You’ll find me at Amity Mediation Workshop, where we facilitate Divorce, Family, and Civil Meditations.  We also conduct co-parenting psycho-educational sessions that provide divorced co-parents with a tool kit for handling conflict and a safe place to learn new ways to communicate with each other. We help co-parents discover the Co-Parenting Partnership Type that is right for their circumstances and set them on a path toward building a stable future, rather than be stuck rehashing the past.

by Jamie C. Williamson, PhD

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A new school year is a perfect time to refresh your approach to parenting and renew the way you interact with your kids. As kids grow and change, your family communication patterns should change, too.

Back-to-school means back-to-routines for children and their parents or caregivers. In anticipation of this annual change, insightful parents adjust their family routines based on their children’s age, disposition, and learning needs. Bedtimes, homework, extracurricular activities, chores, screen time, friend time, meal times, and family time all get adjusted to match a growing child’s needs.

Establishing routines and expectations helps to decrease stress and create a smooth, predictable family life. So, this is all good….Probably even necessary for healthy child development and parental sanity.

Families also benefit when parents and caregivers review the way they interact with their children and make similar age-appropriate adjustments in family communication patterns involving parental encouragement of two-way conversation and parental expectations for conformity of attitudes and values.

Family Communication Patterns

Conformity Orientation denotes the degree to which children are expected to obey their parents without question and express similar attitudes, beliefs, and values. High Conformity families express similar attitudes, beliefs, and values and try to avoid conflict. So, they seem harmonious. But, may not be under the surface. Low Conformity family members express highly divergent attitudes, beliefs, and values and do not shy away from conflict. So, these families seem discordant. But, may actually be more supportive of each other differences than high conformity family members.

Conversation Orientation designates the degree to which parents and children openly express their differing points of view and remain supportive of each other in the process. High Conversation families encourage members to discuss issues and alternative attitudes, beliefs, and values. Low Conversation families discourage (and often sanction) voicing divergent opinions and refrain from open discussion. Instead, children are expected to think like their parents and do as they are told, without question.

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With Conversation Orientation and Conformity Orientation in mind, Ascan Koerner and Mary Ann Fitzpatrick identified four types of families, which I have depicted in the “Types of Families” graphic below.

1. Protective Families are low in conversation and high in conformity. They avoid conflict and emphasize the importance of agreement among members, but engage in little communication about issues. They expect children to obey their parents without asking challenging questions (except the ubiquitous “why”, of course).
2. Consensual Families are high in conversation and high in conformity. They encourage (or at least tolerate) open communication about issues but parents still seek (and often expect) their child’s agreement on important values.
3. Pluralistic Families are high in conversation and low in conformity. They encourage members to appropriately express different points of view and openly engage in communication, while remaining supportive of each other.
4. Laisser-faire Families are low in conversation and low in conformity. They avoid communicating with each other, encourage privacy, and adopt a “do what you want” approach to conflict resolution.

Create Age-Appropriate Family Communication Patterns

Some relationship scholars argue that none of these four family communication patterns are better or more productive than the other types, saying “what works for some families will not work for another family”.

But I disagree.

My research on family conflict, my experience helping families solve problems, and my university-level teaching have convinced me that children need to learn how to formulate their own attitudes, beliefs, and values and express their opinions in a civilized manner before becoming adults.

And, I believe the best way for children to develop moral reasoning and learn to express themselves appropriately and effectively is through age-appropriate interaction at home

In fact, I’ve numbered the Family Communication Patterns 1-2-3 in the order that is likely to work best for most children as they move from pre-school through high school, with parents determining the appropriate pace of skill development for their child.

(Please note that I have intentionally left out #4 Laisser-fair Families because this family structure seems inappropriate for school-age children. The Laisser-fair approach ignores the interdependence of people who share a history, space, and life together, so it is likely to be dysfunctional for an all-adult family, as well).

Here is your challenge:

As part of crafting your new back-to-school routines, review these Family Communication Patterns with your parenting partner, whether you live together or not. Think about which combination of conversation and conformity is appropriate for your child’s age, temperament, and learning needs. Then plan time in your new routines that encourage the family interaction you believe is appropriate for you and your child. If your children are old enough, let them participate in the decisions about how your family will balance conversation and conformity this school year.

You can “work it out” together. Let me know if I can help.

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I am a Florida Supreme Court Certified Family Mediator and Gottman Methods Couples Counselor.  You’ll find me at Amity Mediation Workshop, a mediation practice specializing in “friendly divorce” mediation and family mediation, as well as Marriage Revitalization and Family Dynamics Mediation for families of all configurations.  Family Dynamics Mediation re-calibrates communication among family members in a way that restores amity in your home.

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By Jamie C. Williamson, PhD

Happy people have figured out that it is not happiness that makes you grateful, it is gratefulness that makes you happy.

So, the trick to having a Happy Thanksgiving is simple: “Just Be Grateful” and, like this cornucopia, your holiday will be overstuffed with joyful thanks and generous giving.

