If you’re feeling extra yelly these days, or if your kiddo’s eye-roll/door-slam game is getting too strong, it might be time to connect with your kids.
When behavior gets bad and doesn’t improve, we often try to find “better” consequences, rewards charts, or hefty amounts of hidden chocolate in the freezer.
{Read: Why Consequences Don’t Work for Kids with ADHD}
We end up yelling when we don’t want to, punishing more than we’d like, and feeling copious amounts of frustration.
There’s nothing wrong with us for feeling frustrated, and the good thing is we can change our situation. We don’t have to remain in the pit of despair forever.
Connecting with your kids is the first step in improving frustrating behavior problems. Why? Because children do well when they can, so if your child is melting down, refusing to cooperate, talking back, ignoring you, or more, there’s something getting in their way.
They aren’t bad.
Consequences will frustrate them. Rewards will only slap on a temporary band-aid. But connecting with your kids will help BOTH of you know what to do next. Connection halts the fights, brings clarity, and helps you understand what’s going on.
Here are 33 ways to connect with your child.
1. Hug
If your children appreciate hugs, this is the easiest and quickest way to connect with your kids.
Touch is healing, reassuring, loving, and calming. Hugs do some sort of magical deposit into your bank account of patience. I’m not kidding. Each time you hug, the connection between you and your child builds.
When my daughter and I were going through a period of complete misunderstanding, and meltdowns were off the charts both in terms of frequency and intensity, I suggested that we aim for 20 hugs a day.
She liked that idea, and it became a fun game. The greatest bonus was that the tension in our home disappeared for a time.
It was magic.
In fact, I began training myself to hug her as soon as tensions began to rise, and — Whoa, Nelly — that changed EVERYTHING for us.
{Read: What to Do When Your Child Misbehaves}
2. Family Fun Days
Make it a family event to connect with your kids. Our family tries to do a fun outing or an at-home activity every weekend. This doesn’t always happen, but we keep working at it. We’ll never be perfect, but we figure if we at least aim for it, we’ll make it happen more often than not.
Our family fun days are super inexpensive. Some are even at home. One of our favorites was a family spa day. We dimmed the lights, found spa music on Pandora, put on face masks, soaked our feet, and painted our toes.
Donut Day was a day in which we sampled donuts from local bakeries throughout the day in an effort to find our favorite.
We went camping, rented a paddleboard for a day at a lake, had a family sleepover in the family room, created Mom and Dad’s restaurant for the kids, slept out in the backyard, had family movie night, spent the whole day outside, went for a hike, and more.
For a full list of ideas, see the post I wrote about this for Power of Moms.
3. Kid of the Week
I love this idea from An Inviting Home to connect with your kids. Every week, one kid gets to be the special kid of the week. In our family, that means the special kid gets to:
- pick the movie for Family Movie Night (hey, there’s another fun tradition!)
- choose where they sit at breakfast
- sit in the corner of the couch (the most coveted and fought-over spot)
- go on a “date” with Mom or Dad.
This is a genius idea for two reasons.
- Fights are minimized! The kids keep track of who’s picking out the movie, who gets the corner seat, and so forth. Instead of having a battle every gosh darn day, they get that it’s someone else’s turn this week, and they make plans for when it’s their turn next.
- Spending one-on-one time on the “date” has helped us get to know our kids better. Kids are different when you pull them away from the pack. They talk more, they let their guard down, and they feel important. They fill up their little well all the way to the top and they have a better time getting along with parents and siblings.
We like to keep our date nights free or very inexpensive. You can make up your own rules.
A favorite game at the store comes from my sister in law:
| We go to Target and come up with a category: “10 of the most embarrassing gifts to give to your friend,” “Most delicious dessert,” “Worst combination of foods for dinner,” etc. Then we either split up or stay close and be secretive about what we put in our individual carts. When we’re done, we find a quiet spot at the back of the store and compare our selections. Sometimes we take a video and ask siblings to weigh in on who nailed the category the best. (And we always put our items back!) |
And again, don’t strive for perfection. We let this tradition lapse for a good year and a half because life just got too busy. But when we felt we could handle it again, we brought it back.
Remember your season of life and honor it.
4. Family Council and Family Home Evening
I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and we are encouraged to hold family councils and something called Family Home Evening. And let me tell you, both are incredible for building family unity and helping you connect with your kids.
