How to Strengthen Child Parent Relationships?
Parenting was never an easy job. As parents, you experience moments of uncertainty, anxiety, and doubt.
Children’s emotional, behavioural, or educational well-being and growth are as much important as their physical growth.
Parents are responsible for their children’s needs, developing life skills in them. These important life skills include sharing, patience, and good behaviour, punctuality, taking responsibility, discipline and social skills.
You and your children may have differences and discord many times and that is normal and healthy in many ways.
However, if these conflicts are frequent, severe in nature, and are causing stress, then it may be time to consider professional help.
It is disturbing for both sides, to experience parent-child conflict, and can be detrimental to the child-parent relationship.
Negative emotions like anger, aggression, defiance, and depression may take over you and your children. These can make your children feel helpless, and you stressed and depressed.
In many parents, such emotions can trigger a furious reaction resulting in shouting, taunting and in extreme cases physical punishment. This behaviour can deteriorate the relationship further.
Most times, there is a genuine gap in emotional needs and understanding of parents and child resulting in misunderstanding, freezing of communication, and lifelong bitterness.
However, if your gaps and conflicts with your child are causing anxiety, stress and family discord, then it is time to seek professional help and guidance.
The following are some common reasons for conflict between parents and children:
- Children refusing to follow instructions
- You do not know how to talk about sensitive matters like opposite gender and puberty
- You are unable to understand children’s emotional needs
- Parents’ power struggles tear children
- Children emotionally blackmailing you
- The children have become too demanding
- High parental expectations
- Pressure on parents to fulfil unreasonable demands
- Addiction to mobile/computer games, or substances
How Life Coaching can improve Child-Parent Relationships
Life Coach Ritu Singal helps parents and children to have reasonable expectations from each other, find common ground, and start constructive communication.
She, herself a single mother, understands the various push and pull of parenting and can help you with your struggling parent-child relationship.
Parenting is creating life-long memories for you and your kids, instilling human values in them, giving them the scientific temper and a rational approach, making them inquisitive and giving answers to their questions, playing with them, listening to them and spending time with them.
Therapy begins with the parent
Some children need counselling in certain situations, but therapy for parent-child conflicts must start with the parents. A life coach can help you objectively with your parenting style and suggest improvements.
Learn about your child
As parents, you need to learn about yourselves as well as your child. The life coach can help you identify problems that your child may not be able to express.
See all sides of the conflict
Parents need to understand their role in starting or continuing a conflict with their children. This starts with a critical assessment of their own behaviour. The same is true for children.
A life coach will help both, parents and children, to see objectively all sides of a conflict and who is benefitting from it.
Start talking with your children
The near-complete absence of communication between parents and children is one of the reasons for their strained relations. When you start talking, you start understanding each other and the ice starts to melt.
Treat children with respect
When you listen to your children, pay attention to what they are saying, and involve them in important family decisions, you treat them with respect. When you don’t agree with their choices and decisions, don’t just veto them, but explain its reasons.
Seek help
If you find it difficult to manage your child’s dreams and actions, then seeking help from professionals is a good idea. A professional can give you support, guidance and tools to handle such situations.
With proper guidance, counselling and coaching, you can expect:
- open and honest communication with your children
- setting and respecting personal boundaries with them
- unconditional forgiveness and acceptance for each other
- value differences in opinion
- treat each other respectfully
- healing of relationships
