Everyone has their own types of communication that also comes with their own effectiveness
such as the young couple, parent and child, and older couple. When it comes to communication
with older couples and parent and child communication, they do have a little similarity in that
there is some level of wanting to understand one another while the young couple moved away
from adequate communication.
The younger couple expected one another to know their feelings
and took offense when the perception was wrong from reality. Rather than playing a guessing
game and being up front the younger couple tends to have less skills with communication. There
are more i and me statements rather than we, there is an imbalance.
Parents and child
communication can be a lit challenging however because children do not have the same skills as
the fully developed older couple. Children are still learning and trying to find the right words and
may communicate more with actions rather than words depending on age.
Out of the three groups I would have thought that the young couple would have had the best
communication, however it seems as if there still needs to be skills to work on. For instance,
because there is more of wanting the other partner to already know rather than speak to them
there tends to be more space for being unloyalty or trust may not be present. With less verbal
communication on emotions there is a big shadow of the unknown in the relationship which can
be challenging. With parenting they did meet my expectations because children are still learning
everyday so having adequate communication is imminent. However, the communication does
look different than the couples because children communicate at their own developmental level.
The older couple did meet my expectations as well. Because there is so much wisdom that is
gained throughout your life you tend to have an open mind and understanding when it comes to
others and certain situations. The older couple, I would say, has the best communication because
there is a great balance of i and we statement as well as developing a sense of closeness with one
another. Great communication has affection, openness, clarity, and being cooperative rather than
cooperative (Olson et al., 2022). There is trust and the listening skills are great in that they wait
to hear what the other person has to say before there is a response. The point that they are trying
to get across is clear and stays on topic.
Reference: Olson, D., DeFrain, J., & Skogrand, L. (2022). Marriages and families: Intimacy,
diversity, and strengths (10th ed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education. ISBN-13: 9781260837032
