The feeling is awful. It’s a mix of frustration, anger, and resentment. Often the argument is accompanied by a feeling of hopelessness and a sense of helplessness – a feeling of being trapped. It can feel like being knee deep in quicksand, where everything you do to get out only makes things worse.

I recently told the story of a mother and daughter who were sucked into one of these arguments over a seemingly simple behavior on the mom’s part to try and do what she thought was best. Watch the story here and see if you can relate.

The Daughter’s Fight

Can you see how this independent-natured daughter was not really fighting with her mom? Nor was she simply upset about the fact that her mom had gone against her wishes by not letting her get her own horse.

No, she was angry because once again, her mom had disregarded her request and done what she (the mom) felt was best.

In that light, you can more fully appreciate why the daughter would give up riding horses and instead walk home by herself. It was her way of protesting the long-standing pattern of feeling like her boundaries were not being respected.

The Mother’s Perspective

Before you come down too hard on the mom, consider the pattern that she was fighting, albeit in a calmer, less aggressive manner.

You might remember that the mom had nicely requested that her daughter try for a minute longer to get her horse before going across the field to get hay. The mom knew there was a good chance the daughter’s horse would come now that her horse had been reigned in. But her daughter wanted to do things her own way, and without her mom’s help.

Can you see the pattern mom was fighting?

No doubt this wasn’t the first time (or the second, or the hundredth time) that her daughter had resisted one of her reasonable requests. As you can imagine, it’s highly likely that her frustration with her daughter’s stubborn, independent nature made it easier for the mom to justify getting her daughter’s horse despite being asked not to do so.

Knowing When You Are Fighting a Pattern

Fighting with a pattern involves arguments that have happened again and again and again. One of the surest ways to know you are fighting with a pattern is by paying attention to the thoughts you have during the argument. When you’re fighting with a pattern, you’ll catch yourself thinking things like:

• “Here we go again!”
• “Same old, same old.”
• “This is never going to end.”

When we fight with a pattern, our primary goal is to stop the pattern from happening again. We are so tired of it that we will sometimes do or say anything to try and get it to stop. As a result, we often turn into someone completely different in these arguments, someone we aren’t so proud of.

It’s good to remember that the person you are being in those moments isn’t really you. Similarly, it’s helpful to remind yourself that the person you are arguing with, isn’t really being his or her true self either.

A Way Out

Thankfully, there’s a way out. And it starts with understanding a simple concept you’ve probably never thought about before – “The problem isn’t the problem. Rather, the problem is our solution to the problem.”

Let me say that again, “The problem isn’t the problem. Rather, the problem is our solution to the problem.”

Think of it this way. As the pattern becomes more entrenched, our efforts to stop it become more intense, more desperate. As a result, what we do to try and solve the problem has actually become an even bigger problem.

What’s worse is that our efforts to stop the pattern from happening again actually make it more likely that the pattern will continue.

In short, the more we fight the pattern, the worse it gets. So, what are you supposed to do instead?

“Drop the Rope”

Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet for this one. It’s simply not possible to break a pattern that may have been going on for years just by doing one or two simple things. That said, I’d like to offer two simple suggestions that should help you weaken the pattern and get moving in the right direction.

The first suggestion is the simplest and yet maybe the hardest. Next time you find yourself in a familiar argument, imagine yourself in a tug-o-war with the person. Then, simply “drop the rope.” That may mean any number of things depending on how you typically choose to fight the pattern. For example, it might mean not trying to convince the person or your perspective. It could involve relaxing your muscles and taking a few deep breathes. It could involve changing your thoughts from “This is never going to end” to “I’m choosing not to fight this pattern today.”

Not fighting the pattern does not mean giving up. It does not mean giving in to whatever the other person is demanding or asking for. Nor does it mean refusing to communicate or cooperate with the other person. In fact, the next suggestion will require that.

“What’s Most Important to You”

The second suggestion is to invite the other person to try and identify the pattern they are fighting. You can do this with any number of questions, but here’s one you might consider.

“Help me understand what is most important to you in all of this?”

This might be easy for them to answer. In the horse story, the daughter might have said, “The fact that you never respect my wishes.” If so, try to ignore the “never” part and instead simply acknowledge that “there’s truth to that.” Ideally, apologize and let them know you intend to work on that. Invite them to nicely point out when it happens again so you can be more aware of that pattern. Doing this will help them also “drop the rope.”

At other times, the other person may have a difficult time answering your question. They may continue to focus on the details of the present argument. For example, thinking again about the horse story, the daughter might say, “Isn’t it obvious? I wanted to get my own horse. I told you not to and you did it anyway!”

If so, see if you can translate what the other person says into the language of the pattern. For example, the mom could respond to her daughter’s comments by saying, “So what’s most important to you is that I not ignore your requests?” If the mom really wants to confirm whether this is the pattern the daughter is fighting, she could ask, “Is this something you believe I do a lot?”

The Rest of the Story

The suggestions above will help reveal the pattern with which the other person is fighting, but it won’t unveil the pattern with which you are fighting. You’ll need to think about that yourself. Simply ask yourself the same question you asked the other person. “What is it that is most important to you in all of this?” If the answer jumps out at you right away, you could consider sharing it with them in that same conversation. On the other hand, maybe it’s a conversation for another day. You’ll have to decide.

Either way, you’ve taken some big steps to freeing yourself from fighting with a pattern. Plus, while the pattern will work to pull you back in, your ability to “drop the rope” and discover “what’s most important” will no doubt lessen the power that pattern has over you.

The post How to Fix the Fights You’re Sick of Having appeared first on FamilyToday.

My hesitation to say “I love you” didn’t change much during my dating years. In fact, the first time I uttered those words to a girlfriend was just three short weeks before I proposed to her.

From that point on, saying “I love you” gradually became easier and easier. On the other hand, showing love seemed to slowly become more difficult. To be clear, it wasn’t that my love for my wife was lessening in any way. Rather, I was on a learning curve that I didn’t see coming or even realize I was on at the time.

Thankfully, I was married to a woman who was willing to teach me. And then teach me again, and again, and again. Twenty-three years later and she’s still teaching me some things about love.

My struggle to learn how to show love wasn’t because I didn’t want to get better at it. I did. In fact, wanting to be good at it sometimes got in the way of me being able to hear or see that I wasn’t very good at it.

Looking back now, I realize that I was simply a good man struggling to be a good husband.

Those two things – a good man and a good husband – might seem like the same thing, but they most certainly are not. Why? Because being a good man doesn’t mean you intuitively know how to meet a woman’s emotional needs. And yet learning to do so is essential for a happy marriage.

To the Husbands

If you are a husband reading this, my hope is that you’ll appreciate the practical nature of this article. That it will not only outline your wife’s four emotional needs but will also give you some specific ideas for how to go about meeting those needs.

To the Wives

If you are a wife reading this, feel free to do a little fact checking below. I’ll confess though, most of what I’ve written below comes from my experience as a husband, not as a therapist. If it differs from your needs, please feel free to clarify that with your husband. But before you do, I’d invite you to read this article first.

Your Wife’s Four Emotional Needs

Before we jump in, I should mention two things. First, the needs listed below are not unique to women. Much of what is shared will resonate with you as well. If so, simply use that awareness to help you empathize with her needs. Second, although I share some ideas below to help you meet your wife’s needs, doing so is not a matter of checking off items on a list. So please, don’t kill yourself trying to accomplish every item on every list. Rather, focus on those items that echo things she’s also told you are important to her.

Here they are, in no particular order.

The Need to Feel Important

In the context of a marriage, feeling important means to believe that your spouse cares about you and sees you as the most important person in their life. In many ways, it involves what Dr.’s John and Julie Gottman call “turning towards” rather than “turning away” when your spouse makes “bids” for your attention.

When this need is not met, your wife will feel disconnected from you, as if she is alone despite being in a marriage – something that is actually more painful than being single and feeling alone. This feeling will likely lead to searching for meaning and importance elsewhere, whether that be in another role (e.g., as a mother), another context (e.g., at work), or another relationship (e.g., an emotional or physical affair).

Simple ways to help fulfill this need:

• Give her 10 minutes of undivided attention each day (outside of the bed).
• Answer her phone calls whenever possible.
• Support her dreams and ideas.
• Put down your phone when she is talking with you.
• Take her out on dates (bonus points if you plan the date).
• Give her thoughtful, unexpected gifts from time to time.
• Include her in important decisions.

The Need to Feel Understood

This need includes understanding what’s going on in your wife’s world, including her fears, concerns, stresses, and challenges. It also includes knowing her preferences, opinions, plans, hopes and dreams. The most critical time to meet this need is when she is sharing with you a concern she has about your marriage or family.

When this need is not met, she will likely try harder to feel heard. As a result, her communication will have an undertone of frustration or even anger. Unfortunately, this tends to invite defensiveness rather than compassion. If it continues, she will likely oscillate between increasing her intensity and pulling away. In addition, she is apt to turn to friends or family for understanding and validation.

Simple ways to help fulfill this need:

• Take time to ask about her world.
• Avoid making assumptions about how she feels.
• Instead, ask questions to better understand her concerns.
• Recognize when she wants your advice versus a listening ear.
• Learn to not get defensive when she expresses her frustrations.
• Make time to talk through problems that come up in your marriage.
• Remember important things she has shared with you.

The Need to Feel Supported

This need has both a tangible and intangible side to it. On one hand, it’s about giving her hands-on support with any number of her many roles. On the other hand, it’s also about creating an ever-present knowledge in her mind that if she needed you, you would be there for her. The best way to instill this belief in her mind is to be there for her even when it’s not convenient for you to do so.

When this need is not met, she will likely feel overwhelmed given all that she has on her plate. If her bids for help continue to be ignored, her resentment will grow and ultimately undermine her willingness to support you. If this happens, you’ll likely see a sadness set it. This leaves her vulnerable to forms of self-medicating (e.g., overeating, binge watching, alcohol abuse).

