Задание

Match the texts A–F to the questions 1–7. There is one extra question

What is the right lesson for fighting siblings?

How can family members have a harmonious relationship?

What do teenagers lack in their families?

What are the causes of family misunderstandings?

Is it ok to pay for school grades?

How can families organise work around the house?

What do youngsters like doing in their free time?

A. When we communicate with people we live together, we often come across conflicts. Different things can be the cause of a dispute: the generation gap, money issues, family business, leisure activities, housework, and the relations between siblings. Why do families fight? There are different reasons, but very often they are similar to other families.

B. Sooner or later each teenager comes across misunderstandings with their family. And there is a term for this: generation gap. Of course, everybody understands that their parents and other members of the family are great people. However, it can be difficult to spend much time with them. Teenagers want to have independence and the opportunity to solve their problems themselves.

C. Many parents and psychologists can't come to one answer when it comes to pocket money. Is it ok to give children money or should they earn it? There are families where kids get pocket money for doing the chores. For example, washing the dishes, vacuum cleaning the house, taking the rubbish out, or washing the car. Other families give out pocket money for school grades. The higher the grade the bigger the amount of money. There is also a group of parents who give pocket money on a regular basis not depending on their children's help around the house and school grades.

D. One more common conflict is spending free time together. There are so many leisure activities, but families seem unable to come to one decision. This is true for most families especially those where there are more than two children of different ages. Preschool children prefer playing on the playground, middle school kids like going to museums and exhibitions, and teenagers would rather hang out with their friends, not parents. Nowadays mothers and fathers should be ingenious when it comes to activities for the whole family.

E. Most children understand that it's important to help their parents around the house. However, not everyone is that enthusiastic about household chores. You can find all sorts of advice on the internet on how to manage and delegate housework. Some articles say it's good when each family member has one responsibility. For instance, the mother does the cooking, the father does the grocery shopping, and the children do the dishes. Other specialists advise rotating responsibilities. What does this mean? Let's have a closer look. Each week every family member is assigned a certain job. The next week everybody gets new jobs. And so on.

F. Most parents often face a dilemma of how to deal with their children, who cannot share things, or responsibilities around the house, or face conflicts of interest. Of course, parents try to solve the issue on the spot, quickly. This most often leads to a worsening of the problem of misunderstanding between brothers and sisters. However, the right decision would be to understand the reasons of the disagreements, to question both parties to the conflict. And only then to make a carefully considered decision on punishment. After all, the punishment should be aimed not at the fact that the children felt bad, but at the fact that they learned to interact with each other.

Говорящий

Рубрика

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B

C

D

E

F