7 Great Ways to Bond With Your Kids (& Improve Your Relationships)

The first people a child bonds with is their parents, and it’s considered as the most important relationship they’ll ever have. This comes naturally to most people, but it’s not uncommon for some parents to struggle with this.

You might want to bond with your kids better, but you mightn’t be sure about what you should do.

It’s not enough to just spend time with them, after all. You’ll have to make sure this is quality time, which often involves actually doing something with them. That opens the question of what you should do to bond with them.

Keeping their needs and desires in mind is natural, but there are more than a few other things you can do. It’s worth diving into a few of the more notable of these.

Why Should You Bond With Your Kids?

You might be wondering why you should bond with your kids in the first place. You could already feel like your relationship with them is already great. That doesn’t always mean it’s as great as it could be, however.

By bonding with your kids, you can improve your relationship with them. There are more than a few other benefits to this, some of which are:

• Children who have close relationships with their parents form stronger, healthier relationships with people when they get older.
• Forming close relationships with parents helps children regulate their emotions much better, and they’re in a better position to talk about these emotions.
• Close parental relationships promote children’s emotional, social, and cognitive development, while also encouraging positive social development.
• Parents and kids have better relationships with each other long-term once they’ve put some time into this, with the parents being the ones starting this process.

These are more than enough to consider bonding with your kids better. You’ll still need to figure out exactly how you can do that, however. Thankfully, this doesn’t need to be as complicated as you could think.

Some strategies help with this a lot more than you’d think, with seven of them standing out. If you want to bond with your kids better, it’s worth diving into them.

Bond With Your Kids: 7 Great Strategies

1. Tell Them You Love Them Often

One of the more obvious things you can do to properly strengthen your relationship with your kids is to tell them you love them. While you’ll already be doing that, you’ll need to consider whether you’re actually doing it enough. Every once-in-a-while is nowhere near enough for this.

Instead, you should say it to them regularly so they properly know you love them. Tell them this every day so they actually know it’s true. They don’t have to have done anything for you to say it, and you don’t need any kind of reason to say it.

2. Empathize With Them

One of the best ways to bond with your kids is to empathize with them. They’ll want to feel like you know what they’re feeling and struggling with. Even if what they’re dealing with seems minor to you, it wouldn’t be for them. That’s something you’ll always need to keep in mind.

By putting yourself in their shoes, you make bonding with your kids easier. Make sure to show them you understand how they feel, and be there to help make things better. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, and it’ll make you and your kids feel better about everything.

3. Create Parent/Child Rituals

If you have two or more kids, it can often feel overwhelming trying to do things with them. To counteract that, you might do things as a group. While that’s great, it doesn’t mean overlooking their individuality, and it’s always worth having one-on-one time with them.

Take the time to do this with each of your kids, and make sure they all get equal time. This helps you strengthen your relationship with each of your kids, and lets you bond on a more personal basis. While this takes some time, having rituals with each of your kids makes it easy.

4. Play Games With Them

To properly bond with your kids, you’ll need to actually spend time with them. That doesn’t just mean spending time doing nothing. Instead, you’re much better off playing games with them that they’ll enjoy. There are more than a few games you can try.

Even something as simple as solitaire and other card games could be enough for this. Consider what games your kids like playing, and you should come up with more than a few ideas. You’ll bond with them a lot better once you do.

5. Be Available Without Distractions

There’ll be plenty of times when your child wants to talk to you. With how busy you can be between work, chores, and other factors, it’s easy to assume you can listen to them while getting other things done. That isn’t always the best approach to take, however.

Instead, you’re much better off actually being there for them without any distractions. It makes them feel like they’re actually important to you, which they should be. Cleaning or doing any other chores should be a secondary concern. Take the time to actually be there for them, and you’ll have a better relationship with your kids.

6. Set Rules & Boundaries

You mightn’t expect rules and boundaries would help you bond with your kids, but it plays more of a role than you’d think. You’ll just need to be smart about how you do it. Show them that these rules and boundaries are there to help them learn and look after themselves.

By helping them understand this, you can get closer to them than you’d think. The same can be said for any consequences they’ll see if they do anything they shouldn’t. Do this with love, and you shouldn’t have much of a problem bonding with your kids.

7. Show Your Love

Even if you’re telling your children you love them a lot, it still mightn’t be enough to make them feel loved. Sometimes, you’ll need to put a little extra time and effort into it so they do. You’ll have to show them you love them if you really want them to feel it. Random acts of love can be more than enough to help with this.

Even something as simple as getting them an ice-cream without them asking when you’re out with them can help. With how simple and low-effort many of these are, you’ve no reason not to. Your kids will feel it quite a bit. Even playing games with them helps.

Tips To Bond With Your Kids Better

Each of the above steps can be great ways to bond with your kids, but sometimes it could take a little extra work. Using a few tips and tricks should be more than enough to help with it. While it’ll still take some time and work, it should be more straightforward.

It’s worth noting there aren’t any shortcuts with this, but a few tips can make bonding with your children a lot easier. Some of the more notable of these are:

• Treat Them With Respect – Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, and your children are no exception to that. You could often find yourself interrupting your kids when they have something to say, but it’s worth avoiding doing that as much as you can. Respect them enough to not interrupt.
• Let Them Help Around The House – While chores are often seen as some form of punishment or as boring by many children, that isn’t the case for all of them. You could be surprised to learn that your kids like doing some chores. That’s more than enough of a reason to let them help, and it could even strengthen your bond.
• Give Them Unexpected Affirmations – Everyone likes to be told good things about themselves, and your children aren’t exceptions. Go out of your way to give them these affirmations, and don’t always wait until they’ve done something right to do it. It’ll strengthen your bond, and make them feel better about themselves.

Between these and the steps mentioned above, bonding with your kids shouldn’t be too difficult. With how important it is to do, you’ve no reason not to spend a little time on it. You’ll love your children, after all, so it’s more than worth doing.

Bond With Your Kids: Wrapping Up

You should naturally want to bond with your kids, but that can sometimes be a struggle. When you lead a busy life, that’s especially true. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible or needs to take a lot of time, or be a struggle.

It’s just a matter of knowing what you should do, and what you can do. It’ll be simpler than you’d think.

With how important it is to bond with your kids, you’ve no reason not to put the effort into it. It’ll take some ongoing time and effort, but it’ll be more straightforward than you’d think. You’ve no reason not to put the effort into it.