Postal Kitchen

Postal Kitchen

Family Relationships, Keeping in Touch

Building Strong Family Relationships

Our society thrives on strong family relationships

Our family teaches us how to function in the world. It should provide love and warmth to all of its members. A strong family gives its members the support they need to make it through life’s toughest spots.

To build strong family relationships, listen actively to each other.

Strong families have open lines of communications, when all family members feel heard and respected. One way to strengthen your family is to increase your listening skills and those of other family members. Until we can hear each other, we cannot build strong relationships

Focus on what the person is telling you, rather than thinking about your reaction or response to what is being said. (You will have time to respond later)

Give the person your full attention, drop whatever you’re doing and listen

Listen for how the other person is feeling and relay back to them what you think they were saying and how they are feeling. Example: “I hear you saying you don’t like you uncle. You look pretty upset. Did something happen between you?

Resist giving advice of your reaction until you are certain you have fully understood what the person was saying to you.

Encourage family members to share their thoughts and feelings.

Strong families allow all family members to talk about their thoughts and feelings, no matter the age of the member. Everyone should be expected to express themselves in appropriate ways. When people feel heard and respected, they feel better about themselves, are more open to solving problems, and are more likely to allow others to express themselves.

Keeping in touch with family members.

In the future, we will have many special purpose digital appliances which are embedded within our environment. Just as we now have a toaster in our kitchen, even though it is not a general cooking device, so we will have a range of digital devices which serve specific needs. The KIT (keep In Touch) project explores this broad direction in pervasive computing in relation to one core human need: keeping in touch with our closest family.

The initial version for KIT was to make it easy for grandparents and their grandchildren to easily keep in touch with each other, even if the grandparents are, beginning to suffer some cognitive loss and even when the grandchildren are young. There are no current technologies that work well for this task because small children are not typically allowed to use the phone without supervision and they cannot use email because they cannot read and, at the other extreme, elderly people may have difficulties with email. We also wanted to support spontaneity: so, for example, when a small child has an exciting experience or comes home excited about an achievement at school, we want them to be easily able to tell grandma. Equally, busy parents may often think about the grandparent but fail to find times when they can make phone calls. The challenges of keeping in touch are exacerbated when there are time zone differences, make it hard to work out times that are convenient to ring and chat.

The Keep-In-Touch system provides a messaging appliance that allows convenient voice messaging between family members. The touch screen version is intended to be in paces like the kitchen, family room or even in a small child’s bedroom. So, for example, a child can send a message to grandma very simply: they touch grandma’s picture and talk. Once finished the message, they touch “send”. When messages arrive at grandma’s house, they look like a small envelope on the child’s picture and grandma can simply touch this to hear the message. (Source: University of Sydney/School of information)

Six ways to keep in touch…

Telephone

E-mail

Postal letters

Greeting cards

Person face to face

Internet Messaging

Elephants have a special technique for keeping in touch; we will have a follow up article about this.

I hope you have gotten something out of this article that interests you.

See you soon!

I have set aside 2 free greeting cards and 2 stamps so you can test drive my system(no obligation) go to the link below and send yourself a card. Turn up your speakers and just follow the instructions. This system is fun to do. if you have any questions or concerns please contact me.

Howard Vanover

423-591-0431

lhv761@comcast.net

http://www.meetmybiz.org

About the Author

I was Born in Southwest Va. in 1938. I now make Jacksboro Tn. my home.Married with 3 children, 7 grandchildren, 5 great-grandchildren. My wife Paulette and I were married in February 1961 in Harrisburg Pa. Just to let you folks know how much in love I was, we had 38 inches of snow that day, we got the car stuck before we even got out of the driveway but determined to get hitched we managed to get to the church on time.

I was born in a small town called Pound, which lies near the Kentucky and Tennessee state lines. Dad was an underground coal miner, my mother was a home maker, I don't ever recall her working outside the home, of course she had a full time job raising five kids, two boys and three girls, plus we always managed to raise a few crops on the seven acres we had, we also butchered a couple of hogs in the winter time, so this was enough to keep my mother busy, canning vegetables, working with the hog killing etc. I am proud to say my childhood was one of lots of love, respect, and good counseling. In short I had a wonderful childhood and never regret one minute of it. I only wish the young people of today had the same environment to grow up in as I did.

I'm now retired and loving every minute of it.

evan listening to the postal service