Dr. Sara Denman is a licensed psychologist who focuses on divorce, life changes, trauma, anxiety, depression, addiction, eating disorders, and more.
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It's important to foster relationships with your kids.
By Janie Lacy and This Emotional Life — Written on Jun 18, 2020
Every parent knows whether or not they are close to their children. In this modern emotional world, an increasingly common term to define this bonding or connectedness is "attunement."
Attunement means that you are attempting to respond to your child’s emotional needs, resulting in the child’s sense of being understood and valued.
The capability to attune differs on the personality and temperament of children, and how easy or difficult it is for us to relate to them, given our own individual personality traits.
Parenting advice opens up a world of challenges, like the stresses of work, financial worry, marital tension and conflict, the determination for success, modern-day stresses on our kids, and mixed families due to divorce and remarriage.
There are more forces than ever that are tearing at relationships with children.
How can you increase attunement and connect with your children in a way that promotes emotional health?
When we consider an attachment perspective, it all starts with safety in the home with primary caretakers.
Here are 5 simple concepts you can use to help promote secure relationship patterns with your children.
1. Accept your child's temperament.
Each child is born with a certain temperament which is developed by an early age. Most kids are classified into one of four categories:
- Easygoing
- Challenging
- "Slow-to-warm-up" kids
- Mixed temperament kids
What really matters is how well parents adjust to their children’s personalities if parents and children have mismatched temperaments, or if both have difficult temperaments.
Accepting a child for who they are will help them feel secure and okay with their personality and identity.
2. Invest in time with your children.
Most parents make a distinction between quality time and quantity time. What this can translate into is "I don’t have much time for my children, but when I do, I want us to have fun together."
To actually have quality time with kids, parents have to spend a lot of ordinary time with them. This time is the kind that develops trust, learns their love language, and to truly understand their ways.
Quality moments require many hours of little moments: Talking about your children’s day, having conversations, reading, and telling stories.
Kids need both high-quality and high-quantity time. They need you in healthy doses!
3. Deliberately touch your kids every day.
This can mean anything from high-fives and wrestling matches to stroking their hair, squeezing their hands, and giving goodnight kisses. Those with babies should hold them gently and lovingly, not just functionally.
Within the safety and warmth of their arms, children learn that relationships are nurturing and secure. This can be challenging as a parent if you have an avoidant attachment style.
Meanwhile, parents who have the ambivalent attachment style have the need to monitor how much their children are touched.
You need to pay attention to your children’s cues and adjust your behavior, appropriately. It's important to know which type of touch feels good to your children, and then respond in that way every chance you get.
This may change as they get older, so don’t take it personally if they are not as receptive — just be willing to give affirming touch when you can.
4. Teach your children important values and life lessons.
This includes teaching your children the significant lesson of learning how to handle negative emotions by not ignoring them or pushing them aside.
When some parents use messages such as, "Just get over it," and, "You shouldn’t feel that way," this can be harming and ineffective, especially as they get older.
Instead, you will need to set limits on how your children behave when they are upset, and teach them ways to manage feelings and solve problems. When you do this, you create a secure base from which children can deal with negative emotions.
Also, keep in mind that one of the best ways we can teach our children is by having them see us live out the principles and guidelines we are sharing with them. Remember: they are constantly watching and learning from us.
5. Demonstrate tenacity.
When we stick to something and remain persistent in the face of stress, this is tenacity. Tenacity helps create a resilient family structure, one that generates warmth with clear limits and realistic and constructive boundaries.
When families maintain commitments to setting healthy boundaries and fostering open communication, this can help create a healthy and stable environment. It also lets them know you are not going to give up on them even in challenging times, which brings safety and security.
When trying to reconnect with children, there can be several hurdles to overcome. So, it's important for parents to put on their patience hat and have self-awareness of their own personal struggles that can be triggered in the interactions with their children.
Parents can once again find joy in their life after reconnecting with their children and observing the growth and development of them in the family.
Here are the 5 principles you can employ during this time of re-bonding and rebuilding the relationship with your children.
1. Foster uniqueness.
Every family is filled with individuals who are, though related, much different than the others.
A huge mistake is to think that you can raise and relate to each child in the very same way. This can potentially build resentment between the children.
2. Be careful with rigidness in enforcing household rules.
Parents can do a disservice to their children when they have too many rules.
Trust is the key to building healthy family relationships. It's essential for parents to articulate their expectations well and follow this up with consistent, fair consequences.
3. Create rituals of "togetherness."
Embrace the benefits of families eating together several times a week, having meetings where each member can have a say, and outings where a son or a daughter has alone time with a parent — not as a punitive event, but a fun time where you laugh and learn more about one another.
4. Helping them develop their legacy.
In helping them develop as a person, it's important to educate children on the highs and lows of our extended relationships.
You can talk to them about deceased family members, visit gravesites and childhood homesteads, share memories of your upbringing, and the good and bad lessons you learned along the way.
When you're vulnerable with your child, it will help them to open up and relate in real ways.
5. Model appropriate use of words in your communication.
Parents can devastate or hinder reconnection by using ill-conceived language during times of frustration such as, "You always..." or, "You never..." which can really destroy their confidence in bonding with you and potentially in other important relationships.
It's important that they hear words like, "I love you," "You are valued and special," "Thank you," and, "Everything is going to be okay," on a regular basis.
Also, be sure to share that you love them just for who they are and be specific in your compliments. If you build love in your children, they will not lack self-confidence.
Janie Lacy is a licensed mental-health counselor and owner of Life Counseling Solutions (LCS), where they specialize in helping men and women recover and heal in order to become happier and healthier people.
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