When I Was Your Age: Research on Family Communication using Parental Narratives to Instruct Children

Family Communication is a vital field of communication since everyone has a family and learned to communicate in that family. One of the most important forms of communication within families is how parents instruct and discipline their children. This paper seeks to connect the narrative paradigm theory, developed by Walter Fisher, with how parents use their personal narratives to instruct children. A questionnaire was developed and completed by college students to test three hypotheses: 1) the more parental narratives are shared, the better the relationship between parent and child will be during childhood. 2) The parental narratives remembered will have common instructional themes, even if details are different. 3) Parents telling their personal narratives will have a positive impact on their children. All three hypotheses were supported