Simple ways to help fulfill this need:

• Proactively help out when you see an opportunity.
• Take care of a task she normally handles if you see she’s having a hard day.
• Ensure that your shared responsibilities feel equitable to her.
• Take the children to the park for a few hours to give her peace and quiet.
• Confront your children whenever they show her disrespect.
• Make it possible for her to do things with her friends.
• Teach your children to be involved in family chores.

The Need to Feel Safe and Secure

At an obvious level, this means never subjecting her to any type of abuse – physical, verbal, or sexual. At a more subtle level, it involves her being able to trust that you will handle marital conflict in a respectful, constructive way. It’s about being a “safe container” for her when she needs to be raw, meltdown, or lose her cool. It doesn’t require perfection on your part. Rather, it involves stepping away before you lose your cool, and then coming back to the conversation when you’re ready. (Research suggests a minimum break of 20 minutes.) At its deepest level, it’s about trusting that you are here to stay, and that when things get tough, you don’t start thinking about divorce.

When this need is not met, the results can vary greatly depending on the circumstances. However, in almost every case, it creates within her an underlying feeling of anxiety and uncertainty. This often leads to trouble sleeping. Without even realizing it, she may begin to withhold herself from the marriage. Emotional intimacy will be clouded by a feeling of guardedness, and sexual intimacy will either feel less satisfying or completely out of place.

Simple ways to help fulfill this need:

• Listen without becoming defensive.
• Take responsibility for actions that have caused her pain.
• Provide reassurance of your love and commitment.
• Commit to never threaten or angrily mention the “D” word.
• Take a break from difficult conversation and return when calm.
• Get good at listening, empathizing, and holding her.
• Check in with her regularly. A simple but genuine, “How are you doing?”

Again, To the Wives

If these needs resonate with you, then find considerate ways to share them with your husband. If there are other needs you feel should be shared with him, try your best to be clear and concise about what the need is, as well as how he can meet that need. He will be much more likely to receive your request in a supportive way if he believes he can successfully meet that need.

Again, To the Husbands

If your wife shared this article with you, it’s not because she thinks you’re a bad husband. It’s because she thinks you’re a good man with the ability to become an even better husband, and she loves you enough to be willing to learn alongside you.

So accept her influence on this one. Make this your priority. Because truth be told, fulfilling a woman’s emotional needs is, hands down, the most powerful way to say, “I love you.”

The post The Most Powerful Way a Husband Can Say “I Love You” appeared first on FamilyToday.

No doubt, during those months it was hard for us to see anything but the good in each other. Despite learning about “confirmation bias” in psychology class – a phenomenon that essentially means you see what you want to see – I was under its spell, as was my fiancé. We loved each other, wanted to get married, and therefore looked for reasons to validate that desire.

In this way, most couples enter marriage with their eyes half shut. Unfortunately, many of us trade “confirmation bias” for what you might call “perfection bias” – a completely made up phrase that basically means, “I don’t want to live with my spouse’s imperfections for the rest of my life.”

We begin to realize that living with our spouse’s imperfections doesn’t quite match up with our vision for “happily ever after.” With good intentions, we get into the business of helping our spouse become a better person. Our initial efforts are generally subtle and kind. However, if the soft tactics don’t seem to be working, we tend to pull out the hammer of frustration and the chisel of criticism and begin the not so effective method of shaping our spouse into our version of who we think they should be.

A Better Way

The good news - there is a better way. The bad news – most of us don’t adopt it until after heaps of heartache have been caused by the “hammer and chisel” method. It’s a lesson that took me years to learn, despite the fact that for the first seven years of our marriage I was studying to become a marriage and family therapist. And if I’m honest, it’s a lesson I still fail to apply at times.

So, what’s the lesson? It’s simply this: Pointing out the good in others is much more likely to help them become a better person than pointing out the bad.

I’m sure you’d agree, it’s a principle that is far easier to believe than it is to live. It takes patience, practice, and quite often prayer (for those who practice it). To overlook someone’s weaknesses seems saint-like, especially when those weaknesses are inconveniencing us on a regular basis.

Shifting Your Mindset

Right about now you might be thinking, “Hey, wait a minute. I thought this article was supposed to be about how to help my husband better meet my needs.” You’re right. It is about that.

So why would I start with an invitation that seems to be saying, “Overlook his weaknesses, and focus on his good qualities?” It’s because the best way to invite change in others is always by focusing on changing ourselves. Trying to change others is not only out of your control, but it’s often counterproductive because it tends to invite resistance and counter-blame from the other person.

My hope is to set you up for success, not frustration. Thus, the suggestions below are all within your control. They are founded in research and proven by experience. They are the best way to help you achieve your goal of having your husband meet your emotional needs. In truth, they are the exact same suggestions I would give to your husband. (They are not gender specific.)

When it comes to the power of seeing the good in others, Mister Rogers may have said it best: “I don’t think anyone can grow unless he’s loved exactly as he is now, appreciated for what he is rather than what he will be.”

This is true for children and adults alike. Instinctively we know it’s true because when you and I think of those who have helped us grow the most, they are individuals who saw the best in us and helped us see it as well.

Yes, adopting this mindset of seeing the good in your husband (and pointing it out to him) is the first step to inviting your husband to better meet your needs.

Understanding Your Needs

The next step in helping your husband meet your needs is making sure you are clear about what those needs are and how they can be met. That’s something only you can determine, but in my experience as a marriage therapist and a husband, there are four core needs that every woman wants her husband to fulfill.

• The need to feel important
• The need to feel understood
• The need to feel supported
• The need to feel safe and secure

To better understand these needs, what tends to happen when they are not met, and specific ways your husband can help fulfill those needs, consider reading this article

Getting Your Needs Met

Sometimes we want to be heard so badly that we do or say things that undermine our efforts to get our needs met. This happens in marriage more than in any other relationship. The following suggestions will help you not get in your own way as you invite him to take care of your needs.

Share your perspective versus the "truth."

Too often spouses present their version of what happened as if it’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth. However, numerous research studies have demonstrated that our memories of events are biased for two reasons. First, without even realizing it, our brain filters the information we take in by looking for details that confirm our expectations and beliefs. Second, we simply are not capable of seeing and remembering all the details of an event.

In addition, Dr. John Gottman’s research has demonstrated that when individuals are physiologically aroused (experiencing stress that results in accelerated heart rate, secretion of stress hormones, sweating, etc.) they can experience tunnel vision and reduced hearing, as well as a tendency to perceive the events as more threatening or negative than they actually are.

This research ought to make all of us quite skeptical of our own view of reality, especially when it comes to recalling the details of a past argument with our spouse.

Even if you are 100% sure that you are remembering things correctly, it’s better to present your perspective as simply that – your perspective. It’s often as simple as using phrases such as, “From my perspective,” or “This may not be how you remember it, but….”

This invites your husband to not get hung up on the differences in how you each remember the experience. After all, it’s your feelings (not the facts) that you are wanting him to address.

Talk in paragraphs, not chapters

When feelings are intense, it’s easy to talk for minutes on end without pausing to give the other person a chance to respond or ask questions. The more information you share at one time, the less likely it is that your husband will be able to address everything you’ve said.

In addition, talking in chapters is more likely to result in your husband “tuning out.” If you’ve experienced this it can be super frustrating, especially if you are being vulnerable and sharing personal feelings.

If this pattern continues, it’s likely that your husband will begin to enter marital conversations already anticipating a negative outcome. If that’s the case, he will need to choose to let go of that undermining belief in order to have more effective conversations. You can invite him to do this by talking in paragraphs and applying some of the other principles mentioned in this article.

Under exaggerate before you over exaggerate

Sometimes, when we are desperate to get the other person to see the problem, we exaggerate the facts or even our feelings. For example, we may toss in superlative words such as “most,” “least,” or “worst” or use of all-or-nothing language such as “always” and “never.”

This only invites defensiveness, especially if your husband is analytical and/or detail-oriented. It’s as if you are inviting him to challenge the credibility of your statements. When in reality, your goal is to invite him to empathize with your experience and acknowledge your feelings.

Therefore, you are far better off describing your experience using words that are easier to swallow and don’t tend to invite disagreement. For example, you’d be better of saying, “I sometimes feel criticized by you when it comes to my parenting,” instead of saying, “You criticize my parenting every single day.”

Talk about what you want (versus what you don't want)

It’s a simple concept and yet most of us fail to apply it. Maybe it’s because we believe that we must first convince the other person that they are in the wrong in order to get them to agree to do something different. However, that’s often not the case. In fact, as you’ve probably discovered, trying to convince your husband he is in the wrong only increases the odds that he will defend his actions.

Here’s an idea for you. Next time you find yourself jotting down notes about your husband’s past behavior, try dividing your paper in half. Write what you usually do on the left side, but then on the right side write down what you would like him to do next time. Then, tear off the left side and put it through the paper shredder. Yes, I’m serious.

Then, when you talk with your husband, simply give him the context for your concern (without mentioning any of his behavior), along with what you’d prefer he do next time. For example, you might say, “Hey, remember when [such and such] happened?” Then continue with, “If that happens again, would you mind [doing such and such]?”

When he apologizes, keep it positive.

Sometimes when a husband apologizes, his wife sees it as an opportunity to further express how deeply her husband’s behavior affected her. While this is understandable, and sometimes appropriate, if this type of response becomes the norm, it will make it less likely that your husband will apologize in the future. If he’s sincerely apologizing, then he already understands what he did wrong and is remorseful for it. So, take the win (for the relationship), accept his apology, give him a hug, and move forward.

If this is hard advice for you, then try this. When he apologizes, if you are tempted to say more about his behavior, don’t. Instead, write it down, and put it somewhere safe. Then do your best to move on and focus on the good in the relationship. If he does end up repeating the same behavior, you can always pull your note back out and share those thoughts with him at that time.

Show appreciation for his efforts

Everyone likes to feel appreciated, but there’s a deeper, more important reason to focus your comments on his progress versus his shortcomings. Your appreciation essentially communicates to him the following message: “Thank you. Your efforts are making a difference.” It reassures him that no matter how imperfect his efforts may be, they are accepted by you. This is crucial for his ongoing motivation.

