Healthy Communication with Your Parents

TIPS for IMPROVING YOUR

RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR
PARENTS
Spot the conversation youre not having. If
emotions you are feeling toward your parents
are out of proportion, you may be confronting
the wrong issue. For example, if while
responding to complaints about your infrequent
visits you find yourself boiling mad, it may be
that the real issue is unresolved resentment.
Examine your assumptions. Our emotions
toward others are often created by our
assumptions. Revisit the stories you tell
yourself about your parents and look for
tendencies to exaggerate.
Reduce defensiveness. Reduce your parents
defensiveness by creating safety and helping
them understand your goal to improve your
relationship. For example, I love you, and I want
these years together to be as good as they can
be. Some things get in the way of that. May I talk
about them so we can get them out of the way?
Ask questions. Your goal in the crucial
conversation is not to convince your parents
you are right, it is to share your thoughts and
feelings and to encourage them to do the same.
While it is important to be candid, it is equally
important to ask questions and show that you
want to understand their views.

ABOUT THE RESEARCH. The study

collected responses via an online survey of 429
individuals in April of 2005. Margin of error is
approximately 3%.

LEARN NEW SKILLS. To learn how

Crucial Conversations Training can help you
improve your relationship with your parents, visit
www.vitalsmarts.com or call 1.800.449.5989.

V I TA L S M A R T S R E S E A R C H

more than 30 percent

of adults say their relationship with their mother or
father is less than satisfactory. One in three adults say they cant spend

According to our study of more than 400 people,

more than a day with their parents before they feel emotional stress, while 17 percent say they
cant last three hours.
Whats more, previous studies
have linked patterns of bad
relationships to illnesseven
serious diseases. For example, the
Harvard Mastery of Stress Study, a
thirty-five-year longitudinal study
of 126 healthy college graduates,
showed 95 percent of those who
had bad relationships with a
parent acquired serious diseases
by midlife, including high blood
pressure, ulcers, and alcoholism.
Only 29 percent of those with good
relationships had the same problem.

KEY RESULTS

30%

More than
of adults say their
relationship with their mother or father is less
than satisfactory

33%

say they cant spend more

than a day with their parents before they feel
emotional stress; 17% say they cant last three
hours

95%

of those who had bad

relationships with a parent acquired serious
diseases; only 29% of those with good
relationships had similar problems

The surprising finding in the study

is that just because you experience
high amounts of conflict with your
parents doesnt mean you cant have
happy, fulfilling relationships. Those who were skilled at holding crucial conversations with their
parents were just as happy as those who had no conflict at all. The key to a happy relationship
is how skilled you are at holding crucial conversations with your loved oneschildren and
parents alike. A little more skill can lead to a lot more happiness, and perhaps better health.
To see how Kathy Williams-Palmer used crucial conversations skills to improve her relationship
with her mother, visit www.vitalsmarts.com/successstories.aspx.
An innovator in corporate training and leadership development, VitalSmarts combines three
decades of original research with 50 years of the best social science thinking to help leaders and
organizations change human behavior and achieve new levels of performance. VitalSmarts has
identified four high-leverage skill sets that, when used in combination, create healthy corporate
cultures. These skills are taught in the Companys award-winning training programs and New York
Times bestselling books of the same titles: Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer,
and Change Anything. VitalSmarts has consulted with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies
and trained more than one million people worldwide. www.vitalsmarts.com