Q & A with the Experts: Preventing arguments over the holidays

It’s the stuff of holiday movies: relations coming together to celebrate the festive season, only for the gatherings to have more of grudges than gravy about them. Dr. Rob Danisch, professor of communication arts at the University of Waterloo and co-author of Radically Civil: Saving Democracy One Conversation at a Time, shares tips for more productive conversations.

Why do you think holiday gatherings sometimes involve tension? 
At holiday time, everything is loaded with extra meaning. So, if, for example, you put up your Christmas tree and one of your kids breaks one of the ornaments, and you get really upset about the broken ornament, it’s because it's not just an ornament. That ornament likely had some history to it, some story to it. There are a lot of parts of holiday time that are loaded with these extra meanings. 

Do family dynamics play a role in disagreements?
You learn your communication patterns or habits from your primary relationship, so with your family. You have this combination of learning these communication patterns from your family unit and then coming back to them and repeating them, plus these charged symbols everywhere that have this emotional meaning to them. It's sort of like a minefield for you to negotiate. 

Should we just avoid touchy subjects and conversations?
We can't avoid them. But you can use hedges—a bit, almost, seems like. The other person might ratchet down their response.  If someone says something charged, you could narrate what's going to happen, such as this is a point of disagreement but maybe we can be constructive about it. You’re telling them the relationship matters, you've heard them, and they might respond calmly. Good communication burdens one person with responsibility the other doesn't have, but the only way to draw them in is for you to do more of the heavy lifting to begin with.