How To Give
Bad News To Your Children
A few years ago I had the
honor to speak to an association whose members work with grieving children. Any
child who has to hear bad news needs to be given that news with grace and
honesty. Here is research to guide you if you have to give difficult news to
your young adults.
Revealing news to young adult children
A
quick search on the internet returns all kinds of resources aimed at helping
parents communicate with their young kids or teenagers. But, what happens when
teens turn into young adults? When it comes to disclosing important news to
young adult children, how can parents do so in a way that results in closer
relationships?
“My
previous research had indicated that parents really struggle with how to
deliver important news effectively to their grown kids,” says Erin Donovan,
Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Associate Director of the
Center for Health Communication at The University of Texas at Austin. Donovan
is the lead author of a new study recently published in the National Communication
Association’s journal Communication Monographs.
“You
can find information online like ‘how to tell your kindergartener that you have
cancer in a way she can understand,’” says Donovan, “but there's virtually no
guidance for how to talk to young adult children, even though parents,
understandably, worry about how to do this. I wanted to be able to say to
parents: here’s how to disclose important news well to your adult children.”
In
their study, Donovan and her co-authors Charee M. Thompson of Ohio University,
Leah LeFebvre of the University of Wyoming, and Andrew C. Tollison of Merrimack
College identified three tips that could help parents communicate big news to
their adult kids, while making sure that their relationship grows stronger:
providing access to information, relating as peers, and communicating with
candor.
Nearly
300 college students were asked to recall and describe in detail a time when a
parent had shared important information with them. Topics of disclosure
included a parent’s illness, the death of a loved one, a change in parental
employment, a move, and family secrets or family turbulence. The participants
wrote about what contributed to the success or failure of the conversation.
They were also asked what they would keep the same or change were the
conversation to happen again.
Students
indicated that parental disclosures were evaluated based on how cooperatively
parents seemed to offer access to a sufficient quantity of information.
Responses mentioning this dimension tended to focus on how parents “filled us
in as much as they could” or whether a participant felt that he or she had
“learned everything I needed to know.” When a parent had been relatively
unwilling or unable to provide access to information, participants noted their
dissatisfaction with the lack of information provided.
Another
aspect students noted was “candor,” which was related to participant
descriptions of how honest, straightforward, and unambiguous parents were when
disclosing. When children knew or felt that parents had been dishonest, the
communication was deemed unsuccessful. One participant explained:
"Recently my mom was having surgery and had to have some tests run the day
before. I called her to ask how her tests had gone and she explained that they
went fine. That was the end of the conversation. Then the next day I talked to
her, she explained that she had lied to me the day before and one of her tests
had come back with an abnormality. I was devastated because she tried to hide
it from me."
Another
theme that emerged was that children deemed disclosure more successful when
“relating as peers” with their parents. When parents opened up in a manner that
reflected an appreciation for a child’s maturity, participants perceived that
the communication was more successful. They described their parents as “being
real,” treating them as adults and confiding in them the way a friend or peer
would, rather than shielding them the way parents do with young children.
In
a follow-up study, the researchers confirmed that providing access to as much
information as possible when communicating with their young adult children and
relating to them as peers during these disclosures could predict increased
disclosure quality, which in turn predicted relational closeness. Candor didn’t
predict either disclosure quality or relational closeness.
This
study provides a needed analysis of how emerging adult confidants view parental
openness and its relational outcomes. Disclosure may be an important way to
promote and maintain relational closeness even as young adults become more
independent from their parents.
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Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at
www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at
www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at
http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
