You probably don’t realize it, but your relationship with your family ultimately affects your view on the world, interactions with people, and many other things throughout life. Having a good foundation to look back on and guide you throughout other relationships and life is often helpful, and here are the reasons why.

Healthy Communication Skills

In most cases we first learn to talk with our families. They have been there with us since the beginning, and whether parents know it or not, children pick up on how things are handled around the house very quicky. During the early stages of learning to talk, babies not only hear the words being used around them but also hears the expression and tone as well. Proving that even early on, tone and mood affect one’s communication. However, throughout the child’s life, we start to see the emotions even clearer; and this can go both ways.

One might argue that this is not true, and individuals develop their own feelings and ideas and is not heavily influenced by their parents; but let’s look at this this way. Think about your stance on the world, your political, religious or individual beliefs. Didn’t at least some of that come from your parent’s original ideas? No matter if you have grown out of your parent’s ideas, you still know what it’s like to believe in that one side; because someone very close to you, whether they know it or not, is influencing you. Communication really is key when it comes to family, and relationships.

Let’s say that Family A has an overall open household. Meaning they share their feelings with no hold-back, are comfortable with each other and can move on after certain issues. A person when building relationships outside of their family, is most likely to be open about their feelings with other people and tend to be more forgiving. Meanwhile Family B is a hard-headed, loud and stubborn family. This means that they don’t know anything about each other, keep their feelings to themself and when issues arise, it’s basically the end of the world. A person from this family is well, a hard-headed, loud and stubborn person, most likely. Truth is, your family is the first to teach you ideas of the world, and it’s up to you to see how you interpret it.

Source: Baby Talk: How Parent-Child Communication From Birth to Three Sets the Stage for Success – Neuroscience News

Self-esteem

It’s no surprise that we as humans naturally seek validation from others. This is why it is crucial to understand where one’s lack or no lack of self- confidence, self-worth, etc stems from. It can truly hinder a person’s belief of themselves throughout life and many other things. What could that be? You guessed it, family.

Positive interactions with our loved ones lead to one being confident in general. They don’t have to worry if there doing something right because they already have validation from the ones they love most. Meanwhile negative interactions can lead to a very dark hole of sadness, low confidence and lack of feeling worthy. These people often feel like they are doing something wrong all the time or is anxious about what their family might say to them.

This is why families need to be aware of how they interact with their children, especially though the stages of growing up. Connecting my idea from before, that through these stages of growing up they are also learning to express how they for more clearly, because they have seen it, grown up with it, and that’s how someone knows how to express feelings.

Source: The Impact of Family Dynamics on Self-Esteem

Understanding the impact of one’s behavior, personality, and character traits in most cases come from their family. Afterall, they are the ones who they have grown up with, and had been given ideas about the world before they could even walk. It is important to understand this to become closer to people and understand where the come from when issues arise. It leads to a better connection, and it leads to knowledge of their actions throughout different relationship’s in life.