Family Communication

“We can’t communicate!” is the ever-common complaint to people-helpers from families that are not working well. A distraught parent says, “That rotten kid of ours just wants to go hang around McDonalds all night long. He never says anything to us without a sneer.” A rejected wife suffering from urban cabin fever complains, “I have to phone my own husband’s secretary to remind him about my birthday. And then when we go out for dinner, he talks more on his cell phone than to me!” Bad scenarios are numerous. Tragic examples are the content of books, cartoons, sermons, and late-night heartaches and tears.

However, family theorists have a different, less emotive, interpretation of broken communication. They argue that not communicating is a powerful expression of information as well as an editorial comment about the relationship. Not communicating is an effective expression of rejection that has the intended result—rebuffing the other member of the family. We cannot not communicate. In fact, all verbal and behavioral interaction is by definition some sort of powerful and purposeful communication.

All family communication is a message that is communication plus some evaluative comment on the quality of the family relationship (metacommunication). For example, a teenage boy with pitiable acne stutters to his library study partner, who is a Christie Brinkley look-alike, “I need to study for my math test a l-l-little bit l-l-longer. I’m going to come back after dinner. What about you?” She smiles and replies, “I guess I could do some more research on history.” The facts are obvious: both are serious students! The metacommunication is also clear—another opportunity for being in psychosexual proximity has been achieved without rejection. Victory on all counts!

Levels of Communication

There are various message levels of communication. Not every transaction between communicants is intimate. At the least-intimate or most-superficial level of conversation, speaker and listener repeat worn-out but expected clichés. These may be anything from stereotypical greetings (“How ya doin’?”) to preprogrammed discussion to avoid intimacy (for example, talking about the state of the economy or discussing the sermon following a Sunday service). These are clichés because the communication is designed to avoid human contact rather than embrace intimacy. While superficial contact between people does occur, and this may have some value (acknowledging that you are there), these transactions are so predictable as to be exhausting, frustrating and depressing within families. Why? Because the emotional message is You are not worth my commitment to really talking. The metacomment (the comment about the comment) is greater than the comment.

The next level of interpersonal communication is what might be called stranger communication or conversation. It is essentially the exchange of cognitive information (or reporting of facts) without much meaning or emotion. This kind of reporting interchange is typical in business meetings. Families will occasionally choose to suffer with this kind of “facts transmission” rather than face the consequences of an emotional encounter—perhaps anger or blaming. In marriages and families that are lacking in respectful intimacy, much of the communication deteriorates to the level of reporting facts. Couples talk about the kids’ schoolwork, the price of cabbages or the new neighbors down the block. This information might be true and important, but it does not build what is essential to family life. Many therapists, however, recommend that families who persistently fail at communication begin at this fairly inoffensive level. The injunction to “talk like strangers to each other” is good advice to those whose communication spirals down to blaming and hurt.

The next level of communication has to do with expressing one’s values and central emotional convictions. It is much deeper and more powerful than conversation. I remember well talking to my preadolescent daughter about her fears in starting at a new school the following day. In tears, she said, “But Daddy, what if they don’t like me?” Her life was caught up in that brief explosion of worry and dread. Afraid of being left out when she had not yet had the chance of being accepted, she was expressing one of her central emotional convictions—“I need to be loved.” Psychologists talk about the teachable moment in parenting. This is the time when the parent can communicate some essential virtue or value to the child. When a family member is expressing the central value of her life, much emotion is experienced. The communication is palpable. It is the same between husband and wife as well as between the family generations. At this time the most effective communication may be active listening and not talking at all. Attentive listening with a vector to the deep longings of the other is incredibly effective communication!

The deepest level of communication has to do with the personal and emotional commitment of your life to another. In wholesome marriages and families it is the joyful explosion of an unrequired “I love you!” The communion level of communication is also the experience of being accepted by the God who accepts us. No verbal communication goes on—it is more spirit to Spirit. And this communion fills both with joy! Also, the tentative glance of a single mother to her awkward teenager who is caught doing something right and the reluctant smiles that this produces speak of years of communication that can only mean that they have communed many miles together. Communication of this sort is often called communion communication, and it expresses belonging and acceptance.

Digital or Analogic?

