Better Ways To Bond With Your Children

When you are a parent you can spend so much of your waking time aiming to teach, love, and nurture your children to help them become the adults that you want them to be. You want to help them to avoid certain mistakes or it can make us on a mission to have children that are more kind or more studious. But taking a step back to think about it, it can be a great idea to be more relatable to your children and find time to get along with them, so they don’t always feel like they’re letting you down, or like they are some kind of project that you have taken on.

Our little people are much like us, in that they are flawed, but they are still wonderful. And a lot of the relationship that we need to have with them is about slowing down and having more of a bonding relationship with them that truly helps you to know one another, and can create a really open and nurturing environment. It is never too late (or too early), to look for ways to bond with your children. So here are some ideas to help motivate and inspire.

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Reading

Spending time together with a good book can be a great way to bond. It not only helps with their reading and learning, but it can be something to look forward to (especially if you decide to read a series of books together, like Harry Potter, for example). You can ask questions about what is going on in the books and even delve more into what the characters might be feeling or motivated by, particularly as your children get older and older.

Outdoor Adventures

Outdoor adventures are going to be different for different people. For some it could be a fishing trip and spending the day bonding over that. Camping or doing something like orienteering or geocaching can be a good idea too. It could even be training for something like one of the Global Adventure Challenges like taking part in part of the Tour de France (probably best with teenagers). But find what you like, as well as what you kids like, and then you can go from there.

Learn Something New

Learning a skill or something completely new can be great fun and a good thing to do together. You could teach your kids how to do something in particular, like baking or DIY, and then do that skill together. You could even find something that the two of you can do at the same time, so that you are both learning for the first time. That could be even more fun as you both take on the challenge of learning a new skill; you kids could even end up being better than you at it!

If you look back on your childhood, hopefully, there are some happy memories to look back on. The same goes for your kids. The time spent together as a family, and one on one time is only brief, but it plays a really important role.