Attempting to parent when your relationship with your child is damaged is like pushing a boulder uphill. Parenting with a good relationship is like guiding it downhill – you still have to pay attention and offer direction, and challenges certainly arise, but the momentum is with you.

Parenting can take enormous effort. But most of the time, the emotional rewards make it feel well worth it. If it didn't work that way, humans would never have survived to this generation.

So how it feels to parent your child most of the time is an important indicator of the state of your relationship, just as how one feels about one's spouse says a lot about the marriage. Does being with your child feel mostly good? Then your relationship with your child is in good shape.

Or does parenting feel like a huge burden? Do you you often feel angry, or hurt? If these feelings pervade the rest of your life, then your priority has to be yourself: healing your hurt places and reclaiming your life. But if your negative feelings are mostly about relating to your child, it is almost certainly a symptom that the relationship needs some repair work.

It isn’t enough that we tell our children we love them, we need to put that love into action in daily life for them to feel it. Like a marriage or a friendship, your relationship with your child needs attention to thrive. Attention = Love. Like your garden, your car, or your work, what you attend to flourishes.

But what does that mean, "putting our love into action"? Mostly, it means making that connection with our child our highest priority. Love in action means paying thoughtful attention to what goes on between us, seeing things from the our child's point of view, and always remembering that this person is still that precious baby we welcomed into our arms with such hope.

It takes a lot of effort to fully attend to another human being, but when we are really present with our child, we will find that it energizes us, as being fully present with anyone does. You can say it any way you want: being fully in the moment moves you into the Zone. It creates love. It sets up a Peak Moment a la Maslow. Whatever you call it, full engagement and presence makes us feel more alive.

Paying attention allows you to respond in each moment to create a good relationship with your child. The relationship you want can seem out of reach when things feel difficult, but we can always start right now, in this moment, to create more positive interactions. Researchers say we need five positive interactions to each negative interaction to maintain a healthy, happy relationship.

"This is all too esoteric for me. What am I supposed to actually DO?"

There's more info on relationship repair work throughout this site. But start here, with the basic guidelines for fostering a good relationship:

1. Start right for a firm foundation. Babies are born looking for parents. Their very brain development depends on being parented lovingly and responsively.  Their ability to soothe themselves in later childhood, and their ability to be close to others throughout their lives, depends on our responding to their cries with nurturing.  While the tone of every relationship will depend on what both participants bring, including your and your baby's innate temperaments, the closeness of the parent-child connection is throughout childhood is a function of how parents relate to 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 college students. Is this cause and effect? The bonding theorists say that if a man bonds with his newborn, he will stay closer to her throughout life. But you don't have to believe that bonding with a newborn is crucial to note that the kind of man who treasures his newborn and nurtures his new family is likely to continue doing so in ways that bring them closer throughout her childhood.

2. Remember that all relationships take work. Good parent-child connections don’t spring out of nowhere, any more than good marriages do. Biology gives us a headstart -- if we weren’t biologically programmed to love our infants the human race would have died out long ago -- but as kids get older we need to build on that natural bond, or the challenges of modern life can erode it. Luckily, children automatically love their parents. As long as we don't blow that, we can keep that connection strong.

Relationship work means three things:

• First, AWARENESS.  We have to pay attention to see what is going on between us and the other person.
  
• Second, EMPATHY. We have to do the internal emotional work on ourselves to see things from the other person’s perspective.
• Finally, WILLINGNESS TO CHANGE.  We need to take action to change ourselves when necessary.

Being close to another human takes work. But 90% of people on their deathbed say that their biggest regret is that they didn't get closer to the people in their lives. And almost all parents whose children are grown say they wish they had spent more time with their kids.

 

3. Prioritize time with your child. Assume that you'll need to put in a significant amount of time creating a good relationship with your child. Quality time is a myth, because there’s no switch to turn on closeness. Imagine that you work all the time, and have set aside an evening with your husband, whom you’ve barely seen in the past six months. Does he immediately start baring his soul? Not likely.

In relationships, without quantity, there’s no quality. You can’t expect a good relationship with your daughter if you spend all your time at work and she spends all her time with her friends. So as hard as it is with the pressures of job and daily life, if we want a better relationship with our kids, we have to free up the time to make that happen.

4. Start with trust, the foundation of every good relationship. Trust begins in infancy, when your baby learns whether she can depend on you to pick her up when she needs you. By the time babies are a year old, researchers can assess whether babies are “securely attached” to their parents, which basically 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: following through on the promise we make to play a game with them later, not breaking a confidence, picking them up on time.

At the same time, we extend our trust to them by expecting the best from them and believing in their fundamental goodness and potential. We trust in the power of human development to help our child grow, learn, and mature. We trust that although our child may act like a child today, he or she is always developing into a more mature person (just as, hopefully, we are.) We trust that no matter what he or she does, there is always the potential for positive change.

Trust does not mean blindly believing what your teenager tells you. Trust means not giving up on your child, no matter what he or she does. Trust means never walking away from the relationship in frustration, because you trust that she needs you and that you will find a way to work things out.