On the other hand, when there is a consistent tendency to focus on what he could do better, or how he could have said it this way instead of that way, it will ultimately lead him to believe that his efforts will never be good enough, thereby smothering his motivation.

Do you best to meet his needs.

This is a tough one. It’s human nature to withhold love from others when they have hurt us or when it seems they are withholding from us. When we feel poorly treated, we typically want things made right before we are willing to treat them richly.

While it’s true that self-respect sometimes dictates the need for boundaries with others who have hurt us, too often our withholding in marriage is fueled by pride, not self-respect.

If there is a feeling of distance between you, or an absence of warmth, then it’s unlikely either one of you will find it easy to reach out in love to the other. While you may hope for the other to take the first step, the best way to initiate change is always with you.

Sometimes the motivation to reach out is hard to come by. Recently, I found a golden nugget of wisdom that helps me in those moments. It comes from the movie, “Before We Go.” There’s a scene where an elderly widow asks a young lady the following question: “Do you know the most important thing I learned after all my years of marriage, after an entire life with one person?” Then came his answer: “You can’t allow the people you love to determine how you love.”

Be true to who you are and the type of spouse you want to be, because doing so is the best chance you have at creating the marriage you desire.

The post 7 Ways You Help Your Husband Meet Your Emotional Needs appeared first on FamilyToday.

With many schools closing, parents are left to figure out how to deal with the fact that two of their primary responsibilities in life are now needing their attention during the same hours of the day. If you have younger children, you’re probably scrambling to figure out whether a babysitter or family member is available to help watch your little ones during the day. If you have school-aged children, you may be having nightmares of being on a conference call with your most important client when your children burst into your room fighting over the last roll of toilet paper!

As you might guess, the best remedy for such nightmares is preparation. So here are some tips for how to help things go well this week as you do your best to handle this two-punch combination of working from home while your kids are out of school.

Help Calm Your Children’s Coronavirus Fears

If your children are stressed and anxious about Coronavirus, it’s going to affect their ability to get a good night’s sleep. Lack of sleep and anxiety will cause them to be more irritable and less patient. This moodiness will result in behavioral problems which will lead to more tension and conflict in the home. This will in turn affect everyone’s quality of sleep. It’s a vicious cycle that can be partially addressed by talking with your children about Coronavirus.

Hold a Family Council

A good family council isn’t about laying down the law followed by threats that start with “So help me, if any of you….” Rather, it’s an opportunity to work together to come up with a plan for how to best navigate these unusual circumstances. The key to a great family council is to involve your children at every step. What are their concerns? What ideas do they have for addressing those concerns? What role can they take in helping implement the solutions that are identified?

As you listen to their ideas, you may be thinking, “There’s no way that will work.” Keep those thoughts to yourself. Vocalizing them will kill the spirit of collaboration. Instead, ask good questions and be open to considering any reasonable solutions. Once the plan is in place, agree to check-in after the first day to see how the plan worked and to make any necessary adjustments. This approach helps alleviate the pressure to “get it right the first time,” allowing you to try some of your children’s ideas…even if you are a little skeptical. You might be surprised just how much of an effort they will make to prove that their solutions work.

Identify Expectations That Need to Be Adapted.

Take time to think through your normal routine as well as your vision for the new routine. As you do so, identify expectations or boundaries that need to be adjusted. For example:

• Where will your “office” be? If it’s your room, do you already expect them to knock before entering, or do they tend to burst through your door when they need something? Are they used to playing noisily in the hall outside your room?
• What are the hours you will be working? When will you be available? If they need something during your work hours, what should they do?
• If they are used to watching TV or playing music in the house, is there a specific volume limit that you want them to respect?
• If they are used to having friends over, is that still okay during work hours?

Make Use of Visual Reminders

Visual reminders are especially helpful for younger children. For example, you could put a sign on your office door whenever you are on a phone call. Or if you want to limit playing outside your office, you might string a ribbon across the hallway that leads to your office. Using a visual timer such as the “Time Timer” can be super helpful for younger children. For older children, you might consider something as simple as sending a quick text before starting a meeting.

Consider Adapting Your Work Schedule

This may mean getting an early jump on the day by starting at  6 a.m. instead of 8:30 a.m. so that by the time your children are up, you’ve already accomplished some of your most important tasks. It might be breaking up your workday into segments, starting earlier and working longer but with more breaks throughout the day. It may mean working more in the evening when the other parent is home from work.

Create a Schedule or List of Activities

Planning ahead is key. No parent wants to hear “I’m bored” 20 times a day while they are trying to focus on work. Two solutions work well here. The first is to work with your children to create a schedule for the day. They are used to having one at school and will do better if they have one at home. The schedule could even include the times when you are available if they need something.

The second solution is to create an “I’m bored” list, complete with activities they can choose from when they are feeling bored. Be sure to have any necessary supplies ready the night before so they don’t have to interrupt your work. Truth be told, they will still say they’re bored, but all you’ll have to do is point them toward the list.

Use Consequences as Appropriate

This includes both positive and negative consequences. For example, you may discover that after a couple of days, the biggest problem is having to come out of your office a dozen times a day to ask them to be quiet. If so, work with your kids to identify a goal (e.g., only two reminders per day), along with a reward they can earn if they achieve the goal.

On the flip side, a logical consequence for excessive interruptions during the day could involve the kids cleaning up dinner together, giving you another 30 minutes to finish up any work you didn’t get done.

Find Ways to Be Active

Remember, in a typical day, your children are getting their energy out walking to classes, playing at recess, and participating in extracurricular activities. With most of those outlets suspended, they are likely to get quite restless being cooped up in the house. So look for ways to get exercise without putting anyone’s health at risk, such as playing in the backyard, going for a bike ride, walking the dog, or playing Frisbee at the park.

Invite Your Older Children to Step Up

While we don’t want to go back to the days of children having to drop out of school after sixth grade to help out on the farm, there is some value in children feeling “needed.” This is a great opportunity to count on your children to carry more weight than usual. For example, they could help by making dinner twice a week or helping younger siblings with their homework. While they may resist the idea, you can help it become a positive experience by sharing how grateful you are for their help, adding that you couldn’t do this without them. But be careful though. While you may be tempted to indulge them with financial compensation, doing so will overshadow the simple reward of feeling needed and appreciated.

Share the Load with Your Co-Parent

Talk together and determine if what would be most helpful to each of you. Can one of you more easily handle interruptions throughout the workday, while the other typically has back to back meetings? Are certain times of day more critical for one of you than the other? Find ways to make sure neither of you feels unfairly burdened, such as taking turns being the “on-call” parent. Even if you are divorced, check-in with your ex-spouse to see if it would help to make any temporary changes to the typical schedule.

Give Your Clients a Heads Up

With so many companies choosing to have their employees work from home, many of your clients will be understanding of imperfections such as some occasional noise in the background. Giving them a heads up before you start the meeting eliminates the temptation to comment on an unexpected noise during the meeting.

Be Patient and Understanding

No doubt, your children will make mistakes and forget about the new expectations and boundaries. In most cases, this will not be intentional. Remember, it takes time to get used to new routines. So give them the benefit of the doubt, and gently remind them when they slip up.

No doubt, the Coronavirus experience will be one of those stories your children share with your grandchildren. Give them a story they will be proud to share – one that models flexibility, leadership, and rising to the challenge. And above all, take advantage of this unique opportunity to learn, grow, and spend more time as a family.

The post Coronavirus Brings the Office and the School to the Home appeared first on FamilyToday.

8 Ways to Deal with Family Stress

• Have Regular Family Meetings
• Create a Healthy Home
• Do Things You Enjoy as a Family
• Take Time to Unwind Individually
• Ask for Help and Support
• Set Rules, Responsibilities, and Priorities
• Organize the Family Finances
• Improve Strained Relationships

The Family Stress Theory examines the differences in families and how they cope with stress in daily life. While some families deal with stress well, others allow their levels of stress to impede their functioning. 

Knowing how to deal with family stress in healthy ways can reduce stress levels in each family member. By hosting regular family meetings, building a strong and healthy environment, and doing fun things together as a family, your family unit can strengthen to the point where stress can’t break it.

The key is to prevent or eliminate stress risk factors through intentional efforts, now and in the future. Getting your family on the same page by understanding the differences and influencers of stress is a crucial step toward breaking the stress cycle.

What is Family Stress?

Family stress can be defined as anything that affects family life in a way that results in stress on family members and the family unit as a whole. Family stress has the power to break down family relationships in ways that can be challenging to overcome without having coping strategies in place. Mothers, fathers, kids, and extended family members can all feel the effects of stress.

It’s necessary for families dealing with stress to identify the root causes and adopt effective coping strategies. In many cases, family members can reduce stress by taking care of themselves and each other, talking through their emotions, and developing regular stress management strategies.

What causes family stress?

There are many reasons a family can experience stress. However, the top causes of stress on a family include:

• Financial problems due to a job loss, medical bills, or even lottery winnings
• Marital issues, such as a new marriage, marital conflict, divorce, or strained relationships with in-laws
• Traumatic stress, such as death, chronic illness, or disability (like a child with autism), which can change family dynamics

Stress levels can also increase as the individuals of a family experience struggle with depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues that may come into play. A change in the health and well-being of family members and extended family can also increase stressors that affect family relationships and coping methods. 

Other causes of family stress include sibling rivalry, impaired relationships between parents and children, harmful health habits, like an eating disorder, and mental health problems. Parenting styles and differences in parenting methods can also influence stress levels in your family.

8 Ways to Deal with Family Stress

How to deal with stress and how to reduce stress in family life is often different for each family. Chronic stress is something that needs to be addressed to improve your family’s health. The following suggestions can guide you toward understanding how to cope with stress in a healthy way and develop good family habits. 

1. Have Regular Family Meetings

Regular family meetings give each family member the chance to talk about their personal stressors and anything they believe to be an issue in the family. Choose a meeting schedule that works for your household—once a week or once a month, for example—to gather together and share your thoughts with each other.

The most significant benefit of family meetings is that they allow you to keep the lines of communication open with one another. When everyone feels like their opinion matters, you are likely to get more out of your conversations. Family members can share more and feel comfortable doing so without judgments or arguments.