Easier said than done, right?

After all, even David Steindle-Rast –  who coined the phrase “if you want to be happy, be grateful” – admits that obviously people cannot be grateful for everything.

Life happens.

Betrayal, hurt, disappointment, job loss, violence, death, disease, and family dysfunction are real. They cannot and should not be blithely ignored. They must be confronted, head on. And, time for acceptance and healing must be allowed. But, these misfortunes also must be kept in perspective. They are a part of life, not the whole of it.

So, in the face of life’s oh-so-real heartaches and stressors, how do you keep the pithy and affirming “Just Be Grateful” slogan from being trite and tiresome like “Just Say No” and turn it into something powerful and effective like “Just Do It”?

Consider this:

In his TED-Talk David Steindle-Rast suggests that the secret to being happy is not being grateful for everything that happens, but being grateful for each moment we are given.

Thinking this way, each moment becomes an opportunity to celebrate, to forgive, to understand to reconnect, to stand up, to love, to laugh, to let go, to welcome in, and to learn.

To “Just Be Grateful” we need to recognize the opportunities each moment provides us. But moments are fleeting and clouded by our feelings of loss, distrust, sickness, and hurt. How do we break through these emotional clouds and accept the moment we are given for the gift that it is?

Brother David suggests we adopt the “Stop, Look and Go with it” approach. And, it works for me, with a few modifications – today using the Thanksgiving Holiday as an example – I offer my Five Step Path to “Just Be Grateful”:

1. IDENTIFY WHAT IS TROUBLING YOU. What about Thanksgiving keeps you from being grateful? The preparation and work? The uncertainty of other’s behavior? The dread of dealing with your former spouse? Missing a loved one? The threat to your weight-loss goals? Loneliness?

2. CREATE STOP SIGNS. What physical sign or symbol can you put in place that keeps you focused on the moment of opportunity and not what is threatening you? Instead of drifting mindlessly into thinking about overeating, your Uncle’s political rantings, your co-parent’s faults, or your husband’s indifference to your hard work, create your own version of a STOP sign around your home that keeps you and yours focused on the initial purpose of a day of Thanksgiving. This will help you notice Thanksgiving Day as the special moment that it is, despite your concerns.  Here’s mine:

3. LOOK FOR THE OPPORTUNITY AND DEFINE IT YOURSELF. Does Thanksgiving Day give you the opportunity to apologize? To forgive? To reconnect? To be supportive? To show self-discipline? To abandon grudges? To embrace new family members? To show respect for your family elders? To honor those who have passed? To create new traditions? To help others feel included. To show your kids that you still care about their dad? To help less -fortunate others? To order in, stress less, and have more fun?

4. GO FOR IT! Act to take advantage of the opportunity you have been given. Claim the moment as yours. Act genuinely out of a sense of your newly defined purpose for the moment. Be grateful for this chance to learn, grow, make amends, support, show kindness, have fun, or make peace.

5. BE HAPPY.  Keep repeating steps 1-4 and you’ll get there.  It really is that simple.

President Abraham Lincoln seems to have understood the power of the “Just Be Grateful” philosophy when he created our national Thanksgiving Day holiday.

In the United States, Thanksgiving Day has two officially proclaimed purposes: To remind Americans of the need to thank God (however you envision God to be) for our “bountiful blessings” and to encourage prayer for the “full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and unity”.

With humility, I’ve taken the liberty to paraphrase President Lincoln’s October 3, 1863 official (and rather wordy) Proclamation that established a national day of “thanksgiving and praise”. The announcement was written by then Secretary of State William Seward and signed by President Lincoln just a few weeks after significant Union victories forecasted the near end of the Civil War. Although the idea of a formal day of Thanksgiving had been around in various forms for 200 years, Lincoln was the first president to establish a national day of thanksgiving.

He did it to help unify the American family, torn apart by years of war and conflict.

Like Lincoln, you, too, could use Thanksgiving Day as the mechanism to work toward your own happiness and toward enhanced peace and harmony among your immediate and extended family members.

To claim this opportunity, follow the five step path to “Just Be Grateful”.

If your desire for family amity has been gestating for a while, I hope this Five Step Path to Gratefulness will fill you and yours with happiness one moment at a time.  Identify what’s troubling you, create stop signs, claim each moment for something good, act and go for the joy, peace, harmony, tranquility and unity you can create in those moments.

Before you know it “Just Be Grateful” will be your new philosophy of life. And, then just watch what happens to those around you – this affirming way of life is contagious.

Share this post with people you care about that need to learn how gratefulness creates happiness and that, surprisingly enough, you can be in control of what you do with your moments of opportunity, not the other way around. Try to Work it Out  together.

And, let me know if I can help.

You’ll find me at Amity Mediation Workshop where we embrace the “Just Be Grateful” philosophy and do Family Dynamics Mediation that can make your house feel like home again.

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