Helping Your Child Build Relationship Skills

One of the ways your child becomes who they are is by exploring different relationships with different types of people with various interests. The relationships a person builds throughout their life helps them learn to trust others and contribute to developing their own personality.

•         Help Your Child Understand Themselves – It will help your child build stronger relationships with others if they know who they are, and most people learn who they are or who they want to be by observing others.

•         Give Your Child Time with Friends – Once your child wants to be around friends, you need to give them time to be with their friends. You can supervise them age-appropriately, but you want to allow them the time to learn and develop their own personalities.

•         Don’t Plan Every Single Moment of Your Child’s Time – Allowing children the freedom to just be without every moment planned will help them figure out what they like doing.

•         Provide Opportunities for Relationships with Friends – Don’t tie up every moment of your child’s schedule so that they don’t have time with friends outside of organized activities. Allowing children to get bored is the best way to unleash their creativity and imagination.

•         Show Interest in Your Child’s Activities, Ideas, and Thoughts – You can demonstrate to kids how others should treat them by treating them with importance. Show interest in the things your child does and ask them about their ideas and thoughts often.

•         Help Your Child Express Their Emotions Appropriately – As your child builds relationships, they will sometimes get hurt or feel hurt. Please help your child learn how to deal with their emotions and show them how to set boundaries for friends.

•         Show Respect for Your Child’s Feelings – When your child shares their emotions with you, be kind. The more you can respect their feelings and support their thoughts, the more they’ll want to share with you and the more confidence they’ll have to be who they are with everyone.

•         Limit Screen Time – Screens often get in the way of relationships for adults, and they will for kids. When your children are socializing in person with friends, try to encourage them to give up the screens some of the time.

Relationship-building skills are among the more important and life-affecting skills that you can pass on to your kids. Relationship building covers life skills, including interpersonal, communication, listening, empathy, and more that kids need.