together. For example, you might decide that the whole family will work together to clean the house and do various chores on one particular day every week. Not only does this teach important living skills to your children, but it also provides ample opportunities to pass the time by talking about your lives, asking for advice from one another, and offering support to one another.
Likewise, if you feel that it is important to give back to your community, think about what your family could do as a team. Instead of Dad working at the parish food bank, mom serving in the women's club, Johnny going to Boy Scouts, and Jenny working as a candy-striper, why don't all of you pick one project to work on together? Individual service projects and activities are wonderful, but not if they hinder family cohesion and intimacy. Building love and rapport in your family is your first and most important work. Everything else is gravy.
The family is like a “privileged community.” Begin exercising the privileges of membership in your family by spending time talking to, and not at, each other.
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