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Parent-child relationships are one of the major parts of a family. You must have a healthy bonding with your kids to understand and help them. This also helps to keep the family together and happy. Parent-child relationships help with the physical, social and emotional development of the child. Studies indicate that a healthy parent-child relationship will create positive outcomes for the children and the family.
Importance of Good Parent-Child Relationship
It is clear that parent-child relationships are the best way to keep your kids on track. But there are many more benefits to the same.
- Helps to develop a happy and content relationship with others in life
- The secure relation with parents helps to regulate emotions in difficult times
- Helps the child to be optimistic and confident
- Promotes child’s mental, emotional development
- Parent’s interaction promotes social and academic skills
- Helps promote problem-solving skills
Keep in mind to avoid parent-child relationship problems with a proper approach to parenting. You have to keep a strong bond with your kids from the beginning. But you should learn to make them flexible as the time makes changes. You can’t behave with a two-year-old and ten-year-old the same way.
Tips for Building a Positive Parent-Children Relationship
As you have noticed, a parent-child relationship is very important in the life of your kids. To have a healthy relationship with them, you need to be responsive, trustworthy and loving. Let’s go through a few tips to improve your relationship with your kids. A bad parent-child relationship can easily be solved by following the tips mentioned below:
1. Start from the Beginning
Bonding of a mother starts during the pregnancy period itself. The special period helps to create a strong bond between them. As for the father, they have to get involved in their early days. Studies show that fathers who were involved with the kids in their early days had better bonding later in the life. Thus it is always important to spend time with your child from the beginning itself.
2. Invest Time and Effort
Parents love their kids naturally. The qualitative time and effort is part of showing this love. More time and effort you put into this relationship, stronger the bonding will be. Even though it is better to spend more time with them, you must consider their age before doing so. Teens might need privacy, while younger kids always like to have parental intervention and interaction. So you have to understand what your kids expect you to do to improve the relationship.
3. Prioritise Your Relationship with Your Child
Priority means everything. Your kids should be your top priority, at least at the stages. So you have to spend as much time as possible with them. Making smaller schedules and excuses for your kids may weaken your bonding. Hence, take the effort to put them at the top of your priority.
4. Be Available
When your kids are growing, proper interaction is needed for them to improve their skills. You must be responsive to your child’s needs. This helps to support your kids mentally and will help to strengthen your bond. You should be attentive, loving and able to see things from their perspective during this time.
5. Emphasise
One of the best ways to let you strengthen the relationship is to let the emotions speak. Help your children express their emotions freely. Be empathetic and make it comfortable for them to vent their emotions. This might not be easy to do for a first-time parent, but practice makes perfect. Once you have seen through their perspective more often to understand more about their behaviour, you will be better guided to help them as well.
6. Communication
As a parent, you should have good communication with your child. It should be fair, firm and friendly to keep a positive impact. Always be clear about your expectations, what they can expect from you and restrictions like ground rules. These help to have some control over your child and improve your bonding. You have to control your kids maturely and calmly for a healthy and better future for your kids.
7. Get Involved in Their Studies, Friends, and Activities
More time given to your child can help make stronger bonds. It is noted in a study that the parents who get involved in their child’s life have a stronger parent-child relationship. This part of life involves having more time with them, understanding their academics, and knowing their friends. Staying in touch with their teachers or volunteering at school will impress your kids more.
8. Listen Actively
Most of the kids like to talk about their life more often. They are likely to show this in the early days of school. Always try to listen whatever they are saying. You have to stop whatever you are doing at the time and listen to them. You should maintain eye contact while talking to them as well. This help to let them share more of their time with you.
9. Make Family Time Important
The family is the best part of the life. So have the best of the time together. Have meals together every day and talk about your day with everyone. This helps to improve your family bonding. Family outings, going to movies, events regularly will make some fun time for everyone.
10. Trust Your Child and Be Trustworthy
Trust is the foundation of every relationship. You must always be the trustful parent for them to rely on at any time. Earning this trust is a time taking process in which you must keep promises, give them privacy, and keep them confident.
11. Encourage Your Child
Children are always active in one or the other things. But they always like someone to boost their confidence. Thus you must provide them with encouragement and motivation to build their confidence. When you criticize them on such occasions, they might be confused about themselves. So keep them spirited with your words and support.
12. Respect Your Child
Even though your kids will more or less look to you to establish beliefs and opinions, they might have their own views on certain things. Treat your kids as individuals and acknowledge their opinions. This helps them to be more confident and to share their opinion with others as well.
Facts to Know about the Relationship between Parents and Children
A parent-child relationship can be of many types. This is mainly due to the change in the attitude of both the parents as well kids. Here are some of the types of parent-child relationships.
1. Secure Relationship
This is when the kids are feeling secure with the parents. The care and trust given by the parent helps to provide a great bonding between them
2. Avoidant Relationship
Here the case is the direct opposite. The parent is not responsive to the kids. This leads them to become independent and take care of themselves.
3. Ambivalent Relationship
When the parents have different priorities, this may happen. Parents are responsive at times and will not be available for the kids when they need.
4. Unorganized Relationship
There are some cases where the kids will not get any attention. Kids will learn not to expect from their parents and will have unusual behaviour in social life. This is most likely the case of parents with psychological conditions.
The base of bonding starts from the birth of your child. It has a lot of influence in your child’s life and the overall interaction between members of your family. You have to keep in mind that it is always better to understand them and know them better right from the beginning to build a positive relationship.
