Family

I’m not so sure what really make's my family “unique”, we are who we are and to me it’s pretty normal. Then again I’ve lived like this for 23 years so to others it might not be so normal.

As another holiday comes and goes so does one of the many gatherings for dinner at my house. It’s always the same, moms in the kitchen cooking and baking everything. No one in the family really offers to make anything to help out so my mom is always stressed and is one of those people that have to have everything perfect and in place. Dad’s not really doing too much and then finally goes outside to cut the lawn and get everything outside looking nice so he can avoid my mom’s frustration in the kitchen. I’m cleaning up what needs to be cleaned up and watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade, Jimmy (my older brother) is watching the parade and not doing anything, Mare (my older sister), is helping with anything possible and Nick (my younger brother) is trying to avoid work and helping as much as possible. His girlfriend is over early so it’s kind of his excuse to not do anything and she never offers to help with anything. This is how things are any holiday we have dinner at my house.

Things start to come together and my grandma Joyce (my mom’s mom) comes over to help with what she can. It seems that she just comes over to tell my mom what she’s done wrong and how she should have done it (blemisher). Finally, everyone begins to come over. Everything looks beautiful and smells great. You can tell everyone’s growing up because my cousins that have come over every thanksgiving are not here because they have girlfriends and boyfriends and are at their family’s houses. As everyone takes their seats, the adults all together in one room and the “kids” in the other, begin to eat. Where I’m sitting it’s just me, Dan (my boyfriend), Jimmy, Mare, Nick and his girlfriend Jenna and somehow my Pop. I think he was avoiding the other room because my grandma Mary (his wife) is always nagging him. The couples are all sitting next to each other and Jimmy, Mare and my Pop are next to one another. In the room I was in there wasn't much conversing going on. Separate conversations were taking place and not group conversations so Nick and Jenna were talking, me and Dan and Pop and Jimmy. In the other room all you can hear is loud voices of many people. Here and there I hear compliments about the food being said to my mom, but besides that it’s just a bunch of conversations going on in one room. This is what you get when you mix 100% Italians and Polish people, at least at my house. It’s not that their yelling at each other either, they just talk loud. They're either getting their point across or many conversations are going on so they have to talk over one another.

According to Cuber and Haroof the married couples in my family definitely have the Vital Marriage. They spend most of their time together especially my grandparents. My parents do as well, the only time they’re apart is when they’re at work. As for conflict in the family I have to say that there is over conflict. Everyone’s open, straightforward and direct and it’s usually intense. A lot of the times you see kitchen sinking and things are brought up in conflict that need not be. Everyone interrupts everyone and no one really listens the way they should.

For the three cores of communication, words, thoughts and emotions I didn’t get to see much of that. The conversations were either in between two people or like I said in the other room very loud and too much was really going on. My family expressed complementary words to my mother for her cooking and baking which is satisfaction. My grandma Mary seems to always start arguments with my Pop so that represented the dissatisfaction. You can never come to a dinner without hearing the two of them start arguing over something and my Pop ends up just saying “yeah you’re right Mare”. The communication between the two is really off. For thoughts, you could see the difference in the different couples. It’s rather funny to see it too because my parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles don’t really hold hands with their spouses or kiss and show affection but the younger couples myself and Dan, Nick and Jenna show it. We sit next to one and another, hold hands, hug etc. The only time you’ll see the adults show affection is when they’re coming in and saying hello and when they’re leaving saying goodbye. Last for emotion, you could see how the words my grandma Mary says to my Pop frustrate him. I can’t pinpoint a conversation because there was so much going on but you can see in his face and hear it in his voice his frustration. I can’t even recall when or if they spoke that night without arguing. Also when kind words were said to my mom about her cooking you could see the gratitude in her face for them enjoying everything so much and noticing her hard work.

I found this assignment to be the most difficult out of all the blogs because holidays are always so crazy in my house and it’s hard to even hear yourself think so it was pretty hard to observe what was going on around me when I was in the other room. The adults always sit together and that’s usually where the action is so to speak. It’s loud in the house too so you can’t really understand who’s talking to who and what about. What I do know is that there is never a dull moment in my house around the holidays and that the dinners are always exciting even if you don't know exactly what is going on!

Why so many misunderstandings?

"The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words." -Rachel Naomi Remen

The quote above said so much to me that I really wanted to share. It is so true and important that we must be good listeners along with giving that person the attention and time of day to hear, actually hear what they are saying. If we are better listeners we may be able to comprehend better what the other is looking for in a response from us.

This definitely ties into the communication between men and women. It just may be that we both need to be better listeners to understand what the opposite sex is looking for when they speak to the one another. We, the listener, may be too quick to jump into the conversation and say our part, that we miss the whole point and frustrate the speaker. Therefore I do not agree with Dr. John Gray’s Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. I liked what was said in the case study that “John Gray is from Mars but women and men are from the same planet.” I very much agree with that.

The case study we received in class, He Says/She Says by Julia T. Wood shows a lot of the concepts we went over in class and I found it very interesting how they mirrored each other. It took a simple situation between a boyfriend and girlfriend that often happens and made it very clear to the reader.

To sum up the article, Ginger and Luke are having communication problems. It seems as though every time they talk they are misunderstanding one another. Ginger doesn’t see why Luke can’t flow with the conversation and Luke can’t understand why Ginger “jumps” all over the place with different topics and not sticking to one. They later talk to other friends about the problem and learn that men and women have different ways of conversing and listening. Once they understood this they both made the effort to be clearer when talking.

