As your child gets older, conversations begin to feel more like arguments, and direct instructions become confrontations. A breakdown of communication with your child is detrimental to your family’s overall well-being and your kid’s development as well.
Use the following tips to improve how you communicate with your child and foster a better environment for growth.
Keep Your Promises
There’s nothing that disappoints your child other than empty promises. Perhaps you assured your child that you would take their spoilt phone to the cell phone repair shop and keep forgetting or accompany them to watch a movie and didn’t make it.
Whatever the case, making promises and constantly breaking them deteriorates the relationship with your child and, more so, prevents effective communication.
Becoming more re-assured with your words and actions fosters a trust between you and your child that encourages better communication.
Here’s how to get better at keeping your promises:
Acknowledge its Magnitude
Before committing to taking your kid swimming or bike riding, always make sure you have sufficient time first. Knowing what you’re getting yourself into promotes a spirit of calmness in your home as you’re sure to make good.
Put it down
The best way to remember the play dates or school events for your kid is to write them down. Whether that’s on your phone or a notebook, your main priority is to record it somewhere easily accessible for easier tracking.
Expect the Same
When you keep all your promises, you must expect the same of your child. For example, if your kid promises to wash your car, hold them to their word and ensure they do it in good time for better accountability.
Converse with Your Child
As a parent, you always focus on speaking to, rather than with your child, which often hampers communication as they cannot completely open up.
Your choice of words, expressions, and tone all matter to your child as it becomes part of your child’s communication. As such, it must always be in a positive light.
Encourage better talks between you and your child by:
Using Better Language
Instead of always speaking negatively, use a more positive tone in your speech. For example, instead of saying “don’t color on the carpet”, offer an alternative and say “use the table to color”.
Listening
Although you may know best, it doesn’t hurt to hear what your child has to say every once in a while. For effective communication to occur in a home, you must learn to listen and incorporate your child’s opinions.
Use the In-Between Time
As the world gets busier, it may be hard to find enough time to talk to your child. Extended lack of talks may hamper communication between the two of you. Talk to your child whenever you get an opportunity. It can be while driving your child to school or during dinner.
A stable family depends on how well the members communicate and interact. Besides, parenting can be daunting, however, if you want to improve communication with your child, it would be best to use the above tips.