Expressing love to your kids is central to effective parenting, so is understanding them – which is most critical and lacking substance in parent-child relationships. Loving your kids is not just you buying the latest gadgets for them or taking them for expensive holidays. Some parents think showing their kids love is the same as knowing them.
Knowing your kids take more than that. Parents most of the time concentrate on their kid’s outer look, which is good. But kid’s internal struggles – their emotional needs are key to them growing to become responsible adults. And sadly enough that is what the large majority of parents lack. The understanding or knowing their kids better.
Parents need to take time out of their hectic schedules and develop a conscious attitude of understanding and know how their kids think and help them out.
I will love you to ponder on these few questions and relate it to the relationship you have with your kid now and make the comparison yourself.
- Which of your relatives understand you best and how open were you to him/her?
- How was your attitude towards that person?
- Did you feel that person loved you by the fact that they understand you?
- For the fact that they understood your moods you felt they know you right?
- And how did you feel about those who least understood you?
When these questions are answered genuinely by you, developing a stronger bond with your kid will become a necessity in your life.
The first and most important thing is to have an open communication and quality time with your kid. Encourage them to talk to you by asking them about the games they played in school, their friends, their fights and quarrels, every minute detail about them. Make it in a way which will not end up like an interrogation section but a parent-child honest conversation.
Let them make choices themselves. Give them options but do not choose for them. In so doing you learn what they really like and why they do. In addition, help them think things through. How do you do that? For example when they ask you a question, instead of you answering straight away. Ask them for their opinion – answer. This makes them reason and later the two of you could find the time and talk about the answers.
When firm house rules are set by you or your spouse, explanations need to be made available to make them understand why. This helps them know you care for them. Also, value their opinion on issues and the rules setting. It makes them feel part of those rules and they adhere to it.
Kids nowadays have more online friends than in the physical world. They spend hours on their smartphones and tablets and sometimes parents have no idea what they do. Learning about what they search on the Internet will help you better know them. Just as you get to know their preferences by their physical associations so with the online world too. Mobile parental control apps could help you out. These apps have features that give you all the browsed websites your kids have been to. The chats they are involved in with friends. All their new friends’ contacts.
It is not what you do for your children, but what you taught them to do for themselves that will make them success being – Ann Landers. Teaching your kids good values and attitude in life is by you having quality time with them. Do not leave them to be nurtured by nannies and teachers alone. Those people are not their parents. You brought them to this world be responsible for their daily lives.
Be their parent and a best friend.
