Patterns in Family Communication

This article explores the patterns in family communication and their impact on behavior and relationships. It discusses storytelling, relationships, discipline, rituals, and roles within the family.

Running head: FAMILY COMMUNICATION 1
Family Communication
Name
Institution
What patterns exist in your family in relation to each of this Aspect of communication?

FAMILY COMMUNICATION 2
Story telling
I find myself more often telling all these kind of stories to my friends and a time just writing
them down when no one is around or ready to listen. I got curious and decided to find out more
about my family’s genogram. The revelation was shocking, it turned out that my great
grandmother was a very famous story teller. She got all these stories about the world. She was an
individual who loved collecting stories from all over the country and tell it to her community as a
way of educating them.
In the evening groups of people would gather by her house just for these stories. Apparently
it is my father who inherited this gene of storytelling, he would tell us bed time stories and a time
he would even write short stories, as articles, in magazines. In my generation, I am the one who
inherited this character. My passion for telling stories came from my great grandmother who
could not stop telling stories.
Sex
One of my cousins just my age, is in a committed same- sex relationship with one of our
friends, Sheila. Together they have adopted children, she did this prior to her relationship, and
her partner also has a child who she delivered with the help of an anonymous sperm donor that is
during the term of this current relationship. My cousin, her husband and these kids create a
household. According to my genogram, my cousin, Cynthia, had a strong relationship with her
mother until she passed away at 36.
Cynthia grew estranged from her father who had no time for her children and was not
emotionally attached to them. Interestingly, her brother is also in a committed same sex
relationship. Cynthia’s maternal great grandmother was homosexual and through a sperm donor

FAMILY COMMUNICATION 3
she gave birth to two girls who also became homosexuals. In their history they have at least six
families made up of homosexuals. In most of these families there existed poor child-parent
relationship and this discouraged them from getting involved with the opposite sex. This has
made me understand how Cynthia and where Cynthia got this from.
Discipline
During the era when there were no jails and prison and punishment was by banishment, my
great grandfather was banished from his community due to his indiscipline. He was not a person
who followed rules and preferred to live against them. When punished he would not carry out his
punishment and instead break more rules. He saw himself as always above the authority and no
one would dictate his way of life. My grandfather, my dad’s father, got arrested several times for
not following rules. At one time he spent three months in jail for beating up a police officer who
tried stopping him for over speeding. My father was not left behind; he attended four different
high schools because of indiscipline cases.
At one point in class he threw a paper at his teacher for not marking his work for submitting
his work late and was expelled. It took him six years instead of four to go through high school
because of his indiscipline cases. This history has made it easy to understand why my eldest
cousin Fred was expelled school because he helped organize a strike, this being his second high
school in two years. My younger brother, john, was also sent back home from school because he
refused to shave his hair. This is only two weeks after my mother was called to school because of
claims that he is inciting students to go against the school authority.
Rituals

FAMILY COMMUNICATION 4
In my family we have a lot of belief in rituals, for instance if you complained of stomach
ache, my mum would prepare some herbs for you to drink with claims that maybe you ate
something by the road and one of the passersby had look at you with “bad eyes”, and this is the
cause of your stomach ache. Every occasion is marked by a ritual either before it begins or at the
end. A good example is a funeral. During a funeral, the diseased family shaves as a sign of
grieve. A lot of ritual practices are performed at the grave side which is not common to other
families. This got me curious and I decided to find out about it.
Roles
Apparently before my mother was even born, her mother’s grandmother was a witch doctor.
She was believed to be one of those few people with solutions to almost all the problems in their
community. This was believed to a gift from God that was given to very few chosen families,
and mine was among the chosen few. This gift was passed down to every firstborn girl of this
family. My grandmother being the first born daughter this gift was passed down to her and so to
my mother.
What made it even more interesting was the belief that the first child will automatically be a
girl. A clear look at this family tree the first child of every first girl turned out to be a girl. With
this I understand why my elder sister prefers treating herself with herbs rather than go to the
hospital, and why my mum would make us go through all these rituals before going back to the
village for the holidays and before leaving the village. Even though there are hospitals and
modern medicine. Once in a while people would come buy medicine, the traditional medicine
from my mum and I now understand why.
I came to realize how important a genogram is and I would love to find more about it and
keep it in the family for other generations to learn more about the family. Through this

FAMILY COMMUNICATION 5
genogram, I have been able to see patterns and relationships which are the cause of certain
behaviors in my family. It has enabled me explore the quality of relationships and behavior
patterns across generations. This has enabled me understand the history of my family which is a
very powerful opportunity for personal growth to me and even others who will come after me. I
have been able to unpack those family dynamics, some of which have been taking place for
decades. It has been so obvious that the way our parents live their lives has been greatly
influenced by how their parents lived their lives and even how we live our lives has a lot to do
with how our ancestors lived their lives.
Through this genogram have been able to relate a lot of things that I see taking place in my
family with what had happened before with my ancestors. At least I can now understand why
there are a lot of indiscipline cases when it comes to children around my age in the family; I am
able to understand why my cousins would prefer to be in intimate relationship with same sex
and why my family is too much in rituals and traditional medications. From all this I have learnt
that for an individual to possess a certain behavior, he or she probably got that behavior from
someone within the family. No behavior lack an explanation with through research through the
use of a genogram you will be able to explain almost all behaviors.
Our next assignment would take another form, still on genogram and we could concentrate on
the history of genogram and why and how it came into existence.