strongerby1

What drives a kid to sell-out to a coach or teacher or even their friends, but rebel against their parents?

Kids don’t rebel against authority, they rebel against lack of relationship.

Yup R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P is the key to what drives and directs your kids, good and bad.  In fact, I would say there is no more important a factor as to who your child becomes as an adult, than the development and health of the parent(s) to child(ren) relationship.  Are you treating it as such a priority?

One of the intentional steps we’ve done is to have a family night weekly.  We’ve set the expectation for our kids that this is the 1 day a week we say no to absolutely every other activity or offer from others, and say yes to our family.  They know before they ask now, the answer is always “no” to other interests on that day…. At least 1 day a week we eat dinner at the table together, we share stories together, we talk hopes and dreams together, we share struggles together, we laugh and cry together, we serve each other, we build each other up, we pray together, and we believe in each other.  We play games, we read together, we write things down together, we keep each other accountable, and we love each other deeply.  This is just 1 of the ways we make relationship building between parents and children a priority in our family, but there are many other ways.

Most people equate relationships to time, but time only plays a supporting role.  It will always be a combination of quality and quantity.  Can you build relationship watching the new release at the movie theatre, or sitting in the bleachers cheering on your child?  There are all sorts of relationship counterfeits out there.  If you are a parent who keeps score with time only, please re-think that for your child’s sake.

Relationships take effort, consistent and intentional.  As a parent, you take the role of the initiator.  Even though relationships do take two people, the burden of the relationship building rests on your efforts.  The only thing keeping you from building relationships at all, let alone consistently, is Pride.

If I may, let me play the role of coach for you…. You can do it!  Yes, it’s hard, it take effort, but you can do it!  Quit making excuses, or using past failures as a crutch for future failure.  Stop projecting fears of your own strained parent relationship, or rationalizing with cliche’ “kids will be kids” answers.  You want something different, so you are willing to do something different starting now.  You are the only one who can control your own attitude and effort in this process, but you’ve already chosen what that is.  Now get in there, and expect to build a rock-solid, stand-the-test-of-time, amazingly wonderful, most rewarding relationship with your kid(s).

Assessment time: On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “desperately need” and 5 being “best it could be”, where would you rate your relationship with each child?  What is the 1 intentional thing you could initiate this week, and do consistently to build quality relationship with your child(ren)?