Developing A Great Relationship with Your Child

It takes a lot of effort to fully attend to another human being, but when you are really present with your child, you often find that it makes you feel more alive, the same way you feel when we are fully present with someone else. It takes so much work to be close to another human. Being present just means paying attention. Like a marriage or a friendship, your relationship with your child needs positive attention to thrive. Attention gives birth to Love. What you attend to flourishes and of course, that kind of attentiveness takes time. You can multi-task at it while you're making dinner, but the secret of a great relationship is some focused time every day attending only to that child. Here is what you must do to build a balanced relationship with your child.

1. Make the Foundation Right.

The closeness of the parent and child relationship throughout life depends on how much parents connect with their children right from the beginning. For instance, research has shown that fathers who take a week or more off work when their babies are born have a closer relationship with their child at every stage, including as teens and adults. If a man bonds with his new-born, he will stay closer to her throughout life.

2. Remember that all relationships take work.

Good parent-child connections don’t spring out of nowhere. If you weren’t biologically programmed to love your infants the human race would have died out long ago, but as kids get older you need to build on that natural bond or the challenges of modern life can tear it apart. Luckily, children automatically love their parents from their child hood. Nature made it so except parents who don’t show love to their kids from birth which is not normal. As long as we play our love part, we can keep the connection stronger by the day.

3. Start with trust         

Trust is the foundation of every good relationship and it begins in infancy. When your baby learns whether she can depend on you to pick her up when she needs you from infant, by the time she is a year old, she becomes attached to you, which means the baby trusts that his parents can be depended on to meet his emotional and physical needs. Over time, we earn our children’s trust in other ways from fulfilling promise we make to play a game with them later, not breaking confidence to picking them up on time. At the same time, you extend your trust to them by expecting the best from them and believing in their ability. Although your child may act like a child today, he or she is always developing into a more mature person just like every adult. Trust does not mean blindly believing what your teenager tells you, it means not giving up on your child, no matter what he or she does. Trust means never walking away from the relationship with your child in frustration. She needs you and you must find a way to work things out.

4. Encourage, Encourage, Encourage.

Your child is like a plant who is programmed by nature to grow, If your plant has brown leaves, it is either it needs more light, more water or more fertilizer. You give it what it needs to make it grow well. Likewise your kids, they need your encouragement to see themselves as good people who are capable of good things. And they need to know you're on their side. If what comes out of your mouth is correction and criticism, they won't feel good about themselves. You lose your leverage with them, and they lose something every kid needs to know when they have an adult who thinks of them.

5. Grow Your Relationship Through Daily Interactions.

You don’t have to do anything special to build a relationship with your child. The good and bad news is that every interaction creates the relationship. Shopping, watching movies, and bath time matter as much as the big talk you have when there’s a problem. He doesn’t want to go to bed, or do his homework? How you handle it is very important in the foundation of your relationship, as well as his ideas about all future relationships. That’s one reason it’s worth thinking through before any interaction with your child. Nagging and criticizing are no basis for a relationship with someone you love.

6. Communication Habits Start Early.

Do you listen when she tries to tell you something about her friends at preschool, even when you have more important things to think about? If your answer is "yes", then she’s more likely to tell you about her interactions with boys when she’s fourteen. It’s hard to pay attention when you’re rushing to pick up food-stuffs for dinner and get home, but if you aren’t really listening, two things happen. You miss an opportunity to learn about and teach your child, and she learns that you don’t really listen so there’s not much point in talking.

7. Stay Available.

There isn’t a particular time for kids to bring things up, and nothing makes them open up faster than pressing them to talk. Kids talk when something is up for them, especially when they know you to be a good listener. Being available when they come home is a sure way to hear the highlights of the day with younger kids and even with older ones. With older kids, simply being in the same room doing something can create the opportunity for interaction. If you’re cooking dinner and she’s doing homework for instance, or the two of you are in the car alone, there's often an opening. Whichever way, ensure you find ways to be close together without it seeming like a demand.