A family council can look like whatever you want. Basically, you get together on a regular basis as a family to discuss things that are important to your family. You can set goals, calendar your week, talk about people’s wins for the week, discuss each other’s struggles in an effort to find a way to support each other, take a vote on where to go on vacation, problem solve when a parent is going to be out of town or a big expense is coming up, etc.
In our family, we get together for a few minutes on Sundays after church. We talk about the upcoming week and ask what we can pray for as a family. It’s not formal, and somebody usually whines or loses focus or rolls around on the floor. But it’s a way to get our family on the same page — sort of.
Family Home Evening is something our church began a few decades ago. They suggested setting aside Monday nights to get together as a family for a lesson and activity. We’ve done this INconsistently for our whole marriage, but it has always been a good thing whenever we do it.
For us, our Monday night Family Home Evenings are more about fun. We assign one child to pick an activity and one to pick a treat to make for the family.
The activities have ranged from playing telephone to family soccer to board games to crafting to watching America’s Got Talent. We then eat whatever treat has been cooked up and send the kids to bed.
It’s simple and fun. And remember how I said we’ve done it inconsistently? Well, now that our kids are older, they keep Mom and Dad on track. Because they look forward to Family Home Evening, they take charge — so it happens more often than not.
Quick and Easy Ways to Connect with Your Kids in an Instant
Use these ideas when tensions are rising, when you find yourself with a free moment, or when somebody is bored. They’re great ice breakers, mood lifters, and instant ways to connect with your kids.
- Use a special handshake or high-five
- Create a special code name, phrase, or silly face
- Wrestle — When timed right, this can chase away all the bad feelings.
- Race to something — This can be helpful in the right moment if your child doesn’t want to transition to a new activity. “Race me to your pajamas!” “You can’t catch me!”
- Turn on music and dance
- Pull out a forgotten toy and pretend to make it talk — If you don’t love pretend, don’t worry. Your child will likely take over after a few minutes and you can follow their lead.
- Talk about the weather — There’s a reason this is the perfect ice breaker. Everyone always has something to say. You can even get silly. “I wonder if this wind will bring us Mary Poppins?”
- Eat somewhere different — on the floor, under the table, on a blanket in the backyard
- Play discussion games like “Would you rather…”
- Pick a category — any category — and list all the things you both see in that category (all thing red, all things living, all things edible)
- Play “Wouldn’t it be nice.” If your child is upset about their lunch, say, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could eat cotton candy for every meal of the day?” If they wish they could keep playing their video game when it’s time to turn it off, say, “Wouldn’t it be nice if the video game was attached to your brain and you could play it in your sleep?” Encourage your child to make up their own silly “Wouldn’t it be nice-es.” Use this even when your kids aren’t upset about something. “Wouldn’t it be nice if a unicorn lived next door?”
- Give your child a task for dinner prep
- Hug – never forget about the power of a hug
Fun Planned Ways to Connect with Your Kids
These ideas to help you connect with your kids are the intentional type you might schedule into your calendar to make sure they happen. They’re great for building connection, bonding, and learning about each other.
- Write a story together — Start the story, and let your child add to it. Do this next to each other, or if you’re short on time, leave the story on each other’s pillows as you add to it.
- Write back and forth to each other in my back-and-forth journal!
- Look at family history items together
- Cook or bake something together — Make it fun by trying to imitate your favorite cooking show.
- Make play-doh together, and then play with it
- Go for a walk, hike, or bike ride
- Plan a special meal together — Do the whole thing together, from menu planning to decorations to shopping to cooking.
- Watch your child practice their instrument or play their sport — Give compliments, no criticism (they have a teacher or coach to help them improve)
- Watch their favorite show with them
- Sit with them at bedtime, and talk, read, or play for a few minutes — Set a timer if you’re worried this will go too long
- Create something together
- Find a skill you both lack but are both interested in — changing the oil in your car, decoupage, building a birdhouse, oil painting, long-distance running, etc. Research together how to learn the skill, and then do it together.
- Take a class together
- Pick out a new food to try together — My friend Andrea from @APurposefulHome does Try It Thursdays, and they often try a new food that day.
- Celebrate an obscure holiday — Here’s a list of funny holidays for every day of the year
- Choose a book that also has a movie adaptation — Read the book separately or together, and then have a themed night when you watch the movie
