Welcome to the open adoption project. This is episode 111. We're the Nelsons. I'm Lanette.
And I'm Shaun. And we're happy to be back in your podcast feed. It's been busy and sick
and a lot of other things a couple weeks here. I believe it was the day after we last recorded.
I had surgery on my nose. I didn't get a nose job. I mean, kind of. It doesn't look different
on the outside, but had a deviated septum fixed and healed from that great. And then
I got sick along with one of my kids and then we passed it along to the rest of the family.
Yeah, kind of cycled through and yeah, things are just, we're in a busy season, but things
are good. It's just been hard to stay on top of things with the podcast. Yep. But we promised
in our last episode that we would talk about improving family communication patterns. And
so we wanted to make sure to hop in to your feed and talk about that just a bit today
before we have some other really fun episodes come out next week. We will be having a really
exciting episode. I'm so excited about this one. I have been for so long. We'll be talking
about establishing psychological safety with Dr. Jeff Thompson. He was one of both Shaun's
and my professors in the MPA program that we were in. And he is so great. I feel like
this topic is so relevant for adopted families and people connected to the adoption community.
It's just fun to chat with him. He's very, I mean, he has so many great insights about
just connection and relationships and communication. Yeah. There was just a really good conversation.
So we're looking forward to sharing that with you. And then throughout the rest of the year,
I think we've already have almost all of our episodes prerecorded. So hopefully we won't
fall off with this one. Whoops. But yeah. Do you want to give a preview of some of the
other conversations that we'll look at over the next couple of months? Yeah. So last November,
we kind of went overboard with our national adoption month plans. We wanted to do something
really special and we had a lot of episodes this year. We had to step back and make it
a little more simple, but I'm excited. We're doing a kind of book club for national adoption
month where we'll have episodes where we're talking with adoptees about different books
that are connected to adoption, right? Like we'll be talking with adoptees about books
like far from the tree, the girls who went away, the orphan train. And we're really looking
forward to hearing from some of these people and learning about some of these books. So
if you want to put any of those books on your library queue and start reading them now.
Yeah. As I started editing, as I started editing some of those already, I love that we talk
with adoptees about these topics that revolve around part of who they are. Yeah. And for
us who weren't adopted and, you know, friends and family who might not understand that perspective
as much, it's really insightful to hear their point of view. So I'm really looking forward
to releasing a lot of those conversations. Yeah, I'm excited about that. And then our
last episode of the year will be a trilogy, trilogy discussion is what we're calling it.
It's where we speak with an adoptive mother, a biological mother and an adoptee all in
one family, like family, right? And so that was a really fun one to record as well. And
so that's how we'll round out our year. And then we have a few things planned for next
year too. So yeah, we're excited today to talk about family communication patterns some
more though. First, let's start off and maybe refresh a little for those who might not have
caught the last episode. It would make more sense if you did catch it, but that's okay.
We'll, we'll lay some ground. Yeah, help us just maybe Clifford's version. Okay. So family
communication patterns, basically they help us understand how childhood family structures
impact adulthood and life. So there's two different elements of family communication
patterns. We're looking at two different orientations is what they're called conformity orientation
and conversation orientation. And so how these impact communication within families. Okay.
So conformity remind us what that is. Yeah. So conformity can range from low to high.
And it's basically like, how much, I'll just give you a few examples. This will be quicker.
So an example of a measure of the conformity orientation on the revised family communication
patterns measure, it's from Richie and Fitzpatrick in 1990 is my parents usually have the last
word in our family. Another example would be I'm expected to obey my parents rules when
I'm at home. Yeah. Right. And yeah, it's basically the Bible like my parents are right. Or my
parents are in charge. Yeah. And I know that I think we referred to this one before, but
like you'll, you'll know better when you're older is sentiment. Yeah. So the high conformity
is going to look at yet conforming with your parents. There's an expectation that you're
going to conform in the family. And these patterns are generally laid by parents, right?
