Building Connection and Great Relationship with Your Child
All parents want to build a great relationship with their children. Like in any relationship, a parent-child relationship also takes effort and patience to run smoothly.
Do you want to know the secret to building a strong bond with your child? It is connection. You can’t expect your child to love you for life just because you are their mother or father. Yes, most of the time we love our parents even if they were not what we wanted to be.
But is that enough? Don’t we want to build close, meaningful relationships with the people we love? Like anything meaningful in life, building great relationships also takes work. But it’s not hard. You already love your child. What you need is the sincere effort to pass it to them. It means being present for them and paying attention to them.
The answer is, you don’t need to take a lot of time in your day to connect. Always aim for quality time against quantity time. Even if you are a stay-at-home mom and are always around, it’s not enough to build a connection. You need to engage with your child intentionally and bond with them.
Try these connection-building activities:
🟡 Play with them
🟡 Listen to them
🟡 Hug and cuddle
🟡 Have one-on-one time with each kid
🟡 Do chores together
🟡 Make use of driving time
🟡 Slow down, don’t rush them
🟡 Put the smart phones away
🟡 Tell stories
🟡 Take one-day trips or dine out as a family
Building connection is essential because we want our children to feel loved. We also want them to follow the rules we have set for them so that they grow up as well-adjusted kids. But if there is no connection and only rules, it’s hard to get co-operation from them.
Lack of connection directly impacts their behavior towards you. Because as parents we always need to guide them to behave well. And that includes scolding, criticizing, and even yelling (yes, we all don’t have it together all the time). So, if they are getting only negative interactions from us, it is going to weaken the relationship. Therefore, taking time to connect must be made a priority.
© 2024 Benjamin Mizrahi. All rights reserved.
