17 secrets of the happiest families

“Family meetings are a regularly scheduled time to draw attention to specific behaviours,” says David Starr, author of the report Agile Practices for Families. If you don’t have a safe environment to discuss problems, any plan to improve your family will go nowhere.”

Studies have shown that people in power positions – those sitting higher than their partners, putting their feet up, or lacing their fingers behind their necks – have increased feelings of superiority, while people in lower-power poses, such as sitting lower, are defensive and resentful.

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Indiana researchers spent years monitoring the twitching of noses, raising of eyebrows and pursing of lips during marital spats. They checked back with the couples four years later and determined that above all other gestures, eye-rolling predicted marital tension.

Find out how to improve communication in your relationship.

In the 1950s, a British psychiatrist noticed that patients interacted more socially when they sat facing one another instead of side by side. The same rule can apply to families. If you want to have more communal family gatherings, sit in an O, not an L or a V.

Use we instead: “We have to get better at communicating” will diffuse a fight quicker than “You never tell me what’s wrong,” says James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas and the author of The Secret Lives of Pronouns.

Here are 15 questions polite people never ask (including to their family).

Two Chicago psychologists determined that this two-hour window is the most stressful time of day, as parents are coming off tension-filled workdays, kids are tired, and family members are converging at home.

John Gottman of the University of Washington found that the most important points in any argument can be found in the first three minutes. After that, he says, people often repeat themselves at higher decibels.

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Source: RD.com