Increase Connection in Your Home

There are so many different developmental stages of children. Parents may be in the toddler phase where their children have endless amounts of energy or parents may be in the teen phase where their children are testing every limit and rule ever put in place. There are a few things that all the seasons of parenting have in common. This week we will focus on love and trust. The parent-child relationship is the single most influential factor that affects the future of our kids.

Many working parents are expressing high levels of disengagement at home. They are disconnected from their kids and struggle to find the balance between the demands at work and the demands at home.

This week Working Parent Institute will unpack 4 areas that you can focus on to begin to strengthen the connection within your family. By increasing warmth and mastering these skills, your relationship with your children will strengthen and grow. 

1. Understand Strengths:

We have three factors that contribute to our desire to focus on weakness. Biology, Biases, and Blindspots. Biology is how our brain is hardwired. Our brain is actually designed much like a security system, to alerts us of any potential dangers. We all have been conditioned through our upbringing, school, social messages, to fix what is wrong. Last, we have blind spots that we cannot see until we do some work. What can help us push past these road blocks? We can discover strengths. By learning your unique parenting strengths and discovering your kids strengths, it brings to light what is going well. Intentionally building these strengths build confidence and resilience.

2. Keep a Joy journal

Document the things that bring you joy. Write down when you see you children’s eyes light up. We all know those big smiles that mean the world to us parents. Write it down. What were you doing? How did it make you feel? What did your child experience?

3. Turn towards your child

There are several people that want your time, energy, and attention. When someone expresses a need we have three choices. We can turn away from them and ignore the request. We can turn against them and get angry for them not being able to handle it on their own. Or we can turn towards them and listen and engage in a manner that connects us. Take note of how you respond when your kids express a need. Take note of how you respond to your boss/co worker. How about looking at how you respond to your spouse/parenting partner?

4. Make them feel loved

One of the most basic human needs is to feel love and be accepted. Kids are going to test and push the limits and often times this is a way to see if parents express unconditional love. Do you respond in a way that encourages connection?

Don’t miss our session this Wednesday at 12:30 PST where we will be discussing which parenting strengths directly connect to building warmth and expressing unconditional love toward our children.

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