During your meeting, be sure to talk about the positive efforts and behaviors within the family. Discuss anything that’s been happening recently to cause problems or stress within your home. Ask for suggestions from each family member about what they believe might help the family move past those issues. 

2: Create a Healthy Home

Your home environment plays a pivotal role in how the members of your family interact with one another and foster their relationships. The healthier your home environment, the less stressed it will feel for everyone in your home.

For example, consistent arguing or talking over one another can disturb relationships and influence how younger family members behave. The more they see yelling and other stressful situations, the likelier they are to model the behavior. This can result in a negative family dynamic pattern that can be difficult to break. 

Other children may not model the yelling or arguing behavior, but instead may turn their stress inward and silently suffer. They may try hard to be perfect in order to not cause more problems and family stress. They may even avoid sharing their feelings in order to not be a burden. This response can slowly turn into depression and anxiety in this type of silent sufferer. 

Even during your most challenging times, try your best to stay calm. Spread joy and love in your home with open conversations, affection, and a relaxing environment—and expect the same from other family members. Everyone in your family deserves a safe, loving place to call home without the fear of stress turning their life into another broken family statistic. 

3: Do Things You Enjoy as a Family

Bonding over shared interests or trying something new as a group can bring your family closer together. When you feel close to the people you love most, you’ll notice fewer symptoms of stress in yourself and your family as a whole. Getting out of the house for quality time can be just what your family needs to feel rejuvenated and establish fun family traditions you can enjoy for years to come.

Finding a work-life balance is usually the tricky part for modern families. In single-parent households or families with two working parents, it can be a challenge to find time to spend together between work, school, and other responsibilities.

If you have only a few minutes to spare each day, make it count. Head to the park with the kids, play a family board game, or read a story together before bed. When you do have a day to spend together, try to engage in family activities that are enjoyable to each family member. You might even consider taking turns choosing and planning for these types of family outings.  

4: Take Time to Unwind Individually

Stress on a family often starts with stress on individual family members. Parents and caregivers might experience stress from both work and family, and it can be challenging to separate the two. Sometimes, families spend so much time together that they lose their sense of individuality.

As important as it is to work together and spend time together as a family, it’s just as important to focus on yourself. Each individual should be allowed to do things that they enjoy to improve their mental health, whether that’s spending an hour reading, visiting a friend for the day, or participating in recreational activities. 

Remember that every family member will have different interests, and that’s okay. Show support for the things they love and give them time to enjoy them. It’ll only work to make your family culture stronger.

5: Ask for Help and Support

If you’re having trouble overcoming your family’s stress, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Getting help from extended family or a family therapist should never be something that makes you feel ashamed. In some cases, this may be a necessary step to get each family the help they need to manage their own stressors so that you can come together to manage family stressors.

A family therapist can work with your entire family, certain members of your family, or even in individual sessions as needed to get to the root of your stress. There are many different types of family therapy and leaning on the experiences and expertise of a licensed family therapist is always recommended.  They’ll not only provide a safe place to talk and learn more about why you feel stressed, but they’ll also give you the tools your family needs to work through whatever life puts in your path. And in these tech-driven days, developing such tools is becoming more and more important. 

You might also consider joining a church or community support group designed to help families feeling stressed for any reason. You’ll see that other families experience similar family problems with stress and anxiety and are dedicated to overcoming them, just like you. Having a community of support that you can rely on has been shown to reduce stress levels, even if you don’t actually need their help. Just knowing they are available if needed is enough to make a difference.

6: Set Rules, Responsibilities, and Priorities

Disagreements in the way your family members share responsibilities can be a significant source of stress. If even one family member fails to play a supporting role in your family, the rest of its members may feel resentful. It’s necessary for your family to set clear rules and responsibilities for each individual and make chores, family meetings, and other responsibilities priorities for all.

Everyone in the family—even young children—should contribute to the daily life of the household in some way. Create an age-appropriate chore list with a few tasks for kids to focus on each week. If necessary, teens and young adults might also contribute financially once they start working. 

Emotional support should also be prioritized as a way to deal with stress in your home. Set rules to establish a foundation of respect when listening and talking to each other. Knowing that everyone can count on one another for a listening ear or a helping hand when they feel stressed can reduce anxiety and create a family oriented atmosphere within your home. 

7: Organize the Family Finances

Your family’s finances and factors relating to it can cause chronic stress for the family. Losing a job, getting a new job with longer hours, dealing with chronic illness, no longer being able to afford your home or make necessary repairs, and even inheriting money are a few scenarios where finances can affect the family’s health.

Some situations are out of your control. However, making smart financial decisions starting now can improve your current and future financial picture. To help relieve stress, you may want to consider doing the following:

• Opening a savings account and setting aside as much as you can each week for emergencies
• Saving for college for your children
• Opening a retirement account for you and your partner
• Investing your tax return or depositing it into your retirement fund
• Setting a weekly budget for food and entertainment
• Cutting costs by negotiating bills, nixing subscription services, and paying down credit card debt

Tip: Parents and children should work together to budget and save. This teaches children about handling money wisely. Kids will catch on to your money-saving habits, setting them on the path toward being intelligent money handlers.  

8. Improve Family Relationships

Anxiety has the power to tear people apart, especially in traumatic stress situations. Over time, it can feel almost impossible to get a relationship back on track to where it once was. Being around family during the holidays is often a source of stress on families with strained relationships. 

However, drifting relationships between family members can often deepen family stress, so you should take steps to strengthen your bond with your mother in law or sibling as soon as possible. Start small by making it a point to reach out to your family members. Pull them aside for a conversation, write a note, or have a quick phone call. Showing you care is the first step.

Work towards longer conversations, apologies, bonding activities, and special outings to continue strengthening your relationships. It will take work from both parties, but you’ll never regret the investment when you eventually reach the point where you feel comfortable, respected, and loved.

How to Deal with Family Stress

By implementing these strategies into your life, you should begin to notice a positive shift in your family’s stress. It takes time to learn what techniques work best for your family, so don’t lose hope. Most importantly, focus on your home environment. A welcoming, loving home can make all the difference in your family’s attitude toward life, work, school, and each other. Be sure to open the lines of communication so that everyone feels heard and supported. Doing so will unite you and help you work toward common goals to boost your family's health and well-being.

The post How to Deal with Family Stress appeared first on FamilyToday.

10 Positive Character Traits Parents Should Teach Kids

1. Kindness
2. Perseverance
3. Resilience
4. Courage
5. Humility
6. Honesty
7. Fairness
8. Empathy
9. Resourcefulness
10. Creativity

To teach character and personality traits, you must live them yourself. You need to “walk the walk” of the qualities you want to transmit—not just “talk the talk.” Children need to see you acting in alignment with the core values you teach. Only then will they genuinely embrace the value of those traits in their own lives. To get a better sense for the qualities you are teaching your children and how that is impacting your family culture, consider taking this family culture assessment with your partner and children. 

10 Positive Character Traits to Teach Our Kids

As a parent, you want what is best for your kids. You may be actively involved in school and helping them stay focused academically. But if you truly want them to succeed in life, it’s important to nurture their character and personality, too. 

Often, kids never encounter any formal training or education on character. Instead, they learn through what they witness and experience every day. Parents are the primary teacher of family values and character qualities that children need to develop as healthy human beings.

1. Kindness

Kindness is one of the most important positive character traits to teach children. A kind person treats others as they would wish to be treated. Kind people are typically generous, friendly, and compassionate. We’ve all felt the warmth and caring of the kind people in our life. But researchers have proven the value of kindness as well. Scientific studies have shown that giving to others instead of keeping resources for yourself improves well-being. And kindness is one of the key qualities of a successful marriage. 

At a young age, many children are naturally self-centered. In fact, research has shown that our developing immature brains don’t innately motivate us to be altruistic. As we grow, we can start to see the benefit of doing what is best for others, even if it’s less beneficial to ourselves.

You can teach kindness through your words and actions, and by taking note of others’ needs. A simple action like holding a door for someone who is carrying packages shows respect. Or, you can bring food to elderly or homebound neighbors. Sharing positive words and compliments are examples of kindness that your children can learn to emulate.

2. Perseverance

Children should also learn the value of hard work and discipline from a young age. They should know that it’s important to try their best and not give up when they face a hard passage. Perseverance, also known as grit, is one of the key personality traits that helps kids succeed at school—and in life.

When facing a challenge, a person perseveres by maintaining control of their mind, body, and emotions. If a person is able to find the strength to keep trying despite difficulty, that person will eventually achieve mastery and reach long-term goals. However, it’s important to know when it is time to move on and focus on something different. A person with a well-developed sense of perseverance knows when to work hard and when to shift their efforts to different goals. 

3. Resilience

Life is overwhelming sometimes, even for kids. When troubles hit, it’s easy for anyone to fall into patterns of negative thinking and defeatist feelings. But when you teach your kids resilience, they’ll learn to weather life’s storms with dignity. 

As a parent, you’ll likely want to shield kids from all the hard things in life. It’s true that adult concerns need to be kept between adults. But including your kids in manageable issues can teach them not to feel engulfed by difficulties.

For example, what should you do if your child is struggling at school or facing a bullying situation? Yes, you may need to advocate for your kids, but include them in problem-solving when you can. Talk to your kids about the challenges and how they feel. Ask for their ideas and solutions. With this approach, you can teach kids that personal and family problems aren’t insurmountable and reinforce their resilience.

4. Courage

Sometimes we all need to face things that make us nervous. You may hate public speaking, for example. But if you avoid it completely, you could miss out on career or personal opportunities.

It’s important to teach kids how to step into situations that make them uncomfortable. One great way to do this is by getting them involved in activities that encourage them to stand up in front of a crowd. Dance or music lessons or sports can be good avenues to cultivate courage at a young age. 

As they grow, encourage them to take on more individual challenges. A move from a team to an individual sport is one option. You can also get your kids involved in activities like martial arts, pageants, or theatre. When kids can acknowledge what makes them nervous, but face those fears and overcome them, they learn courage through experience. And the sense of pride and accomplishment and gratification they feel as they push through their fears will become part of their incentive for facing their fears in the future. And the courage they develop now will be an asset to them throughout the positive and negative phases of life.

