How To Improve Family Communication Skills: 5 Activities

The ability to communicate effectively is a key life skill. This blog shows you how to improve family communication skills with five fun and simple activities. Clear and open communication helps minimize misunderstandings and strengthen family bonding. When family members can communicate properly, they fight less and solve problems together. Positive communication is a skill that needs to be learned over and over again as parents, as children, and when contexts change.

Family life today is so busy that there isn’t much time for talking. When you add a teenager who would rather text her friends than talk to Mom or Dad while being driven to her next activity, you may have a problem with how your family talks to each other.

Find Consistent Opportunities For Communicating In Person

Talking face-to-face adds value to communication. Only 7% of human communication involves words, according to research. Body language, face, eyes, and speech indicate the rest. We lose 93% of our communication when using devices to talk. In order to be intentional about creating healthy communication, you may have to schedule a time to invest in it.

Every parent wants a healthy relationship with their child. For example, family meals can be a great time to have conversations that are not generic and to which you can give your attention and focus. Time in the car is a great opportunity to ask questions and have meaningful discussions. Before bed, no matter the age, you can give kids the opportunity to express themselves without distractions.

Define Communication Skills As A Family

For this blog, we will look at the following to improve communication skills:

• Active Listening
• Non-verbal Communication
• Asking questions

Active Listening

Active listening is the process of really paying attention to how someone is saying something and how they feel about it. This means understanding how words are used, how feelings are expressed, and how people respond. When you actively listen, you go beyond simply hearing what someone is saying—you consider how the other person feels, and how their emotions influence their behavior, and you send a message that they matter and are respected.

Activity 1: Define What Active Listening Is For Your Family

Great questions to ask everyone in your family are:

• Who listens well to you?
• How do you feel when they are listening to you?
• What do they do that makes you know they are listening to you?
• On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the best, how would you rate your listening skills?

As a family, come up with 3–5 characteristics of an active listener and post them for all to see. Then, in conversations, you can hold everyone accountable to being an active listener.

Active listening is a skill that requires practice and patience. It’s one of the most important communication skills that can help build stronger relationships and better understanding between people. To be an active listener, you need to pay attention to the speaker, listen, provide feedback, show support, and ask questions.

A great question to ask the listener is, “What did you hear?” This will help them summarize what was heard, and the speaker can clarify to make sure the other person understood.

Or the listener can say, “What I am hearing you say is…”

Non-Verbal Communication: Body Language and Tone Matter

Body language can be a powerful tool in communication. According to studies, body language accounts for up to 55% of our communication. When it comes to how we feel and how others perceive us, our body language is just as important as what we say. That’s why it’s important for families to understand how non-verbal communication works. Speak in a calm and even tone rather than raising your voice. Avoid making hostile or dismissive facial expressions. This includes not scowling, rolling your eyes, or making other similar expressions. Keep your statements to no more than ten or fifteen words in length. 

Activity 2: Charades With Body Language: Guess The Mood

Write some of these moods down on paper and have each person in your family draw a mood randomly. Have them act it out. This could be done during family time or at a meal.

Extra Challenge: Guess the Tone

Do the same as above but this time they say “blah blah blah” but with no body language and JUST tone. Can you guess the mood?

Questions Add Value To Better Family Communication

In his book, The Beautiful Book of Questions, Warren Berger calls himself a questionologist. He discusses that 4-year-olds have a natural curiosity that propels them to ask questions. However, as we grow older, fear can make us avoid asking questions.

Asking quality questions is a skill that every family member can develop. Asking questions help you make better decisions, helps in the creation of ideas, and builds connection in your relationships.

How can asking better questions help improve family communication?

Elie Wiesel once observed: “People are united by questions. It is the answers that divide them.”

Activity 3: How Many Questions?

Give a subject or phrase, like WALT DISNEY or POLLUTION IS BAD, and other family members have to generate as many questions as possible. Repeat this with different topics.

Activity 4: Build On My Question

Someone will start with a question that doesn’t have a right or wrong answer. The next person must ask a follow-up question that is also open-ended and builds on the last one. Keep going until you can’t add anything else.

• Should uniforms be required in all schools?
• Should there be a law that kids should not have social media access until 18?
• Should pets be allowed in school?
• Should the school day be shorter?
• Should little kids be able to play organized sports?

Activity 5: A Question A Night

We rarely ask deeper questions when we live with people every day. When we embrace curiosity rather than judgment, we can create a shift for deeper questions. Ask a question at dinner and let everyone think it through. The key is not to judge the answers but add to it. On The Deep blog, you can find incredible questions to ask at dinner. Here are a few:

• IMAGINE THIS: You wake up to discover that you are a character in a movie. Which character from which movie would you be the most excited (and least excited) to be?
• IMAGINE THIS: You find a book and start to read it, only to discover that it’s the story of your life. You get to the point that you are at right now. Do you turn the page to find out your future? (And if so, how far do you read?)

Asking questions is an excellent skill that takes time to build. Critical thinking is a soft skill that is important in a world that changes quickly and often. Asking questions can help everyone in your family think more deeply, build stronger relationships, and learn how to be a better leader. These are great goals that everyone should try to reach.

Good communication skills help children and adults build trust, strengthen relationships, and make the world a better place for everyone. Positive family communication impacts how family members behave toward other people such as classmates, colleagues, and a future partner or spouse. These five activities can help your family talk to each other better and strengthen the bonds you already have.