All families experience times of conflict. As long as these times are managed wisely and resolution is achieved, family conflict is nothing to be concerned about. However, if conflict occurs frequently, usually turns into something resembling World War 3 or you are generally unable to reach a satisfactory outcome, it is vital to find the causes of your conflicts and determine to deal with them come what may.

Some years ago I heard about research (involving close to 20,000 families) that was conducted in an effort to discover what people believe constitutes a strong family.

The 6 major qualities were identified as follows:
1: Commitment
2: Appreciation and affection
3: Effective communication
4: Quality time spent together
5: Successful stress and crisis management
6: Spiritual unity

A few hints on how this might work:

Commitment is:
* A promise and decision of significance and lasting value.
* Hanging in there when the going gets tough.
* Walking life’s journey together through thick and thin.
* Supporting family members when they are having a rough time.

Appreciation and affection are:
* Caring deeply for all family members and expressing this frequently.
* Showing family members through our actions how much they mean to us.
* Being available to and showing respect for all family members in good times and in bad.
* Physical demonstrations our love.

Effective communication is: a two-way street that has a number of components. It requires an ability to verbalise our thoughts and feelings in a non-threatening way and a willingness to listen in a way that lets others know they’ve been heard and understood. It requires an openness to others’ experience, an ability to acknowledge their opinions (whether we share them or not), a tolerance for differences and, last but not least, the courage to deal with conflict. These components can be specified as follows:

* Careful listening - We listen carefully when we focus all our attention (physically and emotionally) on the speaker (our partner/child/ren or anyone else). This means that we don’t glance over the top of our newspaper (or worse, continue reading it), we don’t fidget, turn our back, interrupt, assume that we’ve heard all of the message after hearing the first two words, leap into problem solving mode as soon as we think we’ve got the gist of the message, pretend we’re listening when we aren’t etc.

* Understanding - We understand (and the speaker will feel understood) when he or she knows that we’ve not only heard the words they’ve spoken, but also get the gist of what they are aiming to express. Thus hearing and understanding often are two different things. If we listen carefully we may hear the actual words that were spoken. Unless we hear with a “third ear”, we won’t necessarily have understood. Hearing with the magical third ear means comprehending the context of the communication, paying close attention to the speaker’s body language, checking whether what we believe we’ve heard is actually what the speaker has been saying.

* Acknowledging – We acknowledge the speaker’s message by allowing it to be whatever it is. Whether we like it, dislike it, agree with it or perhaps think it’s utter gobble-de-gook, we simply accept it for what it is. Everyone has a right to their opinion, whether the listener considers it accurate or not. There is no law that says that the speaker (whether it be our partner, child or anyone else for that matter) has to agree with us. If we could always remember this very pertinent truth, we’d have nowhere near as much conflict in our lives.

Quality time spent together:
We spend time with whom and on what we value. A thousand words won’t be as effective as quality time spent together...
Spending time with our family says: “I enjoy your company”, “I want to be with you”, “You are more important to me than my golf buddies”
If, however, they – or anything/anyone else - take precedence over our loved ones and usually come first, the message our family receives is loud and clear and it’s a very painful message – others matter more!!

Remember: “Families who play together, stay together!”

Successful stress and crisis management:
None of us can escape the stresses of the world we live in, but some families deal much better with them than others. Families that manage stress more effectively are usually headed by a couple who: * Have a strong and committed relationship.
* Have strong values.
* Are good role models for their children.
* Have firm, but flexible family boundaries.
* Have realistic expectations.
* Have good conflict resolution skills.

Spiritual Unity:
Spirituality can be a great bonding agent. Spirituality, whilst meaning different things to different people, usually is focused on a power that is greater than us. Spending time together in discussing, exploring and communing with our Higher Power can be a great foundation for family unity. It can be the basis of our value system and provide the guidelines by which we lead our families.

 

© Sonja Ridden 2004
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