5. Humility

Developing strong self-esteem is essential for kids. But you don’t want them to feel self-important or to look down on others. Cultivating genuine humility is valuable for every child.

Role-playing is a great tool to practice humility. Talk through different scenarios with your kids and model prideful and humble behavior. For example, consider different behaviors someone can exhibit when they get an A on a test or earn a spot on a competitive sports team. A prideful person would brag about the accomplishment and take all the credit. By contrast, a humble person would recognize those who have helped them and offer praise and encouragement to others. 

6. Honesty

Children can grasp the concept of honesty from an early age. An honest person is truthful, moral and sincere. When people aren’t honest, they may lie, steal and deceive others.  They may even have a broken moral compass. It’s easy to see and feel that honesty builds positive relationships, while dishonesty breeds mistrust.

What can you do to teach kids honesty? You can reward kids for telling the truth. Often, parents are quick to scold kids for not telling the truth, but rewards for honesty are less common. Even a simple hug and a “thank you” can send a message about the importance of honesty.

Also, you can teach kids to speak up in difficult situations. What if your child knows that a friend has cheated on several tests? Your child should talk to the friend about this wrong choice. This conversation is extremely difficult to have, but it’s what is best for the friend. If your child’s friend refuses to act, the next step is to talk with a teacher. Scenarios like this one teach kids that honesty isn’t always easy, but it’s always the right answer.

7. Fairness

Many kids react strongly to perceived injustices. If a peer doesn’t share, take turns, or follow the rules, a child will often proclaim, “That’s not fair!”

You can find many teaching moments to transmit the value of fairness. From a young age, you can play games that encourage turn-taking with children. When everyone gets an equal number of turns, it promotes fair play. Also, look for books and movies that contain characters that act in fair and unfair ways. Point out those characters and situations and talk about how they relate to everyday life.

8. Empathy

Research has shown that many kids innately value their own accomplishments over helping others. Where do they learn this? They get these messages from their parents. If you’re constantly praising kids for grades and sports accomplishments, they’ll think those things matter most to you. When that happens, they’re likely to put their own needs first—often at the expense of others.

Developing empathy helps make kids better community contributors. They can see the value in the contributions of all people and look for ways to support others in doing their best. Ultimately, this emotional intelligence can help them succeed in future careers.

You can model empathy for kids by being compassionate towards others—especially towards those people who are clearly different from you. Engaging with a wide circle of people and taking part in community activities are excellent ways to express empathy. Remember that your kids are always observing and learning from your choices, behaviors and the family culture you establish.

Keep in mind that neuroresearch has shown that the brain’s ability to experience empathy is primarily enhanced when children are actively involved in face-to-face interactions where empathy is felt. Thus, helping serve dinner at the homeless shelter will do much more for a child’s capacity for empathy than dropping off food to the local food bank. 

9. Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness is one of the positive character traits that will serve kids well in school and life. And resourcefulness isn’t as prevalent today as it was in the past. In prior generations, children did not have had all the conveniences that modern children have. Also, children of the past didn’t have instant access to information on the Internet. They had to look for opportunities and solutions—and use what was available in innovative ways.

You can teach your children resourcefulness by having them seek out answers on their own at times. If your child asks you to give them ideas for good birthday party games,  invite your child to search for ideas on the internet, and if need be, show them how to do that. Pursue activities that help them find new uses for everyday objects. These options help them stretch their thinking and see potentials instead of roadblocks. 

10. Creativity

When you hear the word creativity, you may think of artistic expression—but there’s more to the concept. Creativity is part of any activity that helps children use their imaginations and envision new ideas. If they are complaining about a chore, challenge them to think of a better way of accomplishing the chore, or a tool that might help make the chore easier, even if that means creating a makeshift tool. When individuals tap into their creativity, they can build critical thinking and communication skills—both of which are critical for success in life.

You can seek out creative activities for your children. Opportunities like dance, music, theater, photography, and art are all avenues for creative expression. But you can do many creative things at home—from telling stories to baking together. Don’t forget that science and technology require creative thinking as well.

One of the best ways to encourage creativity is to have unstructured time in your days. And you may need to limit access to screens and electronics. Instead of engaging with worlds that others have created through games and shows, encourage your children to develop their own characters and stories. Kids need the freedom to play and invent in order to tap into their creative selves.

Every Parent Should Teach Kids Good Character Traits

Parents are teachers—they should be a child’s strongest role model of positive character traits. The truth is that children will develop good or bad character traits based on what they witness. If they can’t look up to parents as role models, they may take moral cues from others with less-desirable behaviors. The importance of family in building positive character in kids can never be underestimated. 

It's critical that you take time to reflect upon and identify your moral values and beliefs—and consciously model positive character traits for your children. Use our character traits list as a starting point and add other qualities you want to pass on to your kids. Depending on your family situation and composition, you may want to emphasize other traits as well. For example, if you’re a mother, you may want to teach your daughters to love their bodies to avoid the risk of self-shaming and low self-esteem. 

Remember that all your actions and decisions can provide a lesson to your children. Know your values and the character traits you want to embody and use them as a guide in every situation. You can help your children develop good manners and healthy conflict resolution skills that are crucial for building positive relationships. Their sense of self-worth and happiness can flourish—and those strengths will set them on a course for a positive future.

The post 10 Positive Character Traits Parents Should Teach Kids appeared first on FamilyToday.

Depending on your specific needs, there are several types of family therapy approaches you may want to consider. Keep in mind, many family therapists combine two or more of these approaches in the work they do with families. A good family therapist will be able to tell you which models of family therapy they rely on the most. Just ask them when you call to set up an appointment.

10 Types of Family Therapy to Consider

1. Bowenian Therapy
2. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
3. Intergenerational Family Therapy
4. Milan Therapy
5. Narrative Therapy
6. Solution Focused Therapy
7. Emotionally Focused Therapy
8. Strategic Family Therapy
9. Structural Family Therapy
10. Systemic Family Therapy

A family therapist can help ensure that your family interactions are as healthy as possible for everyone involved. Strained family relationships can come from many different fronts: major changes in family life, parent relationship tension, work stress, trauma, addiction treatment, chronic illness, eating disorders, child and adolescent behavioral issues, financial issues, and so much more. 

The overall goal of family therapy is to help family members appreciate the importance of family by creating and maintaining healthy relationships and mental health. Family therapy also assists family members by teaching them how to better communicate effectively with one another and work cooperatively to solve whatever challenges they face.

Family therapy has many tangible benefits, including the following:

• Improved family communication 
• Healthier personal and behavioral boundaries
• Improved problem-solving
• Increased empathy
• Deeper level of family trust
• Healthier family patterns and dynamics
• Reduced overall family conflict 
• Better anger management skills for the entire family
• Improved mental health for all

Family therapy is usually led by licensed marriage and family therapists, but it could also be facilitated by licensed clinical social workers or other professional counselors if they have received additional training needed for doing effective family therapy.  Such professionals have earned graduate and postgraduate degrees or certifications, and are likely also credentialed through the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

Bowenian Family Therapy

Developed by Murray Bowen in the 1950s, Bowenian therapy explores the mental and emotional tension we all feel between individualism and togetherness. To be our healthiest, we all need independence and companionship in varying doses. The degree to which we’re all able to reconcile these two opposing forces depends on our “differentiation of self,” which Bowen defined as “the capacity to think and reflect and not be reactive to internal or external emotional pressures.” In this type of therapy, the therapist will assume a neutral role, serving as a coach and mentor—and sometimes as “translator” among family members. 

The goals of Bowenian therapy typically include increasing the self-differentiation of family members, reducing emotional reactivity among family members, and helping clients develop new patterns of behavior and mental response for the future. Bowenian therapy is considered by many to be an integration of multiple therapy approaches.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy attempts to identify and adjust certain ways of thinking that may be causing internal distress and/or family strife. Cognitive behavioral therapists help people outline alternative thought patterns and behaviors that may be healthier. With this type of behavioral therapy, specific behavior treatment plans may be developed and implemented. Family members often have homework that they need to complete between sessions, including worksheets that help them map out their thoughts, feelings and actions. A mental health professional  may utilize both individual sessions and family sessions that include some or all members of the family.

The overall goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is to help stabilize family behavioral dynamics by identifying patterns of conflict. Once patterns emerge, individuals are better able to identify their role in these patterns. They learn to develop healthier mental responses that help them to adapt and communicate better. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps family members adjust their thoughts and behavioral patterns in ways that benefit the entire family. In other words, the individual focuses on personal growth in order to help the entire family unit.

For this kind of behavioral therapy to be successful, every single person participating must be open and honest—and willing to work through emotional issues. 

Intergenerational Family Therapy

Intergenerational family therapy recognizes that the different generations within a family can influence individual and family behaviors. This type of therapy often helps families identify multigenerational mental and behavior patterns and see how current challenges may be rooted in those of previous generations. 

Often, therapists employ the concept of the genogram, which is a schematic representation that mimics a family tree, but with substantially more information included. A genogram, in addition to mapping family structure, will outline relationships among various family members in order to help identify patterns. Sometimes the simple act of mapping it all and putting thoughts on paper can help identify places where families can work to strengthen relationships and reduce conflict.

Milan Family Therapy

Milan therapy focuses on analyzing belief systems that individual family members or the entire family unit may hold. It often examines family rituals and practices, especially those related to conflict. Milan therapy challenges families to explore their belief systems—including conscious and subconscious systems. This can help dismantle belief systems that perpetuate conflict in family units and replace them with healthier family values and belief frameworks.

Narrative Family Therapy

Whether with individuals or a relationship,  narrative therapy helps each family member to examine the narratives they have formed about themselves and their relationships with family members. More importantly, it invites individuals to let go of old, unhelpful narratives and replace them with new, more helpful--and often more accurate--narratives which better highlight each individual’s positive attributes, gifts, and skills. By doing so, family members begin seeing each other and their relationship differently. Seeing it differently, they begin to think and feel differently, while also choosing to act in new ways. Narrative therapy has many core values, including the belief that our problems mainly exist outside of us, and thus do not define us. Despite this, Narrative therapy asserts that individuals are still very much responsible for how they choose to respond to handle and respond to these “externalized” problems. At its heart, narrative therapy helps clients take mental ownership of their own values, capabilities, competence, and self-worth. 