Okay. Yeah. And then high conversation orientation, conversation orientation is just a totally
different thing. Right? So I wouldn't think about these as connected as much as like two
parts of a whole. Right? Okay. So conversation orientation is how open a conversation is
within a family research is really clear in showing that more conversation means better
adjustment, better relationships, higher life satisfaction. So a couple of examples from
that scale from Richie and Fitzpatrick, my family members often talk about our feelings
and emotions. Or my parents encouraged me to express my feelings. Yeah. So when we talked
about this in the previous episode, we talked a lot more about like the communicative openness
in a, in a, in adoptive home. Right? I feel like there's a lot of overlap there and I
don't have anything to support that. But logically for me, it feels like there's a good amount
of overlap because it's about communication within the home. And we've talked to a lot
of adoptees that fall on that spectrum, right? Where some grew up in a home where they had
one, maybe two conversations about the fact that a child was adopted. It was kind of a
taboo subject. Yeah. And their whole, you know, adolescents were growing up and others
where it was just very free flowing conversation. And so there's this spectrum. Yeah. Yeah.
So there's four main categories that families will generally fall into, right? We've got
protective families where there's low conversation and high conformity. And there's also laissez
faire where there's low conversation and low conformity. Consensual, high conversation,
high conformity and pluralistic, high conversation, low conformity. Right? And we talked in our
last episode about how we know conversation is important. It's like we need to be seeking
to have high conversation orientation hands down. It's a little more ambiguous knowing
on conformity orientation with adoption. I think it's a bit of a tightrope, right? Because
you want your child to feel like your family is like this inclusive place that they belong,
but you also want them to feel like they belong however they are, right? They don't have to
conform, but they're also like this cohesive part of both of their families, right? Their
birth family and their adoptive family. Yeah. And you could see how some who are trying
to foster a really good family culture, who create a lot of identity around their family
may verge on being really high conformity in an effort to help that family culture feel
one. Yeah. Yeah. But the flip side, right? I guess, I mean, right. It's a spectrum. If
we're too far on the other side and we are too pluralistic, really low. Yeah. Like anything
goes like be, and I don't want to say these like they're a bad thing, but like be who
you want to be and do what you want to do. And you're your own unique individual person
like somewhere in that they may adoptive children, at least in my opinion, may feel less connection.
So yeah, so I feel like there's like a pendulum in the adoptive family. And probably changes
throughout development. I imagine, yeah, there's probably different needs developmentally during
early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, right? It probably evolved. What kind of conformity
is healthy, which is challenging because these patterns are generally like a set thing. Yeah.
And so yeah, something to be really aware of and attuned to. And yeah, I mean, how do
we change a family communication pattern? I have been researching this and basically
all I have found is like therapy, right? We continue to use by going to professionals
and getting some help. But I feel like families do evolve and communication patterns within
families do evolve. And so I think this is something very doable. It's just maybe a little
bit more of an abstract conversation that we're going to be focusing on today. So last
time we talked a lot about how families might not fall firmly into one category, right?
Like I feel like our family is somewhere on the line between pluralistic and what is the
other one? Consensual, right? I think we're somewhere between there. Like Shaun and I both
took this quiz that I think we included in the show notes about where our family would
fall. And I think for me, I was like, we were both high on conversation, but in conformity,
I was like on the border of pluralistic, like right between being in pluralistic and consensual.
So I was pluralistic and then Shaun was consensual just barely by one, right? And so I think
a lot of families probably fall kind of in both camps, right? Like they can be and maybe
different days and different circumstances can just bring out different aspects of family
communication patterns for us. So last time, Shaun, I remember you were talking about how
your family growing up, you thought we're probably lower on the conversation end of
the spectrum. And then conformity, what do you think that depended on what shaped how
conformity was in your family?
Yeah. So, I mean, trying to remember really specific things, especially for me is challenging
from my childhood, but I would say that we had a lot of conformity in our home. Like
there were rules and unspoken rules that were expected to be met. And we didn't really talk
about much. For example, I mean, so one, one example of something that was really high
conformity was my sister and I had to get like perfect grades in school. And that was
just, that was it. Later, I only later that I find out it was because of my dad's personal
education and all experiences that we weren't aware of and that he wanted better for us
than he had experienced. But we never talked about that like in the moment, right? But
this was the law. You follow the law. And that's just what we do as a family. But there
wasn't really the conversation about that.
Interesting. I feel like my family was probably on the lower end of conversation as well.