In this situation it wasn’t a problem with the speech community because the two share common norms, it was more about their listening styles and gender differences that led to misunderstanding the needs of the other.
Ginger showed the listening styles of people oriented and content oriented. People oriented meaning she had empathy for the situation that was going on with Becky and Ben and Content oriented meaning she was very detailed in the situation linking everything together and questioning why. Luke on the other hand showed Action oriented and time oriented listening styles. Action in which he wanted to stick to what he thought was the main topic, Becky’s job opportunity and the no-nonsense approach. He didn’t want to hear anything else, not Becky’s parents divorce and the affect it may have on her relationship with Ben etc. He just wanted to discuss Becky’s job opportunity and what she should do. With Luke having this mindset it led him to show nonverbal cues that he was no longer interested in the conversation. An example would be him tuning into the construction going on around him and not what Ginger was saying. This example also goes along with barriers to effective listening. Maybe if the environment surrounding them was different the conversation would’ve taken a different turn. Many of these factors caused conflict between Ginger and Luke.

Another factor that supports why the conflict occurred between the two has a lot to do with gender differences. Men usually have one mind set and that’s to try and fix things or solve problems. Men take one topic at a time and take care of that before moving on to something else whereas women can talk about one thing that may lead to another and to another. Since many don’t know the differences of communication and listening between men and women misunderstandings occur.

I couldn’t pinpoint an exact time where this has happened to me but I know that it does. I chose to talk about this particular case study because while reading about it I thought about my relationship with my boyfriend and how Ginger and Luke’s conversation reminded me of many conversations I’ve had or attempted to have with my boyfriend.

The thing that I find most frustrating is just trying to get my point across and I find it very hard when it doesn't seem like the person I'm speaking to is really listening. I have also realized that I really need to think before I speak and to make sure I am clear in what I am saying. The only problem is I may be clear in what I'm saying and I've thought it through but the person I'm speaking to still doesn't understand me and this is also VERY frustrating. Since men are very one-track minded it makes it difficult to really get your point across. I feel with my boyfriend I have to spell everything out for him to understand exactly what I'm trying to say.

I think it’s very interesting to see the different sides of how women converse and listen opposed to how men converse and listen. I believe if we all listen more closely to what is said to us that we may have a better understanding as to what the person is actually saying and what they’re seeking in return from the listener.

"Cleaning House"

When I read this assignment I was thinking forever on when I had to “clean house”. I never had to clean house with a friend, relative, boyfriend, etc. so I found it really hard to start this assignment. After letting it go for a little while, all of a sudden I remembered that huge change I made, leaving Millersville University. This was cleaning house, this was leaving that part of my life behind me and moving on.

Cleaning house to me is when there’s someone or something in your life that is bringing you down and not letting you be yourself or live up to your fullest potential. Sometimes it can make you feel as though you’re in some kind of rut. Nothing seems like it’s going right and your whole life is affected by this one person or place.

After I graduated high school my next step was college. Well I thought Millersville was the place for me, far enough away from home but close enough in case I needed to go home. It has a great elementary education program so everything seemed right. It started off ok and I made friends and was happy, so I thought. On my second year in I noticed things weren’t going well. I thought things with my advisor would get better, they didn’t. I thought that I would eventually have Professors that I loved, that didn’t happen either. The friends I thought were so great, weren’t so great. Things started getting out of control so to speak.

Whenever I needed to talk to someone whether it be my professor, advisor, bursars office, no one seemed like they wanted to help and it was as though I was bothering them or “putting them out”. I didn’t understand because it was their job to help me in that certain area. I began to feel alone and confused. I didn’t know what to do because the people I needed to help me and answer my questions weren’t very helpful at all.

Classes were horrible, professors didn’t know your name because their were so many people in the class. Extra help from the professors was near impossible too because they had very limited office hours so I began to get frustrated with classes.

The girls I had been friends with all of a sudden seemed to turn on me because I had made more friends and apparently this was not acceptable to them. I didn’t know that once you had a group a friends that was it you couldn’t make anymore. I’m not one to be friends with ONE group, never have been. I like being friends with lots of people.

All of these things really took a toll on me, physically and mentally. I began to get sick, had stomach problems. Seemed like I was getting anything that was going around. I couldn’t eat food from the dining hall or I’d get sick. I knew something was wrong and something had to be done. I didn’t know what the right thing to do was. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents and say I was coming home, they would take this as I was giving up.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore, I couldn’t live like that. I had to do something, my health was horrible, I was upset all the time. I made the call, “mom, I really think I need to come home, I can’t stay here anymore. I hate it, I’m sick all of the time, I can’t get my work done, I miss home.”

I remember how mad my mom sounded, just like I thought, disappointed. My dad even said he was disappointed in me. I thought , “well guess that was the wrong decision”. I came home and the following semester went to the community college to make up some credits and to decide what my next step would be.

Coming home was the best thing for me, I was so much happier home. This is where I wanted to be. I’ve been going back in forth with thinking did I make the right decision, but I know I did. I’m not going to lie it wasn’t easy and it took so long to get my life back on track.

I’ve gone back and forth with thinking I’ve messed up and I am a disappointed to this is me and I’ll get things done and do things in my own time. Everyone’s different and you can’t compare yourself to others. You need to do what’s right for you not someone else. Cleaning house with Millersville is what was right for me and I can now say that I’m so happy with the decision I’ve made.