Because what family members know about each other’s life experience depends mostly on what they tell each other, communication is what it takes to keep everyone adequately informed. Insufficient sharing of information, using spoken language to careless or deceitful effect, “misreading” the other person’s mind, can cause misunderstanding and estrangement in families. Thus every conflict provides an opportunity for needed communication to occur. Think of it this way.
When family members are in conflict, it means that something within them or between them is worth talking about. Not talking about things that bother them creates tension in the form of silent discomfort between parent and out of control teenagers. The relationship becomes strained or abrasive until what is being withheld is finally declared and discussed. The ten-year-old admits that the reason he has been hard to talk to is that he has been lying about keeping up with his homework. He feels fearful of being found out. Or the parent admits, “The reason I’ve been fussing at you about not wasting food and money is that there have been changes at work and I’m worried about losing my job.” Conflict can be informative.
Disagreement offers two opposing ways of considering the same issue. Clothes that a teenager thinks look “cool” can seem scandalous to her parents. Exchanging opinions allows each party to see the other person’s point of view and be informed by that perspective. Conflict has an upside if the participants are willing to learn from each other, and if they can put aside power struggles and instead address the questions that conflicts are always really about.
Ongoing uncertainty about what is going on within each other and in each other’s lives is what keeps us gathering information. Questions are a primary communication tool to satisfy our abiding curiosity. Ignorance about each other cannot be avoided, but we can only tolerate so much. When that curiosity cannot be satisfied and uncertainty about what the other person is thinking or feeling rules, a serious exposure to conflict is created.
Inadequate communication between family members creates a variety of problems: misunderstanding, estrangement, distrust, suspicion, and insecurity, among others. I see it often in family counseling: More conflict results from what people do not communicate than from what they do, from “shutting up” instead of “speaking up.” Open discussion has a chance of creating understanding, but ignorance allows a host of false assumptions to grow.
A major function of verbal communication for family members is to reduce the abiding ignorance between them. Exchanging honest information about our feelings and thoughts and behaviors, family members stay connected.
In families, ignorance about each other is the continuing problem that communication is meant to overcome. This problem is ongoing because no matter how much you and your children know about each other today, tomorrow brings new experiences and perspectives. It takes an enormous investment in communication to keep a family functioning together as a unit, to keep everyone “on the same page” and “in the know.” Of course, this knowledge is only as good as it is true, which is why so many family conflicts are about determining what the truth really is.