Psychologists have found that every family has a unifying narrative, he explained, and those narratives take one of three shapes.įirst, the ascending family narrative: “Son, when we came to this country, we had nothing. “The answers have to do with a child’s sense of being part of a larger family,” Dr. Why does knowing where your grandmother went to school help a child overcome something as minor as a skinned knee or as major as a terrorist attack? Duke said, “the ones who knew more about their families proved to be more resilient, meaning they could moderate the effects of stress.” The researchers went back and reassessed the children. Fivush were horrified like everyone else, but as psychologists, they knew they had been given a rare opportunity: though the families they studied had not been directly affected by the events, all the children had experienced the same national trauma at the same time. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.Īnd then something unexpected happened. The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. They then compared the children’s results to a battery of psychological tests the children had taken, and reached an overwhelming conclusion. Fivush asked those questions of four dozen families in the summer of 2001, and taped several of their dinner table conversations. I spent the last few years trying to uncover that information, meeting families, scholars and experts ranging from peace negotiators to online game designers to Warren Buffett’s bankers.Įxamples included: Do you know where your grandparents grew up? Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know where your parents met? Do you know an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? Do you know the story of your birth?ĭr. The only problem: most of that knowledge remains ghettoized in these subcultures, hidden from the parents who need it most.
Trendsetting programs from Silicon Valley and the military have introduced techniques for making teams function better.
Myth-shattering research has reshaped our understanding of dinnertime, discipline and difficult conversations.
#The story of your life summary how to#
The last few years have seen stunning breakthroughs in knowledge about how to make families, along with other groups, work more effectively. It turns out to be an astonishingly good time to ask that question. “It’s stronger than ever.”īut lying in bed afterward, I began to wonder: Was he right? What is the secret sauce that holds a family together? What are the ingredients that make some families effective, resilient, happy?
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