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Chronic relationship and parenting problems suggest that people can't think and communicate effectively. Family Lesson 2 in this site encourages adults to learn communication basics and develop seven skills to raise their effectiveness. One skill is metatalk - talking cooperatively about how you communicate. Instead of talking about "our disagreement over the check-book," metatalk focuses on "how we talk about our checkbook conflict." This learnable skill builds on (a) awareness of up to ~ 50 communica-tion and relationship variables, and (b) growing a vocabulary to describe and discuss them. Examples: R(espect), embedded, and double messages; eye contact; facial expression, sequences, distractions, voice inflection, volume, and tone; flooding; awareness "bubbles," assuming; defocusing; interrupt-ing; venting; demanding; and E(motion) levels. Restated: metatalk is the learned skill of objectively assessing and de-scribing the communication process between two or more people like a reporter or scientist. It aims to respectfully identify significant communication blocks, so people can use the other skills to resolve them and get more of their needs met in ways that please everyone well enough. Metatalk skill enables you to map communication sequences. more detail / examples / slides / Lesson-2 index / close |
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