As mums know, being a parent is one of the most difficult jobs around. It’s also one of the most rewarding. However, it’s not something that you can be perfect at. Most parents are doing the best that they can for their kids while juggling work, relationships, managing a household and a million other things. However it is worth taking the time to work on improving relationships with your child and other family members. A good family dynamic will help:
- Make children feel secure and loved
- Overcome any underlying problems with eating, sleeping, learning and behaviour
There are lots of ways that parents can work on developing good family relationships:
Spend quality time together:
- Use time together, such as mealtimes or car trips to have meaningful conversations together.
- Make time to do fun things together as a family at least once a week
- Speak to each individual family member to build on individual relationships
- Hold family meetings about what to do for special events such as holidays and birthdays
- Talk about everything even things that are hard to discuss
- Listen with full attention to each other
- Try to praise and support each other rather than find fault and criticise
Work together to solve problems:
- Create family rules that apply to everyone
- Include older children in family decisions such as curfews and family holidays
- Share household chores
- Consider what everyone needs when planning family activities
- Take an interest in each other’s lives
- Try not to exclude anyone from conversations about the day’s events
