Feedback in Family Communication --- Supportiveness

There is also a doubt within myself. Why I tend to share my life with my best friends instead of my parents? I know that I love them very much, but I just do not feel like to talk with them, especially about my problems.Last week, when I was reading about how to give feedback, I had a "a-ha" moment about this question. I believe that part of the reason lies in the way I received and gave feedback in my early childhood.

According to Block's book, feedback need to be deliberately designed in order to be acceptable and constructive. The way that information is organized, the language chosen to deliver the information and the attitude of both sides determines how useful the feedback could be.In family communication, especially when parents give feedback to child, it is very important to make sure that the feedback is well-designed and well-delivered.

In many cases of family communication,  parents do not necessarily emphasize the positive feedback about what the child had done well. On the contrary, they tend to focus on the problems and the way to fix it. Also, since family members are so close to each other, there is little consideration for the organization of language. With insufficient awareness of how to give feedback to child about what he hasn't done very well, the feedback experience could be painful and ineffective for both the parents and the child. If this keeps happening, the desire for communication will decrease, which leads to estrangedness.

There are several key characters of good feedback. First and foremost, it should be supportive. This deals with the level of emotion, where the listener decide if she wants to listen to the giver. Th willingness to listen and accept is crucial. If the listener chooses to ignore the feedback, no matter how well-designed the rest of the feedback is, it won't have any impact. It is the giver's responsibility to show the listener that he intends to help. Once this message is successfully conveyed,  the listener is more likely to be open to the feedback. Also, there is a case of trust that is built throughout time. If the trust is not reinforced through each feedback, it will get harder to convince the listens that the feedback will be supportive.

Supportiveness was one of the problems in the communication between me and my father. Although I am very clear about how much he loves me and wants to help me, his feedback was not necessarily convey supportiveness. Sometimes when he yelled at me about some trifles, I could tell that he was just upset about something else. When this happened, I didn't feel supported, because I though he was just complaining about everything he saw to vent his anger. Consequentially, when responding to his words, I show no support, neither, but just reflect the anger. Since this kind of situations keep repeating, the trust between us decreased.

It always takes much longer to rebuild trust than to damage it. Therefore, in the very beginning, both the parents and the child need to realize the significance to be supportive and show it to each other by expressing the genuine concern of each others' welfare. The good thing is that my father and I have better control of our emotion now, and have become more skillful to express out opinions in a supportive manner. As a result, we have a better relationship now and I begin to regain the trust in him. This definitely help me listen to his words more carefully.

(to be continue)