GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD)-Happy Valentine’s Day from Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services! Today, Dr. Gregory Mallis talked about family relationships, specifically when it comes to sibling relationships and the relationship we have with our kids. Sibling rivalry is real and something that has value to your children’s development. While rivalry hopefully does not happen all the time this is the first way our children learn first relationships.
We all want to have deep bonds with our kids and one of the best ways we can do that is by spending time with our kids. That can be by having family game time, if you have multiple children, it can be fun to pit the kids against each other. But it is important that we are also recognizing our children’s unique talents and personality traits. It is also important that we are giving ourselves enough time to individually spend it with our children. This makes each child feel important so that each parent can also form an individual bond with their children.
We all know the grass is not always green when having kids and that tension is a normal and regular part of having kids. It can be easy to expect our kids to act almost robotic like or they way we want them to act but that is not realistic. It is important that we find out about our children and take that into account when guiding them to act the way we want them to. Kids very much mirror what we do as parents so another important way to have our children properly act is for ourselves to act that way. If we show healthy ways to resolve our problems in our marital relationship our kids will learn from that and model that type of interaction as well as conflict resolution.
Finally, another thing that we can do to build our relationship with our children is to let them know that they are valued and loved by encouraging them. It is important that we tell our children that we love them and give them hugs. It can be easy to assume that our children know that we love them, but that may not always be the case. It is important to try to reinforce to your kids that you love them. Simply saying that or giving them hugs or kisses can reinforce this.