Maybe closer to the middle, but probably lower. And then with conformity, I feel like it depended,
right? If we were talking about religiosity and like church, then it was a high conformity
family, right? There was not any room to disagree with my parents religiously. But other things
like grade school, how we dressed, I don't feel like that mattered as much. And so there
was more pluralistic family communication patterns there. And so I don't know if other
families are like that where it might kind of vary depending on what we're talking about.
Yeah. Interesting though. And so as I've been studying about how we can help our families
become better connected, I keep coming back to what's called family systems theory. I
learned about it in school a few months ago and it is really interesting. So basically
family systems theory focuses on how families and family members interact with each other
and their environment. And it's like a system, right? This was developed by Dr. Murray Bowen
in the fifties. And it's the idea that families are these complex systems. Every member has
a role and a purpose. And what one person does is going to impact the whole family,
right? It's like a system. I think of lots of cogs.
We can't all exist independently without influencing the other people that are living in the same
home or in the same family. Yeah. And so following a lot of the principles of healthy family
systems, I think can improve our family communication patterns. So a few of those would be being
connected, right? Having communication, open communication. Talked about this a lot. Yeah.
Always a good thing. Another one is support, right? Yeah. And that's in a lot of different
ways, but showing love and showing care, helping each other and supporting each other is really
important for connectedness. Yeah. Another one is security. Healthy families
provide a sense of security and belonging. And so I feel like that helps us kind of put
in perspective how conformity might look as well, right? We're trying to find that balance.
Well, and I think about all three of those things, communication, support and security,
how they all are intertwined as well, right? Like if I feel support, I feel secure. Yeah.
I love that. Yeah. They all build on one another. So if we're striving for connectedness in
our home, those principles are really important that we strive to have clear, open communication,
that we support one and one another by loving and caring for each other and that we help
our children help each other feel a sense of security and belonging.
I love that. Yeah. Another important aspect of healthy family systems would be transparency.
That would involve being respectful to each other and to others' boundaries, privacy,
opinions. It involve expectations, families that are healthy, set clear and consistent
expectations and rules. There's a mutual respect. And then additionally, there'd be a healthy
kind of conflict management instead of like gaslighting or ignoring someone when you're
mad at them and not speaking to them for however long, you address conflict in a healthy way.
So transparency, we're respectful, we set clear expectations and we have good conflict
management skills. Yeah, exactly. All right. And then additionally, we want to be flexible.
So healthy family systems, there's got to be some grace and some forgiveness and also
an element of playfulness. Families shouldn't just be these rigid systems like a work system,
right? It's such an essential part of who people are. Families need to have some of
that. Yeah, I think just kind of building on what you said for flexibility, right? The
sense of grace or forgiveness in a home. I think for me, I mean, I'm pretty stubborn
in some ways, but I think for me, one really important thing that I do and I feel like
is a really important experience to have is when I've messed up, when I've got frustrated
at one of our kids or when I yelled or something like that, that I take them and sit down with
them and talk to them and to admit that, hey, the way I handled this is not the way that
I want to be a dad. And I'm not hard. Yeah. And just helping them see too, like, Hey,
you know what? This is the first time I've ever had to be a dad to an 11 year old boy,
right? Or this is the first time I've had to be a dad to a 14 year old girl. And I'm
learning how to be that type of dad. And I'm making mistakes as I go. But if you can forgive
me and I'm going to forgive you for my mistakes, because I know this is the first time you've
been an 11 year old boy or the first time you've been in a 14 year old girl, right?
Or whatever it is in our, in our family, right? Those conversations are really important.
Yeah, I love that because I feel like that is a shift generationally. I love this shift.
Where as parents, it's not a taboo or like a sign of weakness to admit our imperfections
and to try to be open with our kids about, Hey, I messed up. I hope you can forgive me.
I'm going to try to do better. Yeah. I don't feel like I saw that growing up. I mean, not
just with my parents, but like with anyone I knew. I'm sure there were some families,
but yeah, it's just been a cultural shift. I love it so much. I think it helps build
us healthy connections. Well, I'm going back to like when we were talking about conformity,
right? One of the, one of the feelings or one of the statements that someone might say
in a really high conformity environment is that, you know, my parents know everything.
