for JoyMercy

Visiting your family and sitting down to dinner may bring back many warm feelings and happy memories. Not everyone would agree. As the next case study illustrates, some may find a return home or family dinner a source of frustration and annoyance. The purpose of this activity is to apply correctly the key concepts, principles, and suggestions from Chapter 5 to the case study.

Read the following case study and the instructions that follow it.

“We only visit my parents every year or two for a holiday. Recently, we were all sitting down to mom’s holiday dinner when the topic of politics arose. I made a negative comment about the current U.S. president, in response to which my father called me an idiot for making such a statement. I felt he wasn’t even listening to my point of view but rather looking for ways to criticize me like he always does. I accused him of being too pigheaded to hear what I was saying. This, in turn, angered him, and he told me that I’m someone with whom it is impossible to carry on a conversation. I stood up and threw my napkin on the table. I told him that he was regressing to the way he treated me when I was growing up. He stood up and leaned toward me. He then said, ’When is your attitude going to change? Are you ever going to grow up?’ I told him I was trying but felt that he was bullying me. As usual, my mother was eating without saying anything.” 

The original version of this case study appears in Cahn, D., & Abigail, R.A. (2014), Managing conflict through communication (5th Edition), p. 52.