Five keys to improving your relationships with the ones you love most

We would all love for the relationship we have with our families to grow stronger and deeper with passing time. It seems like a reasonable goal, but it doesn’t just happen on its own. You might have found some of your past efforts didn’t work out so well, or perhaps you don’t know how to go about giving your family dynamic a boost.

Jeremy Brownlee, a father of four who is also the family pastor at Abundant Life Church in Lee’s Summit, suggests five concepts to help create stronger family bonds.

1. Dedicate intentional time.

“We live in a time when most of us multitask so frequently, but you can’t multitask parenting well,” Brownlee says. “Parenting bonds require intentional time.”

Brownlee says making a difference doesn’t require long periods of time. He suggests you can start by scheduling various sessions of five uninterrupted minutes with your children, and it can be something as simple as walking to the mailbox without distractions. From there, the intentional time can grow.

When local mom Tamra Hoffman and her husband attended a family camp last summer with their two girls, they began to realize the importance of having more intentional time together in order to build a stronger family bond.

“We realized that it’s not just enough to be together, but we need to be intentional with the time and listen to one another, especially us as the parents,” Hoffman says. “We need to be better examples of compassion and understanding for our girls.” 

As a result, Hoffman has worked to reduce the amount of screen time in her home and is seeking to spend one-on-one time with each of her daughters. One way she is accomplishing this is by allowing her older daughter to explore cooking in their kitchen.

2. Create unique experiences.

Family activities and experiences don’t have to be extravagant or expensive to be meaningful. Brownlee says important experiences can be as simple as serving Popsicles on a fancy tray or having a fast-food picnic. The goal is simply to do something outside the normal pattern of life for your family. It’s these times that your kids will remember and treasure.

3. Focus on effective communication.

Our children might not communicate in the same manner we do, and we need to learn how our children best express themselves.

Just like anyone, some children are extroverts and clearly state exactly what they are thinking. Others aren’t initially as vocal with their thoughts and opinions, and it might take some digging on your part to get them to open up. When a child communicates differently than you, it requires you to learn to appreciate how they are trying to tell you what’s on their mind.

4. Seek to achieve understanding.

In addition to sometimes assuming our kids will communicate in the same way as we do, we also sometimes conclude they will act and think in the same way we do. In reality, most members of every family think and act differently at times. This often requires asking questions about our children’s thoughts and feelings in order to understand what motivates them. Once you have discovered their perspective, it will give you greater insight into why your children act in certain ways, which in turn can help address problem behaviors when necessary.

5. Love with sacrifice.

We can say we love our families, but it’s more meaningful when we take action to prove it to them.

“Outward expression of service to one another drives a deeper bond into our family units,” Brownlee says.

Intentionally performing acts of service, whether large or small, for members of your family is bound to result in increased appreciation of your relationships. Again, it doesn’t have to be extravagant. Go out of the way to serve your children a special meal at home or help them build something they would like to make. Encourage your children to serve by helping with chores or by giving up something they want to do one evening in order to support a sibling at a concert or event that day.

Of course, in order to accomplish these things and achieve a stronger family bond, we must prioritize our families in the busyness of life and be sure we are placing the value on them that they deserve. That often involves slowing down.

“The biggest problem of struggle is how busy we are culturally,” Brownlee says. “When everything is important, nothing is important.”

As you seek to dedicate more time, create unique experiences, focus on effective communication, seek to achieve understanding and love with sacrifice, Brownlee also encourages families to seek the value in each member of the family and build on it. When that happens, everyone in the family will feel stronger and able to contribute more to the world because of the encouragement of the family.  

Simple, fun and full of experience

Creating unique experiences is a key to stronger families, and here are a few ideas to create meaningful memories.

• Take a drive and explore a new place that isn’t too far from home.
• Cook a unique meal together.
• Go for a hike or bike ride.
• Pack a picnic and find a special place outdoors to enjoy it.
• Make up a family game.

Allison Gibeson is a Lee’s Summit writer and mom, and her favorite way to create unique experiences with her family is to explore new places together.

My husband and I recently told our 6-year-old son he needed to clean off his Lego table because it was getting a little out of control. Yet let’s face the hard truth: Who really likes sorting out tiny Legos into plastic bins according to like type? Not me. No spoiler alert to say our son hadn’t made any progress when we came back to check on him.

Fun task or not-whether it’s cleaning off the Lego table, doing homework or getting ready in the morning-teaching kids to stop dawdling and learn the life skill to maintain their focus and productivity is quite a task.

So how do we speed them up when they have slowed down?

“Sometimes [dawdling] has to do with a child’s need for autonomy or to have control over their environment,” says Kerri Gray, a local mom, marriage and family therapist, and Love and Logic instructor.

Gra says when you tell a strong-willed child to hurry up, he will often do the exact opposite and slow down. Instead of simply telling the child to speed up, she has more success in providing children with choices.

For example, if you are at the park and need to leave within 10 minutes, instead of simply telling the child it is time to go, ask him if he’d like to leave right then or in 10 minutes. Both options work for you and involve leaving within the necessary time frame, but having the option gives the child a sense of being in control.

The key is giving the child a choice of two things, both of which are acceptable to you. Gray says it is helpful to try to share control as much as possible with the child in a way that doesn’t create a problem for you as the parent.

Sometimes, the task the child is procrastinating might simply not be fun. After all, we adults don’t always like cleaning our rooms either.

“Kids tend to drag their feet and procrastinate for similar reasons we as adults do,” Gray says.

In cases like cleaning off our son’s Lego table, Gray suggests helping the child break down the task into more manageable and fun steps. Children don’t always know how to do that on their own.

In retrospect, we could have first told our son to take everything off the table that wasn’t a Lego and put those items away. After that, we could have given him a short break for a few minutes to do something fun. Next, we could have had him put all the Legos in a pile and open up all his Lego bins followed by another short break. Finally, he could have come back and actually sorted all the Legos into the respective bins.

In the end, when children learn how to speed up completing daily tasks, they will have more time to play and enjoy the more interesting aspects of each day.

Getting it done on time

Consider these tips to help with hassle-free productivity in your home.

• Provide options.

Is your child procrastinating writing thank you cards? Instead of saying, “Go write the thank you cards,” try, “Would you like to write the thank you to your grandma or best friend first?”

• Break down complicated tasks into manageable steps.

Cleaning up a messy room can be overwhelming. Instead of “Go clean your room,” try starting with, “Bring all the dirty clothes to the laundry room.”

• Don’t always assume they know how to complete the task.

A child might not know all the steps to get ready for school in the morning. To remedy this, take pictures of the child completing each step and post in a prominent place.

• Let them learn from natural consequences. Being late to or missing a fun activity altogether because kids haven’t completed daily life tasks might be the best tool to help increase their speed.

Allison Gibeson is a writer and mom from Lee’s Summit.