Solution-Focused Therapy

Solution-focused therapy is considered one of the brief therapy approaches of our day. One of its core principles is that an individual or family does not need to identify the cause of the problem in their different situations  in order to identify the solution. In the approach, the therapist utilizes questions that help the clients think forward about their lives and relationships, considering what they do want versus what they don’t want. The energy and focus is on figuring out how to get to where they want to be versus understanding how they got to where they currently are. 

Many clients find this approach to family therapy to be refreshing. They often find that it helps family members feel more comfortable going to family therapy, knowing that the conversations will not lead to a feeling of defensiveness and blame. Still, staying focused on solutions is not easy, and often requires the therapist to put a lot of energy into helping family members do so. In addition, some clients believe their family problems are too severe for this approach, and therefore don’t believe it will be helpful to them. And based on family therapy research, if they believe that, they should choose a different type of family therapy to participate in. 

Emotionally-Focused Therapy

Emotionally-Focused family therapy (also known as emotion-focused therapy) is founded upon principles of attachment theory, and focuses on helping each individual (usually in a marriage relationship) examine and express their emotions in a safe environment. One core concept in this approach to therapy is that family members have become accustomed to feeling and reacting to their secondary feelings, such as anger, instead of being aware of and discussing their primary feelings, such as hurt or sadness. Consequently, family members come to see each other in ways that do not invite empathy or compassion.

An emotionally-focused therapist works to help the couple not only better understand their feelings, but also helps them have powerful interactions, or “enactments” that lead to changes in how they see each other. These enactments also create new patterns of interacting which are reinforced by the positive outcomes that occur in the therapy sessions. This approach to therapy may feel slower and have less energy, but the impact on relationships can be powerful, as evidenced by the research on this approach. 

Strategic Family Therapy

Strategic family therapy centers on family functions and processes. It explores behavior outside of therapy sessions and may concentrate on processes such as problem-solving and communication. Therapists who use this technique believe that change can be achieved rapidly, without necessarily involving analysis of the problem’s source—which likely means you won’t have to attend as many sessions as with some of the other types of therapy. However, you’ll likely also have outside “homework” to complete in order to get the most out of this approach. 

As the name suggests, this approach focuses is used by family therapists who utilize their insight and understanding of the families old patterns to identify “strategic” methods for interrupting those old patterns in order to open up the possibility for new patterns to begin.  In this approach, it’s helpful if family members can trust the therapist, even if all of the interventions suggested don’t always make sense. 

Structural Family Therapy

Structural family therapy explores the framework of the family by looking at patterns, behaviors, and family relationships as they display during a therapy session. Structural family seeks to establish parents as leaders of the family, and work to ensure that all family members have appropriate personal boundaries.

Therapists may also look at sibling or parental subsystems within the family unit, usually by employing role play, such as reversing roles at a hypothetical family gathering. After observing family structure, the therapist may then create a diagram that depicts the current family structure, which the group can use to define a healthier structure moving forward. With this approach, the therapist is often an active participant with the family, observing, learning, and helping strengthen family relationships. This approach often works well for families with at-risk youth and can help adjust unhealthy family dynamics well into the future. 

Systemic Family Therapy

Systemic family therapy is actually at the heart of all the family therapy approaches described above. Still, it’s worth highlighting to help you understand the foundation of these various approaches. 

Systemic family therapy views the family as a holistic unit and considers the entire family’s emotional tone, attitudes, and feelings. It centers its attention on the dynamics among family systems, rather than on individual issues and personal reflection. This kind of therapy is based on family systems theory (sometimes referred to as just systems theory), which recognizes that a family is more than just the sum of its individual members. The basic premise is that our behaviors within family systems are both inseparable from and informed by our family relationships and other family influences. For example, a parent struggling with alcoholism or mental health issues doesn’t undergo treatment in a vacuum – his or her disorder also has ramifications for the spouse and children. A family systems approach concentrates on how the issue affects the whole family rather than just the individual, and, in turn, how the family dynamics affect the issue

Systemic therapy also considers the spoken and unspoken communication within the family, as well as the meaning family members give to family interactions. With this approach, the therapist remains allows the family members to take the lead on developing their own solutions. That said, the therapist remains an active role in assisting the family in creating solutions when they are stuck.

Interventions may include encouraging family members to develop new ways to solve disputes and issues. With this kind of therapy, it becomes a shared family experience since the entire family system attends together.

Types of Family Therapy

Family counseling can help strengthen and improve family relationships and mental health. It can provide your family with an opportunity to solve problems and express thoughts and emotions in a manner that’s good for everyone. Family therapy also presents an opportunity to explore family roles, structures, and behaviors in order to identify the source of conflict. For many families, family counseling helps identify their strengths and weaknesses, such as caring for one another or having difficulty trusting each other. 

If family therapy sounds like something that could benefit you and your family, it may be helpful to find a licensed marriage and family therapist with whom you can build a strong, trust-based relationship. Seeking a referral from another trusted professional, such as your family doctor, is often a good place to start. On the other hand, you may have a friend or associate who has a good family therapist they might recommend. 

A therapist can work with your family to address the challenges you are facing. There is no one right way to approach family therapy. As you gain understanding of the various types of family therapy available, you can choose the path that best matches your family’s needs.

The post 10 Types of Family Therapy to Consider When Things Get Rough appeared first on FamilyToday.

12 Good Habits to Teach Kids  

• Safety Habits
• Sleep Habits
• Exercise Habits
• Eating Habits
• Hygiene Habits
• Kindness Toward Others
• Good Manners
• Patience
• Study Habits
• Work Habits
• Financial Habits
• Self-Control

Why practice good habits? Adults who understand the value of hard work, kindness, and respect for themselves and others were very likely taught good habits and provided a good moral compass when they were children. Good habits can start as young as babyhood and continue to flourish into adolescence and beyond.

The manners and behaviors you instill in your children now can play a significant role in their future relationships, health, well-being, and work ethics. Although there are several good habits to teach as soon as possible, you can start with just a few and keep building upon your lessons as your children mature. 

How to Teach Kids Good Habits

As a parent or caregiver, you play a crucial role in teaching your kids how to develop good habits and behaviors. To develop good habits, children need to understand the power of habit building, why good habits are important, and how developing healthy habits can lead to a happy, rewarding life.

One of the best ways you can instill a desire to form good habits in your children is by modeling them yourself. When you have a healthy routine filled with good morning habits, daily exercise, nutritious meals, and kind thoughts, then your positive words and actions can transfer to your children. They will want to do what you’re doing and mirror your positivity.

It’s also necessary to set clear household rules and guidelines so that your children know what you expect from them. Discipline comes into play here. It’s important for you to have consequences that invite your children to change negative behaviors and replace bad habits with good ones. 

Talk with your children about the good personal habits you expect them to have and why they are important. Show them simple things they can do each day to work toward good habits. Help your children understand how setting the foundation for positive behaviors and habits now can lead to them becoming well-rounded, happy, and successful adults in the future and at the same time avoid many family problems.

12 Good Habits to Teach Kids 

Helping your child develop good habits starts with an understanding that certain behaviors can have a positive impact on our daily lives. 

1: Good Safety Habits

Children need to learn that their safety (and the safety of others) takes priority over everything else, which is why it’s number one on our list of good habits. Without understanding safety rules that can protect the body and mind, your children may not be capable of developing respect for themselves or others. Good safety habits also help protect your child from strangers, accidents at home and school, getting lost, and other emergencies. They give children a solid foundation for knowing how to avoid or handle accidents later in life. 

You can start by teaching the basics at an early age, such as wearing a helmet when riding a bike or playing sports, looking both ways as you cross the street, and avoiding behaviors such as playing with matches, running with scissors, or touching a pot of boiling water. Kids should also know their home address, phone number, parent or caregiver names, and their own name as soon as they’re capable of memorizing them and understanding how this information can help in an emergency. 

As your child grows older, you can introduce more mature safety rules and responsibilities. For example, you can teach your children to respect their bodies and the bodies of others, show them basic first-aid techniques, and teach them how to safely evacuate the home in case of a fire.  

2: Good Sleep Habits

Sleep is important for everyone. A good night’s sleep keeps you physically and mentally healthy, allows your brain to remain focused on the next day’s tasks, and can boost your behavior and mindset. Children, especially, can benefit from a restful night’s sleep because their bodies and brains are rapidly growing. Sleep gives them the fuel they need to recharge and feel well.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), children require a certain amount of sleep each day/night, depending on their ages:

• Babies: 16 hours
• 1-2 years: 14 hours
• 3-5 years: 13 hours
• 6-12 years: 12 hours
• Teenagers: 8-10 hours

The bulk of this sleep time should come from restful, uninterrupted sleep at night. The right sleep habits can ensure that your children get their minds and bodies ready for a full night of sleep. Some good habits that help promote a healthy sleep schedule include:

• Set a regular bedtime and wake time each day.
• Create a bedtime routine, like reading a book or taking a bath before bedtime.
• Turn off all electronics for at least 30 minutes before bedtime.
• Maintain a consistent schedule for eating and napping each day.

Sadly, the importance of this habit is being neglected in our current culture. Teens especially are at risk with an overloaded schedule of school, music practice, sports, and homework that makes it almost impossible to get to sleep at a decent time. Add to that the bad habit many teens (and adults) are getting into of falling asleep as they watch streaming videos on their devices. Then, the early morning start to school then makes for a short night, giving our children far less than the recommended amount of sleep. This pattern is leaving our children at risk for chronic sleep deprivation, which can lead to poor health, agitation, anxiety, and depression. All of this can lead to further family conflict, which feeds right back into poor sleep, agitation, anxiety, etc. It’s a vicious cycle.

