Jan 22 2009
Communication
I remember when I was young, sitting around the table after dinner, and talking with my dad; my mom finally getting up to do the dishes while my sister and I kept dad talking by asking question after question. He was great. He would take the time to explain things that we didn’t understand, or at least try to explain, all the while; mom was doing the dishes that my sister and I were supposed to do. Don’t worry we didn’t get away with this too often, but even every once in a while is needed. I think about my family now, my dinning room table is a catch all. If we all eat dinner at once, it’s a miracle and a holiday if it’s at the table. When I was growing up, the only time we didn’t eat dinner together was when we were teenagers, and we were eating out with friends; if we were home, dinner was together; and if you weren’t hungry? You still had to sit at the table, so you might as well take a little something. I’m sure there are still a lot of families that maintain this ritual, but I know there are a great deal of those who don’t. I could come up with a bunch of excuses as to why, like we don’t work a normal schedule or the kids’ schedules with sports and all is too erratic, but the truth of the matter is, I was never very domestic. One of the first things I told David (my husband) when we got together, (one of those rules) was, “I cook for a living, I don’t cook for myself, I’ll be damned if I’m going to cook for you. But I do know where all the BK’s and McDonald’s are”.
Sometimes I miss that “family dinner”. I know there are still families out there who all sit down at once to eat their meals, but I know quite a few that don’t. Sometimes I think that this is one thing that has led to losing communication amongst the family unit. Other things become more important than talking. Watching TV, playing on the computer or video games, all these things seem to take priority in our lives, and the communication goes away.
We have to realize just how important communication is. We need it to be able to understand what the other is feeling and thinking. If we stop communicating with our partners, or if we don’t even start, how can we expect to stay together? We can’t just co-exist, we have to tell each other how we are feeling, how we perceive things that are going on, even how we expect or hope that something will happen or not happen. In too many relationships, one just sits there, not saying anything, and then gets upset when things don’t go their way. But because you didn’t say which way you wanted them to go, how can you expect them to go that way?