5. Encourage, Encourage, Encourage. Think of your child as a plant who is programmed by nature to grow and blossom.  If you see the plant has brown leaves, you consider if maybe it needs more light, more water, more fertilizer.  You don't criticize it and yell at it to straighten up and grow right.

Kids form their view of themselves and the world every day. 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 most of what comes out of your mouth is correction or criticism, they won't feel good about themselves, and they won't feel like you're their ally. You lose your only leverage with them, and they lose something every kid needs: to know they have an adult who thinks the world of them.

6. Remember that respect must be mutual. Pretty obvious, right? But we forget this with our kids, because we know we’re supposed to be the boss. You can still set limits (and you must), but if you do it respectfully and with empathy, your child will learn both to treat others with respect and to expect to be treated respectfully himself.

Once when I became impatient with my then 3 year old, he turned to me and said “I don’t like it when you talk to me that way.” A friend who was with us said, “If he’s starting this early, you’re going to have big problems when he’s a teenager!” In fact, rather than challenging my authority, my toddler was simply asking to be treated with the dignity he had come to expect. Now fifteen, he continues to treat himself, me, and others, respectfully. And he chooses peers who treat him respectfully. Isn’t that what we want for all humans?

7. Think of relationships as the slow accretion of 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. Grocery shopping, carpooling and bathtime matter as much as that big talk you have when there’s a problem. He doesn’t want to share his toy, or go to bed, or do his homework? How you handle it is one brick in the foundation of your permanent relationship, as well as his ideas about all relationships.

That’s one reason it’s worth thinking through any recurring interactions that get on your nerves to see how you might handle them differently. Interactions that happen more than once tend to initiate a pattern. Nagging and criticizing are no basis for a relationship with someone you love. And besides, your life is too short for you to spend it in a state of annoyance.

8. Communication habits start early. Do you listen when she prattles on interminably about her friends at preschool, even when you have more important things to think about? 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 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.

9. Don't take it personally. Your teenager slams the door to her bedroom. Your ten year old huffs "Mom, you never understand!" Your four year old screams "I hate you, Daddy!" What's the most important thing to remember? DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY! This isn't primarily about you, it's about them: their tangled up feelings, their difficulty controlling themselves, their immature ability to understand and express their emotions. Taking it personally wounds you, which means you do what we all do when hurt: either close off, or lash out, or both. Which just worsens a tough situation for all concerned.

Remembering not to take it personally means you:

• Take a deep breath
• Let the hurt go
• Remind yourself that your child does in fact love you but can't get in touch with it at the moment
• Consciously lower your voice
• Try hard to remember what it feels like to be a kid who is upset and over-reacting.
• Think through how to respond calmly and constructively.
  

You can still set limits, but you do it from as calm a place as you can muster. Your child will be deeply grateful, even if she can't acknowledge it at the moment.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that you let your child treat you disrespectfully. I'm suggesting you act out of love, rather than anger, as you set limits. And if you're too angry to get in touch with your love at the moment, then wait until you can. (See Positive Discipline).

10. Don’t let little rifts build up. Before you know it, there’s a schism. If something’s wrong between you, find a way to bring it up and work it through positively. Every interaction with another person either brings you closer or creates distance. Choosing to withdraw (except temporarily, strategically) when your child seems intent on driving you away is ALWAYS a mistake. Every difficulty is an opportunity. Use the difficulties that come up to bring your family closer.

11. Re-connect after every separation.  Parents naturally provide an anchor, or compass, for kids to attach to and stay oriented around. When they're apart from us they need a substitute, so they orient themselves around teachers, coaches, electronics, or peers. When we rejoin each other physically we need to also rejoin emotionally.  For more on Reconnecting, click here or see below.

12. Stay available. Most kids don’t keep an agenda and bring things up at a scheduled meeting. And nothing makes them clam up faster than pressing them to talk. Kids talk when something is up for them, particularly if you've proven yourself to be a good listener, but not overly attached to their opening up to you. 

Being on hand when they come home is a sure-fire way to hear the highlights of the day with younger kids, and even, often, 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. Of course, if one of you is hunched over the computer, the interaction is likely to be more limited. Find ways to be in proximity where you’re both potentially available, without it seeming like a demand.

This may seem obvious, but stating your availability is helpful, even with teens. "I'll be in the kitchen making dinner if you want me" or "I have to run to the grocery store, but don't hesitate to call my cell phone if you need me."

But the most important part of staying available is a state of mind. Your child will sense your emotional availability. Parents who have close relationships with their teens often say that as their child has gotten older, they've made it a practice to drop everything else if their teen signals a desire to talk. This can be difficult if you're also handling a demanding job and other responsibilities, of course. But kids who feel that other things are more important to their parents often look elsewhere when they're emotionally needy. And that's our loss, as much as theirs.

Re-Connecting with Your Child 

Attachment Parenting

Connection Parenting 

Empathy 

Disagree? Agree? Please let me hear from you. What's helpful? What's not? What would you like to read more about? What solutions have worked for you that you could share with other parents? Please post a comment in the Parents' Forum, or write me a private email using the button in the Navigation bar to your left.

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Photos:
1- Phitar
2- Soulful
3- Crushedredpepper
4- Ana June
5,7- Phil Cantor Photography
6- Nanda Sunu