13 Dynamics of Raising Great Kids

Love:

What your kids need most may not seem so difficult: love. You already love your kids so much it’s sometimes frightening. So how do you make sure they know it?

Kids need to feel overwhelmingly accepted, to know that there’s nothing they could do to make you not want to have a relationship with them anymore. The only way to go about giving them the sense of security is to be proactive in nurturing a relationship with them-spending time with them and intentionally taking an interest in them and their lives.

Sometimes when we’re worried about making sure our kids feel loved, the temptation arises to avoid conflict or discipline, thinking our exchanges with our kids must always be happy in order to loving. But the truth is that when discipline is done for the good of a child (not to relieve our own anger and frustration), it is one of the strongest expressions of love. Good parental love focuses on a kid’s needs and well-being, not necessarily their wants or our frustrations.

Is it possible to love our kids too much? In a word, no. however, it is possible to praise our kids too much, making them dependent upon praise or paving the way for perfectionist tendencies later in life. It’s also possible to foster such an emotional closeness with a child that he or she becomes “adultized,” more of a confidant and friend than a son or daughter, which can cause a child feelings of insecurity, as well as disrupt family life if the child receives an elevated status over her siblings or even your spouse. Plus, it sets the child up for a painful “dethronement” process in the classroom when she doesn’t get the special treatment she’s used to at home.

A few micro goals for showing love include:

• Nip power struggles in the bud by setting sensible limits and sticking to them. Limits nurture a child’s sense of loving security-and minimize those exasperated moments where you lose your cool and wonder whether you even like your kid.

• Make sure your kids get some affection from you every day-a note in a lunch box, a hug, and an “I love you.”

• Over dinner tonight, do some active listening. Ask questions, make eye contact, and don’t interrupt until your kids are finished talking. Listening is a great way to say “I love you.”

• Avoid making comparisons between your kids, banishing phrases like, “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” from your vocabulary.