3: Good Exercise Habits

Exercising is one of the best habits we can develop. Physical activity helps us lose weight, relieve stress, sleep better, improve our attitude, build strong bones and muscles, and prevent heart disease. Even for kids who show no signs of health issues, daily exercise is necessary for their current and future health.

Instill a love for exercise in your children now and watch it continue to grow as they get older! Kids usually love to get outside and play, so taking a trip to the playground or an indoor gym can be the perfect way for them to burn off some energy and stay active. The key is to make exercise fun. The more fun your child has exercising, the easier it will be to maintain the habit as an adult.

As your children get older, you might consider getting them involved in sports or other physical activities, like dancing or dog walking. Sports may be the easiest way to exercise and can offer a long-term way to keep your child interested in a healthy activity.

4: Good Eating Habits

Good eating habits go hand-in-hand with good exercise habits. Eating can become a bad habit for people who weren’t taught the importance of proper nutrition. They might turn to sweets when they’re having a rough day, crave salty foods or caffeine, drink sugary soda, or eat high carb snacks instead of eating balanced meals. These behaviors are unhealthy for adults, but they can have extremely negative effects on growing children.

Kids need to eat a mix of fruits, vegetables, fiber, dairy, protein, healthy fat, and carbohydrates every day. Each element of a balanced meal works together to fuel your child’s body and mind. Bad foods like packaged or sugary snacks, can increase the risk of obesity, depression, and other harmful conditions.

Here are some ways to teach healthy eating habits. First, teach your child the importance of mealtime and introduce the different food groups—healthy protein (chicken or salmon, for example) fruits and vegetables, milk and dairy, and carbs like rice, pasta, and potatoes. Encourage your children to help you prepare breakfast as part of their morning routine or pick out healthy snacks for lunch to learn about a balanced diet.

Next, have meals together as a family as often as possible. Not only is this perfect bonding time, but your children will also see you eating healthy, which can encourage them to do the same. Serve water or low-fat milk with dinner to avoid extra calories and sugar and be smart about keeping portion sizes reasonable. 

5: Good Hygiene Habits

Hygiene is also a crucial part of a child’s overall health and well-being. As your children grow, they will be able to handle more hygiene tasks on their own as part of their daily routine. 

Washing hands and covering their mouths and noses when they cough or sneeze can prevent germs from spreading to others. Not only is it practicing good hygiene, but it’s also practicing good manners!

Other good daily habits to teach kids include showering or bathing regularly, brushing their hair, brushing and flossing their teeth, wiping after using the toilet, clipping their nails, wearing clean clothes each day, and getting regular haircuts. Older children should also understand the importance of keeping their genital area clean, protecting and cleaning their skin, and taking care of their facial skin, especially if they wear makeup or are prone to acne. 

Young children won’t necessarily understand why it’s necessary to stay clean, but you can explain it in ways they understand. For example, you can explain brushing and flossing teeth like this: “Your little teeth are trying to stay strong while your big teeth are growing and getting ready to come out. You need to keep your little ones spotless so they can protect the big teeth you’ll have when you’re older!” 

6: Kindness Toward Others

Love and kindness make the world go around. It’s also at the heart of your family’s relationships and family dynamics. A child who is kind can spread that kindness to others—playing with friends, riding in the car with siblings, or helping a teacher at school.

Kindness is a habit that children can learn as young as infancy. The people who are around your children the most, like you, other siblings, or a babysitter, can have a lasting impact on the perception of kindness and how to treat others. Kindness is best taught through modeling, so showing kindness through gentle touches, empathy, and kind words is one of the best things you can do as a parent or caregiver.

Older children can get involved with volunteering. Donating time to others teaches children what it means to have a giving spirit. Your child’s school likely offers a few volunteering opportunities, like canned food drives or holiday nursing home visits, but you can always ask around your community for other ways for your family to help. 

As your children show kindness to others, be sure to notice it and make mention of it to them. As you help it become part of their identity, it will become a habit that never dies.

7: Good Manners

Good manners are often apparent in children who understand the importance of kindness—but many kids still need to be taught why they should use manners. Words like “Please” and “Thank you” aren’t simply spoken when a child wants something. These words also express respect and gratitude. 

Young children tend to use manners simply because that’s what they’re told to do, but older children will learn that their manners can express genuine gratitude. Manners also show that a child is considerate of another person’s feelings, which comes from developing empathy. 

Most children can learn to use good manners by watching how adults closest to them interact with each other. Try to make an effort to hold the door open for others, ask for items politely when you are at the store or a restaurant, and say “Have a great day!” to people you encounter. Even the smallest opportunities to use manners, like saying, “May I please have a napkin?” at the dinner table will become important lessons for little ones who always look to you for guidance.

8: Patience

Learning how to be patient is an important habit for children to develop. It helps them become less selfish and understand that their needs or wants may not always be a priority. As kids, patience can help solve a lot of squabbles over sharing toys or playing games. As adults, patience helps us demonstrate kindness and respect towards others during stressful situations.

Patience is a skill that takes a long time to master. It takes time to teach a child how to socialize with others. Be there to guide your children as they play at the park and let them know it’s important to wait your turn when playing with others. Another way you can help your children develop patience is by reliably following through on your promises, thus helping your children learn that waiting patiently does in fact pay off. 

9: Good Study Habits

By the time your children are old enough to attend school, the basic habits you’ve taught them will come in handy. Patience, kindness, and safety can carry them through the day as they make friends, obey the teacher, and follow important rules. 

Schoolwork teaches children about responsibility. Building a foundation for good study skills in kindergarten can lead to success in college and at work and instill a lifelong passion for learning. 

Many children struggle with a desire to do homework. This can be a challenging habit to develop. You might consider letting your child come home from school and unwind for 30 minutes with a healthy snack and some outdoor exercise. Then, sit down with your child for dedicated homework time. By establishing a routine that includes a break after school can prevent the task of homework from becoming a negative experience.

You can also make regular visits to the library or use your family computer to help your child research information. Pick up some books or search websites and videos to gauge your child’s interest. Show your children the different ways than can learn something new in a fun and interesting way.

10: Good Work Habits

Good work habits are similar to good study habits. Although the two can coincide with each other, work habits can differ slightly in that they teach children the importance of independence — that the clothes we wear, the roof over our heads, and the food on our table all come from hard work. 

A child’s good work habits can give him a strong sense of ambition, a sense of responsibility, and a desire to be successful. Some important work habits to instill in your child include:

• Persistence: Teach your child that it’s important not to be hard on himself when something doesn’t work right away. Keep trying to achieve an outcome, even when it’s difficult.

• Effort: The effort your child puts into something is just as important as the outcome. Be sure to recognize your children’s efforts when they try their best even when the outcome wasn’t as you all hoped.

• Punctuality: Spark a desire to be on time for school and other activities. Your child will learn the importance of responsibility and reliability, and showing respect to others Other’s time is something you can never give back.

• Work ethic: A good work ethic is built on a set of positive values and attitudes your child has about work. Every child needs to understand that hard work, effort, and determination can lead to rewards. The satisfaction that comes from seeing the fruits of your labor is a fundamental ingredient in developing a good work ethic.

Giving your children chores is a good way to target each one of these habits. Your child will get practice following a schedule with his to-do list, learn how to spend his time wisely to complete tasks, and develop a sense of contribution toward the family and household.

11: Good Financial Habits

Establishing a work ethic in children can be challenging if they don’t have a basic understanding of how finances work. Your children are aware that money exists to buy things, but they also need to know why savings, budgets, investments, and careful spending are essential aspects of developing good financial habits.

Young children can start with a piggy bank. You might reward them with $1 for helping you with small tasks around the house, like cooking dinner or pulling weeds. Older kids might receive an allowance for keeping up with their chores without reminders. 

When you pay your child, encourage her to consider needs and wants. For example, she could save half the money for a specific goal, like going to summer camp. Then, she could use the rest for  candy or a toy. Another approach is to teach your children to divide the money into savings, spending, and charitable giving.

12: Self-Control

A child who knows how to self-regulate can learn to remain calm in stressful situations, alleviate strong emotions, and be more emotionally available for others. Children with self-control can also:

• Think about their actions more carefully instead of being impulsive
• Talk about their feelings more openly
• Develop stronger social skills and relationships with other children
• Focus on tasks more easily
• Become more independent in several areas of their lives

The ability to self-regulate is something that even many adults find challenging, so it’s important not to expect too much from your child. You might see baby steps for a while, but those baby steps will eventually equate to significant leaps toward positive behavior and emotions.

In toddlers and preschoolers, you’ll usually see emotions on display in the form of tantrums. When tantrums happen, give your toddler a safe place to cool down. Then, sit down and listen to her feelings. Express empathy and then talk about other ways to cope when feeling upset, like snuggling a favorite stuffed animal or giving a hug. In addition, be sure not to reinforce the tantrum by giving her what she wants in order to stop the tantrum.

You can encourage your school-aged child or teenager to feel comfortable talking about their feelings, whether that’s to you, a sibling, a close friend, or even a teacher. Older children may also find enjoyable activities that can help regulate their emotions, like riding a bike, listening to music, or playing an instrument. 

Teaching Good Habits  

Children continue to learn from infancy all the way through adulthood. Some of the most important lessons they will learn are the habits you instill in them at a young age. It can be hard to know just how much your teachings are sinking in. One fun and interesting tool you could use to get a sense for what habits are being formed in your home is to take the family culture assessment developed by Kinmundo.com therapists and researchers. Forming a strong foundation for your family culture while children are young is much easier than when they’ve grown and personal habits have been largely formed.  

Good habits usually start early, but it’s never too late to start teaching your children how to be healthy, show kindness and respect to others, and understand the importance of hard work. These behaviors will last a lifetime. By teaching your children good habits, you are giving them the skills they need to achieve their goals, work well with others, and develop into happy, healthy adults.

The post How to Teach Your Kids Good Habits appeared first on FamilyToday.

