5 Secrets To Building Positive Relationships With Your Child

Building Positive Relationships With Your Child

Building positive relationships with your child is the ultimate goal of parenting. When you have a positive parent-child relationship, both the parents and the children feel loved, safe, and secure in their role as an important part of the family.

But parenting is hard. I’ll never sugarcoat it for you. It’s exhausting, time-consuming, and expensive.

And let’s be honest, there are so many things that come up in a single day that you have absolutely no idea how to handle.

Kids can be best friends one minute and mortal enemies the next.

Someone’s always upset because another child got more of something, because they want something they can’t have, or because someone did something that they don’t like.

And no matter how many times you tell them that nothing in life is fair or equal, children still demand the exact same amount of candy down to the ounce as another kid. And they’ll have a huge meltdown when they think they’ve been shorted.

Remember the days before you had kids when you thought you knew everything about being a parent? Yeah, those days are long gone for me too. I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time, and I suspect you don’t either.

But that’s okay because no one else really knows what they’re doing either. You just do your best and hope that it’s good enough. And whatever mistakes you make today will just give your kids something to talk about with their therapists someday anyway.

All jokes aside, building positive relationships with your child is one of the hardest, most important jobs you ever have as a parent. The effort you put into your relationship today will carry on with them into adulthood.

Kids growing up in safe homes where they feel loved and like they belong grow up to raise their own kids in safe homes where they feel loved and as though they belong.

And that’s a family tradition you can be proud of.

How to Build a Positive Relationship With a Child

The best way to build a positive relationship with a child is to demonstrate unconditional love, to be supportive, and to set boundaries. Children thrive in families where they feel loved, accepted, and cared for and those feelings will benefit them well into adulthood.

These 5 steps for building a positive relationship with your child will help you get started:

1. Demonstrate Unconditional Love

Tell your kids that you love them no matter what and tell them often. They literally cannot hear this enough.

There will be so many times in their lives where they feel like they’ve done something that might disappoint, anger, or frustrate you. But, if they can hear your voice in their head telling them that you love them no matter what, then they’ll feel safe in their relationship with you.

Love for your children should not be contingent on anything. They need to know that the love you have for them is unconditional, and it always will be.

Remember, you gave your children a life so that they could live it.

It may be easy to get wrapped up in what you want for them, but ultimately it’s their decision. Teach them that you will love them regardless of who they are, who they love, or what they do with their lives.

The only expectation you should have for them is that they’re nice humans.

2. Prove That They Can Count on You

Kids will make mistakes along the way, but it’s important to assure them that you’ll always have their backs no matter what.

When you give them a safe place to land, they’ll turn to you when they need help. Whether they’re getting bullied at school, struggling with depression, or even drinking underage and they need a ride home, you want them to know that you’ll always be there for them.

Having a parent that they can count on will help your children feel safe and secure as they grow up.

3. Be Honest With Them

Communication is key when you’re learning how to build a positive relationship with a child.

And let’s face it, you’re not perfect either. Pretending that you are will only make your children feel like they can’t live up to your expectations.

These conversations should be age-appropriate and you certainly don’t need to volunteer all of the details. But let your children see the real you with all of your warts and bruises.

They really do want to know you as a person. And telling them about how you got to where you are today is something they’ll remember forever.

A deep relationship with you is a true gift for your children, and it’ll affect every future relationship they have as they grow up.

So be honest with them about your hopes and dreams, your mistakes and lessons learned, and your challenges and successes in life.

They want to know the real you. So give it to them.

4. Apologize When You Need To

Every single person messes up. That’s life. So teach them the appropriate way to act after messing up by sincerely apologizing to them when it’s you that’s done something wrong.

You will lose your temper. You will say things that you shouldn’t. You will punish them too harshly sometimes and not enough other times.

Parenting is the hardest job in the world. So just apologize when you get it wrong and teach them the valuable lesson of repairing relationships after you screw up.

5. Give Them Responsibilities

It’s important that you give kids small responsibilities starting at an early age so that you can trust them with bigger responsibilities later on.

The thought of putting your kids behind the wheel and sending them out into the world may be terrifying to you now. And sending them away to college to party and do who knows what with who knows who may seem even worse.

But right now, you can focus on teaching them how to think things through and evaluate the pros and cons of any age-appropriate choices.

For example, you may let your younger children decide what treat to have after a healthy dinner or how to spend their own allowance.

Placing these small responsibilities on them at an early age helps them go through the decision-making process and learn from their mistakes while also easing them into bigger responsibilities later on.

Parent-Child Relationships

Just doing these 5 simple things will go a long way towards building positive parent-child relationships.

And it could easily be said that parent-child relationships are the most important relationships people have throughout their lifetime.

Positive parent-child relationships have been shown to be a huge benefit when it comes to:

• Physical health
• Mental health
• Peer relationships
• Romantic relationships

Building a positive parent-child relationship isn’t just a good way to keep peace at home. It will actually affect their bodies and minds as they age leading to less chronic illness, physical symptoms, and stress than children who have negative parent-child relationships.

Plus, they’re a huge determining factor for the types of peer and romantic relationships your children will get into in the future. Demonstrating love, trust, and loyalty in your positive parent-child relationship will make them more likely to seek out the same with others.

And who wouldn’t want that for their children?

So demonstrate unconditional love, prove to your children that they can count on you in any situation, be honest with them, apologize to them when you need to, and give them age-related responsibilities as they grow up.

Putting in the work now will reap benefits for both you and your children for the rest of your lives.

It’ll be well worth it when you have adult children who become your best friends. And no one has ever complained about having children who love and respect them too much.

Sources

• The National Center For Biotechnology Information: Childhood Close Family Relationships and Health
• The National Center For Biotechnology Information: Furthering the Understanding of Parent–Child Relationships: A Nursing Scholarship Review Series. Part 5: Parent–Adolescent and Teen Parent–Child Relationships

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How can you build positive parent-child relationships? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.