Dual Perspective In Interpersonal Communication

Being a child of divorced parents I would have to agree with the statement of communication being the main reason for the decline of the family unit in the United States. I was eight when my father and mother divorced, as I remember it was a long and bitter process. At the time I was too young to understand the causes of why this was happening, but many years later, after my parents became friends and I entered my adult years both my parents talked to me openly about the reasons for the divorce. Of course, there was more than one reason for the divorce, but the one thing I always remembered both my parents telling me was they stopped talking for the final few years, and neither was listening, the end result was the divorce. The irony of it …show more content…
The interpersonal communication concept of “dual perspective” is the ability to have that understanding. Dual perspective is something that all family members must have to effectively communicate, especially in conflict resolution. I have to admit as a parent, it is much easier to have an understanding of what my wife’s perspective may be or the feelings she has towards an issue, dual perspective is not always a concept that can be useful in the parent to child, especially young child conflicts. To some extent as a parent, you do need to have an understanding of how you child feels, but often parenting requires communicating to your children something they don’t want to accept, for example like telling them turn off the Xbox because it’s time to eat dinner. This may seem unreasonable and according to Beth (2013) one strategy is to become an active listener, which "involves acknowledging and respecting the other person 's point of view. This may be true, but as a parent understanding their child’s point of view that they have to finish a certain level of a video game when it’s time to come to the dinner table is not always