My parents are not wrong. And so taking time to seek forgiveness, ask for some grace, be
truthful and transparent and honest in, in the way that you're talking about how you're
parenting, that improves your communication. That's going to help them in their security.
They're going to feel more security. I think they'll feel a little bit more respect toward
you as a parent as well. And it kind of sets the expectation for them to be open and talk
about the mistakes that they make. And if we can come to this place where we're all
open talking about things, it's going to help so, so much of our family. I love that. Yeah.
So beyond family systems theory, we also have a list of a few other ways that we feel like
we can improve family connections and family communication patterns. So it's first off
active listening. Yeah. We'll be talking about that so much next week.
We'll talk a lot about that in an next episode. So I wonder if we just...
I can skip over that. But yeah, it's an important one though.
Yeah. You'll, you'll hear us refer to level one and level two listening. That's your hook
to listen to the next episode.
All right. Also, we want to create family rituals. Bonding rituals can help strengthen
family relationships. They also help with family resiliency and emotional health.
Yeah. What would you say are some of our family rituals?
For me, I think of like traditions, right? Like Halloween, we decorate sugar cookies.
That's like something we do every Halloween at Roarans. We have my grandma. Christmas,
our family always goes to the festival of lights. The kids love this opportunity. It's
like a little drive through park with Christmas lights and decorations. And the kids love
it because they can unbuckle and like stand up with their heads out the sun roof. And
yeah, it's just like a nice sweet tradition. And then we'd always have milkshakes afterwards.
Yeah. I think of birthdays in our home. This is actually the eve of a birthday at the sound
of a recording. And we always decorate the house kind of similarly, like with streamers
in our...
But we always do after the kids are in bed, which is funny if they get older. I don't
know if we need to do that, but it's a ritual and they love it. We've talked about stopping
with our older kids and they're like, no, no, no.
But yeah, the way the streamers and balloons and gifts are put out, it like matches every
year and it just feels like, yeah, this is a, this is a ritual in our family.
That's true. I love that one.
What about any more like meaningful or deep rituals?
I mean, by the next one I was thinking of might not be meaningful and deep, but we like
traveling together. I do think we've made a lot of memories just like sitting in the
car, driving on long road trips and talking after reading. We like to do audio books and
talking about after a really sad audio book. I think last trip we read the Watson's go
to Birmingham.
Because we went to Birmingham.
Yeah. We're so clever right now, but we talked about racism and we talked about some of these
challenging aspects and had really good conversations with our kids about how racism has existed
and how it persists and continues to exist, how we can combat that. So yeah, I feel like
family rituals can be such a huge thing. And there's a lot of things we probably don't
realize that our family rituals, right?
I think I just thought of another one and this is very ritualistic and I think it stemmed
from like bedtime routine, but for each of our kids, we like a different song that we
sing to them at night when we're like tucking everybody in. And even our older kids like
nine, 11 and 13, 14 or yeah, 13, 14. They still want us to sing their songs. So we're
still not, they're still not too cool for that, but I imagine we'll get there, but at
some point, but it's really sweet. Yeah. That's part of our family culture. And this next
one I feel like is similar to a ritual eating meals together, right? Yeah. We hear this
all the time. There are so many studies that show the eating meals together can help reinforce
family communication. And so even if you can't do that every night, choose the nights when
you can and just try to focus on being together without screens and electronics on the table.
And asking questions that help them reflect on experiences they've had, whether it's that
day, it's kind of funny right now, our youngest right now, every time I asked him, what did
you learn at school? And he said, I don't know, but I had fun. It's okay. He's four.
It's great. It was crazy. It was great. But, but we, we struck to eat dinner together
every day.
And that's probably going to change as our kids keep getting older. I feel like we're
kind of in this naive state right now, right before our kids are like getting super busy
with stuff and, but, but yeah, we are in this stage right now where we're able to do that
on a regular basis. We have a lot of scheduled family time too, which is another thing we
thought of for our list. Scheduled family time. On Friday nights we have family fun
night and our plan has always been to let the kids start inviting friends over when
they want to for that. But so far they haven't wanted to. It's been like a special family
night. We try to have a dinner that's like more fun. I don't get to get to eat salmon
or asparagus on Friday nights. So yeah, yeah. But yeah, we'll do games, movies, treats.
