Tips to Build a Closer Relationship with Your Family

The best gift parents can give their children is to support them and nurture them as they grow into adults. However, building strong family ties isn’t the parents’ responsibility alone. While growing up, kids should also support their parents in the best of ways. Sometimes they want to give time to each other but cannot, mostly because of work-related engagements. At other times, they just get stuck with their differences and cannot meet each other's expectations.

Although family bonding takes some time, both parents and kids should continue their sustained effort in forging closer family relationships.

How do they do that? Let’s find out.

Evolve Your Values When Your Kids Start Growing Up

In the majority of families, especially in India, family values are set by authority figures such as grandparents or parents. They guide us in terms of our morality, ethics, and traditions in almost every aspect of our lives. Most problems start when children start growing up, and they demand more freedom in their day-to-day lives. Parents tend to have restrictions because they’re protective, but the fallout usually is that kids rebel and become resentful towards their parents. The end result? Frequent squabbles, growing distance, and increasing negativity. To prevent this, both kids and parents should work together on building trust even before the situation escalates to this level.

Both parents and kids should understand that values are more than just a set of immutable rules. They play a vital role in keeping the family together, and they need to be revisited when kids are growing up. Similarly, if no one in your family has ever gotten a tattoo, don’t stop your son from getting inked.

Revisit your rules. Sit together and encourage everyone to convey their expectations, demands, and concerns using clear and positive communication. Try and create a middle ground, and as you’re getting your kids to buy into some of your ideas, try and meet them halfway to establish new family values.

Maintain Open Lines of Communication

Creating a strong bond within a family becomes easy when its members communicate clearly with each other. This communication can be in the form of conveying your needs, expectations, or just expressing yourself. This initiative has to start with the parents, and they’ve got to take the first step. Instead of resorting to pure authoritarianism or anger when something is amiss, they should talk to their children about their concerns. A few words of appreciation every now and then will also foster positivity and build trust.

Children, too, should talk about the issues that they’re dealing with, especially in their teenage years. However, they should always do it with love and respect. This communication doesn’t always have to be verbal. A warm hug or a comforting smile can also work wonders and develop stronger bonds that will outweigh anything in the world. Both parents and children must understand that discussing their issues will not make them vulnerable. Instead, it will bring them closer to each other and help them understand each other.

Take Some Time Out for Family Meetings

Family meetings are important, especially in nuclear families where parents are busy working while kids are in their school and college or with their friends. In such a scenario, it becomes hard for family members to take out time to just sit and talk about everyday things. Here, family meetings can bring everyone on the same page and get conversations going. Use these meetings to catch up on each other’s lives. Discuss long-term plans, overcome disagreements, and find solutions to any problems you may be facing.

From updates on kids’ college life to discussions on whether you need to buy a new fridge—cover everything in these meetings. Let the conversation flow freely, and let these meetings be free of judgment and confrontations. Family meetings generate a sense of mutual respect and equality as everyone gets a say and nothing gets completely discarded. Avoid having these meetings too frequently, as they can be quite imposing. Weekly meetings are ideal to bring everyone together.

Participate in Activities Together

Participations are great, especially when they happen within the family. Whenever parents help their children in their school/college projects or just do something fun like building a pillow castle, children feel safe, and they develop a feeling that their parents are with them in everything they do. Parents, too, learn a little more about their kids’ personalities, that too in an environment that is open, fun, and unrestricted.

So go ahead, bake cookies with each other, play dumb charades, take short walks around the neighborhood, or just Netflix and Chill. Such small activities can often be of great use in reinstating a lost sense of ‘togetherness’ within a family and developing a sense of camaraderie. There are millions of ways in which you can strengthen your bond with your family, and those are only limited to your imagination.