Family Communication: Listening and Speaking
A handout for families, including teenagers, on the two halves of communication that break down under stress: listening so that the other person feels heard, and speaking so that the message can be received. Practical rules for both, with common traps.
About this resource
Communication training is a core component of behavioural family therapy and of parent-adolescent conflict work. The rationale is that families in conflict are not short of communication; they communicate constantly, but in ways that escalate. Interrupting, mind-reading, lecturing, sarcasm, bringing up the past and speaking for another person are all common, and each reliably produces defensiveness in the listener. Robin and Foster's work with parents and adolescents, and cognitive behavioural family approaches more broadly, break communication into a small number of teachable speaker and listener skills that can be practised in session and at home.
This handout is written to be read by every member of the family from early adolescence upward. It separates listening skills (attending, not interrupting, reflecting back, asking before advising) from speaking skills (one issue at a time, describing rather than accusing, using I-statements, being specific about what you want) and names the traps each person is likely to fall into. It is deliberately even-handed: parents and adolescents are held to the same rules, which adolescents in particular tend to notice and respect.
The professional version adds guidance on practising the skills in session with a low-heat topic first, on the parent who uses the listening rules to trap the adolescent into talking, and on the adolescent who has learned that the safest response is silence.
How to use it
- Give a copy to each family member and read it together in session. Ask each person which listening trap and which speaking trap they recognise in themselves, before anyone comments on anyone else.
- Practise with a low-heat topic first: what to have for dinner on Friday, where to go for a day out. One person speaks using the speaking rules, another listens and reflects back, then swap. Coach in real time.
- Move to a moderate topic only once the skills hold on an easy one. Save the family's hottest issue for later sessions.
- Set a home task: one conversation during the week where the family agrees in advance to use the rules, and each person notes one thing that went better.
- Apply the rules to yourself in session. Families watch how the therapist listens more closely than they listen to what the therapist says.
References
- Robin, A. L., & Foster, S. L. (1989). Negotiating Parent-Adolescent Conflict: A Behavioral-Family Systems Approach. Guilford Press.
- Dattilio, F. M. (2010). Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy with Couples and Families: A Comprehensive Guide for Clinicians. Guilford Press.
- Carr, A. (2012). Family Therapy: Concepts, Process and Practice (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
