Last Man Standing communication

I watched an episode of ABC's Last Man Standing.  I had seen previews for the show, but never watched an episode before. Here is a link the episode that I watched for this assignment:  http://abc.go.com/watch/last-man-standing/SH55126594/VD55176266/ding-dong-ditch

I learned that you can't communicate everything with nonverbal skills.  I had made many assumptions about what the conversations were about, but in reality I wasn't 100% correct.  For example, in the opening scene the dad and his daughter are wathcing TV and eating a snack.  The mom/wife comes in the room talking to both of them, but gets little response.  She seemed frustrated.  I assumed she was frustrated with her husband for not doing something, but in reality she was upset that both of them spent so much time watching TV and the family never talked anymore. 

I learned that you can read a person's feelings about something by wathcing their facial expressions and body language.  You may not be able to discern what is causing the emotion, but you can see it.  For example, the prankster's father visits the family.  His face is stern, not smililng.  His body is rigid, stiff, and upright.  Later when I watched with the sound, I found out he was upset about his son being hurt and was planning to sue the family if they didn't pay for his son's hospital bill.

Also, I learned that we can misinterpret nonverbal communication skills when we do not know the context of a situation. For example,  there was an older gentleman at the outdoorman's shop, who I assumed to be the boss, and a young, dimwitted, college-aged, male employee that had fallen off a ladder earlier in the episode.  In a final scene of the episode, the older boss calls the younger employee into his office. He gestures for the young employee to sit in his seat behind the desk, take some cigars, and shows him a pamphlet.  I assumed the boss was just being nice and offering him some benefits of being an employee.  However, when I watched the episode with sound I had missed an entire conversation about legalism from the family dad in the taping of a commercial for the store that continued after the commercial was finished.  If I had know about this prior conversation, I would have known that the boss's actions had an underlying motive.

With these insights in mind, I think we have to be careful not to jump to conclusions when we observe children and their families.  We do not always know the context of a situation based on observations alone.  We need to be aware of all types of communication and understand that our prior knowledge influences our perceptions of others or events.  I think we need to be aware of how we present ourselves, too.