March 1995
12-Step Program for Healthy Families
1. Healthy families have healthy lifestyles. Activities such as walking, cycling and swimming are family activities that keep everyone fit. Healthier people cope better with everyday stress. Action: Combine TV watching with an activity, such as sit-ups, jumping jacks, or deep knee bends.
2. Healthy families appreciate special times. A strong, healthy relationship is a worthwhile goal for everyone. It helps adults develop their potential and it provides a model for children. Action: Remember special events such as birthdays, or an anniversary. Show your appreciation through words, cards, time, gifts, or other special symbols of your love for the special people in your family.
3. Healthy families keep promises. Commitments are promises we make to ourselves or others. When kept they reinforce the trust in a relationship. When broken, they create doubt and mistrust.
Action: Have a family discussion about the meaning of commitment. Be prepared to hear examples of unkept promises as well as enjoying the special rewards of kept promises.
4. Healthy families talk it over. Communicating is the key to successful decision-making, conflict resolution, child rearing, financial management and many other family issues. It takes time and energy to make it work. When different values make agreeing impossible, "agree to disagree" is one option some families find helpful.
Action: Focus on improving your family's communication skills by practicing listening to words, understanding unspoken (body) language, clarifying messages, giving feedback, and reaching understanding and agreement.
5. Healthy families respect each individual. We are all members of various groups-work, religious, civic, and our most important group, our family. At the same time, we are unique and important individuals. In healthy families, members appreciate and support each other as individuals as well as family members.
Action: Talk about the most famous member of your extended family. Is this person's success due more to individual talents or support from others?
6. Healthy families make time for each other. In some ways, time is like money-it seems like we never have enough of either one. Everyone finds the time or money for those things that are most important. How important is time with your family to you.
Action: List a few household chores that could be finished more quickly as a team, rather than expecting one person to do most of them. Celebrate as a family with the time saved!
7. Healthy families are fun. Happy times together may be planned or spontaneous, but healthy families have fun with each other. Fun times make wonderful memories as we look back on family time.
Action: As a family, plan and do an activity that everyone will enjoy-just for the fun of it. Later, talk about what you enjoyed.
8. Healthy families believe in themselves. All families face tough times occasionally. Healthy families have confidence that they will survive any crisis and come back even stronger.
Action: Discuss a crisis that struck another family- maybe some friends or in a movie. What family traits helped overcome the crisis?
9. Healthy families are involved. Healthy families create communities that care, almost like one big family. They know that, "If it is to be, it is up to me."
Action: Introduce yourself to a neighbor you haven't met. Tell them about your family, invite them over for a visit, and offer your help if they are ever in need.
10. Healthy families are able to forgive. The ability to forgive a family member for an action which is upsetting can open doors to deeper understanding. The fear of opening up trust to a person who has broken trust means that the relationship cannot grow.
Action: Talk as a family about an issue which continues to create conflict, doubt, or blame. Discuss the reasons that forgiveness would be helpful and the reasons why it is so difficult. What would it take to help you forgive?
11. Healthy families say thank you. Everyone likes to be told they are appreciated. Words, gifts, hugs, and time together are some ways to show others that we like what they did and value who they are.
Action: Practice saying "thank you" to family members for the things they do daily to help the family function-cooking a meal, cleaning a room, being polite, doing homework, earning a paycheck.
12. Healthy families share beliefs and values. Being a family is more than just living under the same roof. For many families, religion shapes many of their beliefs. Healthy families talk about their values and live them consistently.
Action: Have each family member come up with their idea of a family motto. Share the mottos with one another and discuss similarities.
How Secrets Affect Family Relationships
"I've got a secret!" The long-running popularity of that old television show attests to the fascination of secrets. Secrets are sometimes exclusive, but we often share them with a few select people in our lives-in many cases with family members. By their very nature, secrets usually contain negative information- "skeletons in the closet," so to speak. But secrets may also serve beneficial functions for families by promoting bonding or by preserving privacy. Although the content of family secrets varies widely, researchers have identified three broad categories of secrets:
In recent research, topics of secrecy ran the gamut from family traditions and anecdotes, to substance abuse, to physical and sexual abuse. Paradoxically, the topics considered most taboo were likely to be those that the whole family kept secret from outsiders. Secrets characterized as rule violations were usually individual in nature.
The primary reason for secrecy appears to be the protection of family members. But whole family secrets may simply be personal in nature or concerned with matters of no interest to outsiders. Family satisfaction appears to suffer when any one family member makes a conscious choice to withhold information from the others. Secrets about taboo subjects appear to decrease family satisfaction only when some family members keep a secret from other members. Secrets maintained by the whole family on such subjects are positively associated with satisfaction, possibly because families assume an "us vs. them" attitude toward outsiders.
For A Better Marriage
Bad habits reinforce negative feelings toward your mate. Avoid: Swapping "horror stories" about your marriage and/or your partner with your friends...taking "marriage quizzes" in magazine articles, which can give you a disjointed view of your relationships...comparing your relationship with those of talk show guests and others in the media, which can lead you to believe that your marriage is abnormal. Do: Contact your local Extension office for the "12-Day Marriage Enrichment Plan" and "Realizing Your Marriage Potential" publication.