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Better Relationships with Your Children

Everybody wants better relationships with your children. It is the most important aspect of parenting. Can you find a way to guide your child to adult level skills and abilities while maintaining a strong and positive relationship?

Some will tell you that the secret to better relationships with your children comes down to being more permissive.  Focusing on attachment over all else. But, I don’t believe this is true. 

There certainly are a few secrets to building better relationships with your children, but you are not going to get there by just giving in and giving them whatever they want. And you aren’t going to be able to hug your way to a great relationship either. In today’s blog, I am going to discuss how to develop better relationships with your children.

Key Steps to Better Relationships with Your Children

I believe that I have pretty good relationships with my two daughters.  We don’t always see eye to eye on everything, of course, and sometimes they get mad at me and my wife. But, the relationship is strong and remains strong for a few very important reasons. So, let’s discuss the path to progress for you in creating better relationships with your children. 

Tip #1: Be a Good Person to Your Child

First, you need to be willing to remind yourself to be someone worth being with and being around.  How do you do that?  Be a good person to your child.  Engage in things they like, talk honestly with them about your hopes and dreams, invite them into conversations about important things in the family and show them that, more than anything else, you care about your relationship with them. 

If you can’t seem to create a positive bond, consider actively trying to pair yourself with your child’s most valued reinforcers.  Be the person who makes these fun things available to them.  Whenever possible take part in these activities or at least work hard not to take the fun out of them.  

In the Just 7 Steps program we teach parents to strive to always be at least 75% fun and valuable to their children leaving no more than 25% of the time for expectations, critique and criticism.  If you know you have to talk to your child about something they’ve done wrong, find a way to start and end that conversation on positives that they have done so that they see you can correct them without only focusing on their mistakes.

Tip #2: Don’t Focus on the Negative

That leads us seamlessly into the second important factor in building better relationships with your children – that is, try not to focus on the negative. Parenting is about building new skills and abilities in your child.  To build skills you need to increase good behavior and positive communication. 

If you only focus on the mistakes your child makes and work to correct them you are actually not building anything but merely tearing down their behavior and along with it their feelings of self-worth and possibly your relationship.  

Try to focus on motivating your child to better behavior and then reinforcing that behavior with positive interactions that will help you build that 75% from tip #1.  Try to avoid focusing only on the mistakes you want to correct and if you have to correct something, always couch it with a few positive comments to soften that blow.

Tip #3: Say What You Meant and Mean What You Say

The third aspect involved in building better relationships with your children is to always say what you mean and mean what you say. Children can get used to anything if they can count on it. You can get away with being a more permissive parent or more strict parent but only if you are able to be consistent and fair with your expectations.

It is the unknown or unexpected that cause children the most stress.  When you say something to your kids you should try very hard not to go back on those words.  

If they are consequences you promise, give them the consequences, if they are an offer for a fun activity, be sure to do the work you need to so that the activity can be available to them as you stated.  To be good at this you will need to become more careful with the words you use and what you promise.  So, staying calm and making carefully selected statements that are easy for you to follow through with is always the best way to go.

Tip #4: Fill their Lives with Positive Reinforcement

The final aspect in building a positive relationship with your children is to be comfortable filling their lives with positive reinforcement.  Positive reinforcement is defined as something that is added to the environment after a behavior that makes that behavior more likely. 

If a child offers to help out your sibling, you should never feel uncomfortable making sure that after they are done they receive something they would deem of value.  It could just be praise or access to a game or hugs and kisses, but it can also be anything else they might be interested in having.  

Anything you add to their environment after a good behavior choice not only increases the likelihood of that behavior happening again in the future but it also pairs you as a giver of good things and someone worth being around.   Positive Reinforcement is a win/win when you understand how to best use it and to fade toward more natural reinforcers as your child grows and develops.  

Understand Your Child’s Main Goal

So that’s it, my four tips for building a better relationship with your child.  One of the best ways to use positive reinforcement for your child is to understand the overriding goal of most of your child’s behavior choices.  That’s why it is often beneficial to understand your child’s behavior type and how to work with that behavior type. 

If you are interested, I’ve created a 10-question quiz available right now that you can take to help you determine your child’s specific behavior type.  There are four different possibilities and depending on where your child falls you will receive a free video explanation of their behavior type and what that means to you and your parenting.  Click here to take my behavior types quiz today.   

Remember the 4 Bits of Advice 

If your biggest concern right now is building a better relationship with your children then remember the following four bits of advice.

  • Be worth being around by pairing yourself with your child’s favorite things and being 75% fun and value over only 25% work or expectation.  
  • Try not to focus on the negatives of your child’s behavior but instead work to build their positives. 
  • Be sure to make it a priority to always say what you mean and mean what you say.
  • Don’t be afraid to use positive reinforcement after behavior you want to see more of. It increases behavior and builds you up as a valuable partner in your child’s life. 

Be sure to click here for the Behavior Type quiz and your free video explanation of your child’s behavior type and what you can do to help work within your child’s main goals.