Three Simple Ways to Build Healthy Communication Skills Within Your Family

One of the greatest gifts in life is the ability to love, nurture, and pour into your family in the hope that you can give all the love you have and more. To be able to lead in love, walk in wisdom, and encourage the people who mean the very most every single day. As a wife and a mother, I want nothing more than to model encouragement and kindness through the words I speak within our family. I desire to set a humble example that can grow beyond my own household and into the hearts of others. What a gift it is to be a mother. And what a gift to be able to lead and nurture healthy communication skills within your own home, to set a strong foundation for the exact way humans should talk to one another.

This post is proudly sponsored by Talk About Therapy.  All thoughts and words are entirely my own!

How to Build Healthy Communication Skills Within Your Family

Society is always changing, and change, while full of hiccups, usually brings growth and progress. One of the changes I have noticed over the past nine of years of teaching high schoolers, is how much more evident the conversation about communicating feelings and receiving help has become. Even when I was a student, in both high school and college, communicating looked so incredibly different. For both my husband and I, as we raise our son, it is so very important to us that we build and develop healthy communication skills to hold as a family.

It is so important to us both that we model kindness, encouragement, humility, honesty, and empathy within how we communicate in our homes. The good news is, it can be easy to model these exact same behaviors in your home too. Now, I am no expert, and I fail over and over again, but the intention of my heart is there. Which is why I am sharing with you three simple ways to build healthy communication skills within your family.

1. Encourage asking for help!

It can be so easy to live life wanting to do everything on our own. To go through our days and weeks without the need or desire to bother someone else. But there is power in asking for help. There is a boldness to putting aside our own pride, and asking for help. We as humans are not designed to do this thing called life on our own. We need each other and we need community. And we need help. Therefore, in order to develop healthy communication within your family, it is so incredibly important to model an environment where asking for help is emphasized.

When we ask for help, it is an invitation to others that there expertise and service is welcomed here. As a parent, by releasing the fear, and not feeling afraid to ask for help in any particular situation, especially around your kids, it models appropriate behavior and leads to developing healthy and strong communication. Through modeling a sincere ask for help, it demonstrates to your child that when there is a problem, or they need help, they can trust that through asking for help, their needs will be met. That is so incredibly powerful to teach within your family.

Talk About Therapy

More specifically, help can be provided through reaching out to services such as Talk About Therapy. Talk About Therapy is a premier, Atlanta pediatric therapy specializing in early intervention speech and language therapy, as well as feeding therapy.  Additionally, Talk About Therapy helps support challenges associated with breastfeeding, such as tongue and lip-tie intervention. Focused on speech therapy for both kids and toddlers, the board certified therapists at Talk About Therapy work with a passion and love to provide sustainable and effective solutions for improving feeding and communication skills.

Additionally, Talk About Therapy through occupational therapy Atlanta, services a wide variety of needs for all families living throughout the metro. Talk about therapy – speech therapy works on building results that will last a lifetime that can create positive change for you and your entire family.

2. Promote honesty

The second step to developing healthy communication skills as a family is to promote honesty. Cultivate an environment of honesty within your home. Too many people live their life walking around egg shells because they are afraid of what will happen if they share, in honesty, how they are feeling. There is freedom in honesty. If your heart is in the right place, powerful chains can be broken when you speak in truth. Therefore, make it a priority in your homes to promote honesty. This can be modeled with a safe space during the day where REAL conversation happens. Where REAL questions are asked and distractions are put away for REAL answers to be given.

Promoting honesty within your household begins with you. Individually, we have to be incredibly honest and real with our own self, knowing the truth to how we are feeling and how we are doing in the moment. In order to develop strong communication skills within the walls of your home and family, honesty is a must-have!

3. Talk through the hard as it happens

The third essential to promoting strong and healthy communication skills within your home is to talk through the hard as it happens. When you are experiencing a hard moment, vocalize it in a mature way. When I am feeling particularly stressed or a moment of chaos ignites a feeling of anxiety or panic, I try to talk about it. Especially, if my son is around. He may only be 17 months old, but I find it so important and valuable to express to him when I am having a hard moment.

To let him know when I am feeling challenged and when my feelings feel too big. I want him to see me as I process those emotions and work through them. I want him to know that this process is normal and a part of life! Additionally, I believe it is important that he sees me, in those moments, with him there, so he too can know, that in his hard moments, I can be there for him, too!

Important Reminders for Healthy Communication Skills

Other helpful reminders as you work to promote good and healthy communication skills within your family. Be sure that when you speak, you choose words that encourage. Words that lift one another up. Use words to empower each other. Words that can call out the potential in someone, not their fault. Let the words you speak, be spoken with intention. Be careful to not use words out of anger and frustration. And when you are feeling frustrated and angry, be sure the words you speak have been carefully thought through.

Lead by example. Remove perfection from the expectation. But instead, be quick to apologize when you slip up. Be slow to speak. Choose carefully your words as they will set a firm foundation in your child’s heart. Your words have the ability to completely shape how someone feels about themself. There are power in your words, so use them wisely!

Build Strong and Healthy Communication Skills as a Family

Close your eyes and take a moment to envision the type of family you hope to be one day. Think about the ways in which you speak to one another. In what areas are you thriving? In what areas are you lacking? Think through this. Reflect in your heart. Make a commitment to work together to be more purposeful in how you communicate within your home. Make it a priority to develop healthy communication skills that can foster the growth to which you all desire to see. Believing in really good things for you and your family. Let the words you speak, encourage those around you. And let those words help empower others, to live each and everyday as the best day!