It's a fun night. I look forward to it too. Actually. Yeah. Another thing we thought about
is to make sure that we allow one on one time. Daddy daughter dates, mom and mom, son dates,
those type of things. Yeah. Yeah. Get someone on one time with each of our kids. And then
also making sure that if there's a situation that arises or a problem or a challenge, instead
of attacking each other, we address the problem, right? Yeah. I'm making sure that we always
remember that this relationship, that our family relationships are more important than
the most important. Well, it makes me think of the one on one time. So one of our, one
of our sons right now is going to run a half marathon next week, which makes us amazing
run our dad really happy. And we've been training together. And I mean, I've spent a lot, a
lot of one on one time with him over the last many, many weeks, even months. And sometimes
we go on a run and we have really meaningless conversation, but we're together. And sometimes
we have really deep conversations. I guess it kind of depends on how fast we're running
and how much we want to talk. But that has helped us work through a lot of problems too.
And something about the, you know, going on a walk or running together with this forward
motion, like mirroring progression in a relationship is generally for the kid.
And I look at you. That's very poetic. I love it. All right. And yeah, just again, along
with making sure that we're addressing situations and problems in a healthy way, seeking to
be assertive, but not aggressive and confrontational. All right. So we created a little exercise
that we thought would help families evaluate their communication patterns and work on improving
them. Awesome. So there's three steps to this exercise. Okay. So first with your partner,
you determine which family communication pattern you think you most align with in your family.
And so as you do that, you want to talk about what the strengths and weaknesses are of where
you are currently. So you're talking about like, are you a laissez faire family? Are
you a pluralistic or a consensual or a protective family? All right. So evaluate that. So you
put that together and then you want to discuss which combination of conversation and conformity
your kids probably need, right? Like look at it more from what do you think would be
appropriate for your child or your children thinking about their ages, their needs, and
think, like, are we in a spot where we are meeting our kids needs with our current family
communication pattern? Yeah. Okay. And then finally with your partner and if your kids,
if they're old enough and it's an age appropriate thing for them, plan time for family interactions
and take steps to find and strike the right balance of conversation and conformity in
your home. Yeah. I think for me, this activity just helps us be more intentional about what
we're doing. I think it's easy to get into kind of a rut or almost complacent. Like this
is just how we've done things for so long that we're not really intentional about how
we're doing things. And so just looking at this, the level of conformity, the level of
communication in our home, taking a sit back and say, Hey, are we really where we want
to be? And we're probably not going to be exactly where we want to be. So let's make
a plan moving forward. And I think it's really important to make sure as part of that plan
that we set periods of time where we come back to it and reflect on our progress or
reflect on our change. Yeah. Without, yeah, not like a one time exercise, right? Like
this is something that I think would be really healthy to repeat. Yeah. Like to add a level
of accountability in that process of making a plan. Yeah. I love that. I mean, I don't
want this to feel like, like a chore, right? Where it's like, Oh, my family is so messed
up and I have so much to do because all of us have families where there's room for improvement.
Absolutely. There's so many like beautiful family relationships. And just because you're
not in a perfect family because you're a human, it doesn't mean it doesn't take away from
that beauty. And so I feel like just remembering like, there are so many good things already,
but just trying to enhance that in a child focused way where you're trying to think of
how you can better meet your child's needs. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing
a little bit about what you've been learning in your PhD program. It's been really fun
for me because I know you have hours and hours of research that you're doing along with classes
and it's not easy to communicate or share even day to day, like all the things that
you're learning. Even as I talk about how important communication is, it's true. It's
a double edged sword. It's really tricky. Well, you communicate about things that are
really important with our family and those things. But yeah, we hope that this episode
has helped you think about the way that your family structure is kind of functioning right
now. Thinking about different ways that you can improve relationships and connection with
others in your family and take some initiative to act in ways that could improve communication
and overall just satisfaction in your family situation. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks so much for
listening to this episode and for being here with us on the podcast. Thanks so much for
listening to this episode of the Open Adoption Project.