How to cool down this year’s family gatherings

 How to cool down this year’s family gatherings

by Priya Parker

We’re coming off an intense and polarizing election. If you, like millions of Americans, are traveling to spend time with an extended circle, you may be thinking more than usual about how to help the group connect (or just not blow up).
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When there’s been a rupture within a group, we tend to think we need to go immediately to the tear. To hash it out, to talk through what’s wrong and how we’ve been hurt, just one more time. Sometimes we worry that we’re not being authentic unless we go for the jugular.

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But if I’ve learned anything from twenty years as a conflict resolution facilitator, it’s that sometimes what’s needed most is to first water the proverbial garden. If we think of a community as a garden, this is the time to fill the soil with nutrients. To grow our capacity and desire to even want to be together.

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Conflict resolution facilitators are taught to hold healthy heat. And sometimes that means turning the temperature down, while still maintaining connection.

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Seven ways to make space for connection when tensions are high:

1. Let your quirks do the heavy lifting.

Fights (and social media) have a way of making our identities flat and one-dimensional. We grow our care for each other when we’re reminded of the diverse quirks, passions, and hobbies (the multitudes, really!) that we each contain.

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What this could look like:

• You remember that before Uncle Tim started shouting about Trump on Facebook this year, he used to post a lot of zoomed-in bird photos. You ask him to lead a bird-watching walk around the neighborhood before dinner. You are reminded, as he points out the coloring on a pair of finches, how gentle and curious he can also be.

2. Deputize an unexpected host.

Find the person who might be more inclined to linger on the peripheries and invite them to host or lead an activity they love. When an unlikely person shares with the group, it creates energy and invites new ways of being together for the rest of us, too.

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What this could look like:

• Assign the ten-year-old twins the role of their lives: hosts of the two-hour afternoon Super Smash Bros tournament for the whole family.
• I’ve noticed it’s often the quieter, too-cool-for-school person who has great music taste. Ask them to DJ the gathering. They’ll get ownership over the emotional arc of the night, surprise everyone with some unlikely bangers, and probably even fix grandma’s Spotify, too.

3. Fight, but about other things.

Energy is energy. Try blowing off steam while remaining connected with some high-energy, low-stakes competition and controversy. Give people the experience of fighting while having fun.

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What this could look like:

• Play a game that gives people reasons to debate and to yell, together. Some of my favorites are Priorities, Codenames, Taboo, Fish/Salad Bowl, and Werewolf.
• Schedule a kickball game in the backyard before dinner. Bonus: fun physical activity is also a great way to get people to drink less. (When things are hot, too much drinking can make nuance hard.)

4. Break it up.

Years ago, I learned about something called the four-player model of group dynamics from (and by) David Kantor. The TLDR version is that in group conversations, there are four roles people assume: the leader, the follower, the opposer, and the bystander. These roles aren’t “bad.” But when the same people play the same roles in conversation after conversation, groups get stuck. And families are particularly at risk for calcification. When you break up the group into smaller, unlikely pairs, you create simple ways to give new roles that aerate the bigger group.

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What this could look like:

• I once attended an extended family gathering where we were paired into unlikely teams to compete for Best Meal and Best Clean-Up Crew over the course of a three-day gathering. It was fun and functional, and shifted who was in and out of the kitchen.
• Don’t underestimate the power of that extra grocery store run for milk with your niece or brother-in-law or older aunt (and how the conversation changes when it’s just the two of you).

5. Give kids real roles. (And watch them rise to the occasion.)

Kids can be great connective tissue across generations. Their mere presence keeps adults on better behavior. When given a little responsibility and taken seriously, they infuse the whole gathering with joy, color, humor, and levity.

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What this could look like:

• Give the kids paper, crayons, and tin foil, and ask them to make everyone a custom place setting with a drawing or foil sculpture of that person’s spirit animal. (For extra credit: have them check with each person what their spirit animal actually is.)
• Consider graduating the well-behaved 12-year-old nephew to the adults' table. In most adult groups, the presence of a young person functions as an invisible mediating force. We watch our language, and use more generous words to tell stories about others.

6. Seed new conversations.

Groups that have been together for a while can get stuck in the same conversational loops. Stop them from starting by planting the seeds of new, more interesting conversations that energize and connect people to one another.

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What this could look like:

• Don’t ask people what they think; ask people to share a story. Opinions are a dime a dozen, but personal stories are unique and precious. They’re also harder to criticize or pick apart, and help us to better understand where someone is coming from.
• Ask alternative questions instead of only what people are grateful for. What’s something you’ve changed your mind about this year? What’s the best new food you tried all year? If there was a song that you could pick to be the soundtrack to the past year, what would it be?
• Stick a pack of Root and Seed Conversation Cards in your bag. On an inter-generational trip this summer, our kids loved handing out the question cards to their immigrant grandparents: What was the first object you bought when you came to this country? What was your schedule like when you were nine years old?

7. Talk less.

My mentor, the late Hal Saunders – an expert in dialogue – once told me, “Sometimes, talking more isn’t the answer. Sometimes, what a community really needs is a soccer game.” Talking is just one way to create meaningful connection in a group. When things are polarized, and people are repeating the same talking points, do something else.

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What this could look like:

• A friend of mine is hosting ten people for Thanksgiving, all older in-laws and parents who don’t know each other well. How they’re kicking off the big day? A sound bath, something none of them has ever tried before.
• Hint: You can buy an inexpensive karaoke mic (as I discovered through my children), and stream the karaoke version of basically any song for free on YouTube. Singing is a heart-opener – the louder, the better.

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When we grow shared joyful experiences, when we allow ourselves to be seen in different ways, and when we don't get stuck in the same conversational loops, we create the possibility for expansion that might seem impossible in moments of heat. And, if you are opting out this year, know that artful gathering is about making intentional choices in both our presence and our absences.