Family communication is done in two modes: digital and analogic. Digital communication is verbal and conveys the content of the message. Analogic communication is nonverbal and carries most of the relational aspect of the message. For example, when I was a child, I often asked my father to bring me half an apple when I went to bed. I was not in need of the nourishment; I was not making excuses to stay up late. I was asking my dad, who couldn’t seem to speak his warm emotions, to say what he thought of me. After walking up the nine stairs to my room, he would stand with the door open, silhouetted in the brightness, and place two corners of a green apple carefully into my sleepy hand. He was saying that he loved me, though he could never say it in words. In the morning there was often a bit of browned apple somewhere in my top bunk. Much later, as a married adult with little kids, expecting and anticipating a long drive home following a family get-together, Dad would come out and wipe the road dirt from my car lights. Analogic communication expresses without the use of words acceptance or rejection, hope or despair, confidence or worry and a future with grace or a future of failure.

Target the Heart

In the family and in the church it is important to target our communication well. Blessings and curses are powerful forms of communication. In 1 Cor. 14:3 Paul says that “everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort.” In our family communication we need to be aware that we are constructing the future of our listeners, guaranteeing the outcome of our lives together. We can do this intentionally and effectively by targeting the heart. Communication is always more than the exposition of facts or the persuasive preaching of information. It needs in addition to be a declaration of our commitment and affection one to another. Effective families do more than have superficial conversations (though these, when they occur, are at least a conversation); such families express a wholesome blessing that calls for an imperative response.

For example, when my children were quite little, I would ask them vast existential questions such as “What are you going to be like when you grow up?” Of course, they would answer, “I don’t know, Daddy.” Then I would gaze down my outstretched arm to my pointing finger and say, “I think that I can see.” Inevitably they would gaze off in the horizon of my imagination. What was the vision that only their dad could know? And I would describe a life full of down-to-earth faith and practical romance with God. Theirs would be the pleasure of being fully alive. They would be a wholesome vector making a difference to the world. We would talk about the Holy Spirit sneaking into their lives with special gifts to give to others who needed what they had. I told them about the creativity that it takes to risk failing in the pursuit of God and that success might occur too. I spoke into them that doing well in school was not very important but that doing well in life was really important.

In the family we target the things of the heart. But we also need this quality of communication in the fellowship of the church family. With his church family in Thessalonica Paul says, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us” (1 Thes. 2:8). In both family and church we are conscripted to live emotionally and vulnerably and commitedly with one another, giving ourselves willingly.

Listening Hard and Speaking Hard

Jesus’ last recorded exchange between Peter and Jesus (John 21) is a paradigm for wholesome family communication. Expressiveness is difficult for many of us, and it certainly was for Peter. Peter and some of the other disciples had quit the family business to follow Jesus. Now they were defeated in this venture and returned to fishing. They were depressed and disheartened and felt like failures. As they came to shore, dawn was breaking and they saw Jesus cooking over an open fire. Peter was beside himself with craziness that this dead Savior had come to life again! Clothed, he threw himself into the Sea of Galilee, swimming through his tiredness to be with Jesus. And Jesus asked him three times, “Do you love me?” After each query, Peter replied, “Yes, you know that I love you.”

We are told that Peter was grieved to have had to repeat himself for something that seemed obvious to him. Jesus had a reason for such perseverance. In Matthew 4:4 Jesus said, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Peter had denied Jesus three times and now needed a word that came from the mouth of God. Jesus was giving Peter the opportunity to express his love three times, creating an opportunity for intimate communication. We have no way of knowing whether he asked Jesus for forgiveness. Perhaps, as in the case of the prodigal son, he did not ask for forgiveness because that expressive family affection was all he needed. Peter needed to say that he loved his Lord and to hear that this was sufficient. Because Jesus loved Peter, he created a perfect opportunity for Peter to say that he loved Jesus. With this experience Peter changed from an intimidated coward during Christ’s crucifixion to a fearless witness after Jesus’ ascension. In the same way Jack and Judith Balswick point to the power of family communication: “People struggling today to find intimacy in an impersonal society need to realize that they, too, can change by expressing love” (p. 210).

» See also: Family

» See also: Family Problems

» See also: Family Systems

» See also: Family Values

» See also: Listening

References and Resources

R. Anderson and D. Guernsey, On Being a Family: A Social Theology of the Family (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985); J. O. Balswick and J. K. Balswick, The Family: A Christian Perspective on the Contemporary Home (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989); W. M. Brody, Family Dance: Building Positive Relationships Through Family Therapy (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1977); E. H. Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (New York: Guilford, 1985); R. Richardson, Family Ties That Bind (Vancouver: Self-Counsel Press, 1984); V. Satir, Conjoint Family Therapy (Palo Alto, Calif.: Science & Behavior, 1967).

—Paddy Ducklow