8 Factors That Affect Family Dynamics

1. Family Structure
2. Family Member Personalities
3. Family Roles and Responsibilities
4. Family Relationships: Past and Present
5. Family Member Goals
6. Family Values
7. Disabilities or Special Needs in the Family
8. Family Events, Hardship, or Trauma 

The world and its social norms are evolving, and family structure, relationships, and communication are evolving along with them. It’s not unusual to see a single-parent household or children being cared for by extended family. However, these ever-changing roles and family systems can also lead to changing family dynamics that are necessary to understand and navigate to maintain positive relationships with the members of your family.

What are Family Dynamics?

Every family is unique, and therefore, all family relationships are unique. The ways in which family members interact with one another are known as family dynamics. There can be positive family dynamics, negative family dynamics, and even toxic family dynamics, and it’s possible for your family to have a mixture of each type. 

To work through conflicts and issues, it’s important to be aware of how family members feel toward one another. Focus on understanding the relationships between children and parents, caregivers, or siblings, strained relationships with extended family members, and communication patterns. Healthy interactions and positive behaviors ensure that everyone in your family receives emotional support and feels like an essential part of the family unit. In addition, the reverse is true. Ensuring each member receives emotional support and believes they are an essential part of the family unit promotes healthy interactions and positive behavior.

Family caregivers, such as a parent—as well as aunts, uncles, grandparents, or another adult caring for children in the family—can improve how they are managing family interactions and issues through studying their family dynamics. Hosting regular family gatherings or meetings and having open discussions with family members can provide you with an opportunity to identify and work through dysfunctional family roles or behaviors to improve family life and health.

8 Factors That Affect Family Dynamics

The psychology of family dynamics attempts to explain how families work together as a family system—recognizing that each family is unique. There are several factors that play roles in shaping your family dynamics.

1. Family Structure

Your family structure refers to the people you consider part of your family, which may include people who have passed on in addition to those living with you now. 

What are the 6 types of families?

• Childless family: Couple without children

• Nuclear family: Two parents with one or more children

• Single-parent family: One parent with one or more children

• Blended family: One that involves step-parents, step-children, and/or half-siblings

• Extended family: Two or more related adults, like an adult child and their parent, living together to raise children or grandchildren

• Grandparent family: Grandparent(s) who care for and raise their grandchild(ren)

Although these are considered the most common types of family structures, there are numerous  other combinations of family members that you might consider to be in your family structure. This structure has a significant effect on family dynamics roles because of the relationships within them.

Family structures can shift over the years, and those changes can influence family dynamics. What starts as a single-parent family can change to a blended family and vice versa. In a nuclear family, parents watch their children age into adulthood and the family may experience a significant change in dynamics as adult children move out and begin families of their own.

2. Family Member Personalities

Each member of your family has a unique personality. Some personalities attract each other while others repel each other, much like the push and pull of magnets. Your family’s personalities could create positive dynamics in which everyone feels cared for, secure, and respected, but they can also clash to the point of creating toxic or narcissistic family dynamics.

Personality tests, like The Color Code and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), note pivotal pieces of your personality that can help or harm relationships when communicating with others of a different personality type. For example, an ESTJ (Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judging) personality type according to the MBTI may clash with an INFJ (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging), partly because a person with ESTJ type tends to make decisions based on what seems logical, while someone with INFJ type tends to make decisions based on how those decisions will likely affect those involved. In addition, ESTJ tends to think out loud and prefers to talk through issues spontaneously, while INFJ prefers to think in private about their thoughts and feelings before having a conversation. 

Birth order may often influence personality and how family members interact. A middle child, for instance, tends to be social and fall into the role a mediator, while a first-born child enjoys leading, sometimes to the point of being bossy. As an adult, your birth order can still have a significant impact on your personality and interactions with others.

3. Family Roles and Responsibilities

According to family systems theory, each member of the family has a unique role to play. Your role determines how you interact and communicate with others in your family. These roles vary but can include roles such as peacemaker, instigator, challenger, fixer, planner, and so forth.  sibling, child, or partner. These roles can shape your family dynamics because they can influence each member’s self-confidence, self-concept, and feeling of importance within the family.

For example, you might play the role of mediator in your family. Family members may triangulate with you for assistance in working out family problems with another family member. In some cases, this nurturing role can also come with a high amount of stress and anxiety. You may feel pressured to prioritize the problems of others over your own needs. 

4. Family Relationships: Past and Present

Your family’s relationships with one another can certainly influence group dynamics. Even past relationships, like those with family members who have passed on, can impact your marriage and family for many years, or even generations, to come. Strong relationships are often very emotional and can have lasting effects on your family.  

Consider, for example, a family with an alcoholic family dynamic. Perhaps a great-grandmother had a history of alcohol abuse which has passed onto subsequent generations of the family. Each generation may now have a pattern of alcoholism and strained relationships resulting from the behavior of a family ancestor. Even if family members do not drink, their relationship with the alcoholic member of the family likely taught them unhealthy family patterns such as lying, avoidance, or minimizing that influence the current family dynamics.

Family dynamics change after the death of family members, too. Your family may have had a central figure who led family gatherings and kept everyone communicating. When this person passes on, your patterns of communicating, familial relationships and feelings toward family members may change.

5. Family Member Goals

You and your family members each have individual goals that may or may not align. The parents of a family, for example, may wish for each of their three children to go to college, but maybe two of their children aren’t interested in attending college. Instead, one wants to pursue a basketball career and the other wants to start a business in photography. Although the children have clear goals for their future, their goals don’t align with their parents’ goals for their futures, which can cause conflicts and resentment.

The goals that each member has for your family’s future could look very different from one another and different from family to family. Some families have members who want to live near each other, even when the children are grown with their own families, while others spread out and become distant over the years. The way each member of your family envisions their future can affect your family interactions and relationships now.  To align family goals with personal goals your family should communicate effectively about goals and aspirations. Taking a simple family culture assessment is one way to start this type of communication.  Insights on your particular family culture will help everyone communicate more effectively, build stronger relationships and have a better understanding of each other points of view and positions.

6. Family Values

Although parents and caregivers attempt to instill the values they have in their children, children will grow to develop their own values, too. These values might mesh well with the primary values of the family unit, but they don’t always blend. Some members of the family may grow to enjoy volunteering and giving to others, while other members develop a more self-centered personality or focus.

Your family’s behavioral and moral values affect overall family culture. Parents and caregivers often have the idea that their children will grow to value the same things in life that they do, but there’s no way to ensure that happens. Even siblings raised the same way can grow to prioritize different things, which can cause rifts and judgment. On the other end of the spectrum, families with members who share very similar values likely prioritize similar things, which can have a positive effect on family dynamics. 

7. Disabilities or Special Needs in the Family

Caring for a family member with a disability or other special needs, such as mental illness or behavioral problems, can affect each member of the family—not just the primary caregiver. Family members can be pulled in different ways. Some may form a special bond with the individual with special needs, while a sibling may feel resentment toward that person for getting extra attention. 

This unique family situation often comes with increased stress on the family, even in young children who may not understand the situation entirely. Your family unit will need to learn to cooperate with one another to form healthy relationships. Focus on open lines of communication so siblings, children, parents, and even extended family feels comfortable sharing their feelings. 

8. Family Events, Hardship, or Trauma

A multitude of events, hardship, and trauma can affect your family at any point in its life. Family threats can include death, sexual abuse, addiction, infidelity, financial struggles, and mental illness. A family threat also refers to anything that substantially and negatively affects a family and how it functions. Trauma can send lasting shock waves through a family that continue to trickle down through each generation and affect the family dynamics.

A parent’s unexpected death, for example, can affect a child’s life into adulthood, and may affect how that person interacts with his or her own family. The death of a matriarch or patriarch of a family can significantly change, alter or end long-standing family traditions that could otherwise serve to help overcome the trauma or other family problems. Neglect or abuse toward one member of the family can cause emotional turmoil and stress on everyone else involved, and it could lead to a pattern of abuse in future generations. Similarly, if a family member has a personality disorder, family dynamics may become rocky or toxic as family members attempt to navigate interactions with that family member. 

Factors That Affect Family Dynamics

Anything that impacts your family can influence your family dynamics in a positive or negative way. And certain factors like your family structure, personalities and roles, family values, and trauma can significantly affect how the members of your family feel towards one another and how they interact with the family unit as a whole.

Hosting regular family meetings during which everyone can voice their opinions without judgment is a beneficial first step toward more positive family dynamics. In some cases, regular individual parent-child interviews can be a better alternative to family meetings if one family member has a strong personality and is apt to negatively influence such meetings. It takes willingness and work from each family member to improve your family dynamics, but with enough effort and cooperation, your family life and relationships can strengthen and grow.

The post 8 Factors That Affect Family Dynamics appeared first on FamilyToday.

7 Things to Help Fix a Broken Family

• Individual and Family Therapy
• Communication
• Daily Structure
• Family Time
• Time and Patience
• Support Outside of the Family Unit
• Forgiveness

Whatever the cause of the broken family, each situation is unique. Sometimes, a broken family situation is more easily repaired. An apology, therapy, or time apart is all that is needed. Other times, a broken family may not be something that can be returned to its original form. Parents should always make considerations for the welfare of the children, as a child’s life is often largely impacted by the situation. 

No matter the reason, there are steps that parents and children can take to help mend their family relationships. Even if family relationships are changed permanently, there is always hope for healing and moving forward in whatever the new family dynamics have become, such as a single parent household.

The advice below can help assist each individual in a broken family to move forward beyond the situation. Whatever situation caused the broken family, working to move past the event is the most beneficial step for everyone involved. In this way, the term broken family is a misnomer since healing and moving forward and creating new family identity is always possible.

Individual and Family Therapy

From the moment that a family is broken, a family therapist can help everyone involved. The sooner the underlying issues are addressed, the easier it will be to find resolution and prevent problems that may arise down the road.

A difficult family situation can be hard on every single person in the family, especially a child. It can be very difficult for children to express their thoughts and feelings, such as anger, conflict, fear, and confusion. A professionally trained family therapist has experience dealing with this type of situation and knows how to help the child or adult who may be struggling to cope with an issue.

A licensed family therapist can also teach coping skills to assist with a family member’s mental health. These coping skills can help everyone deal with the stress of daily life and keep those factors from further worsening the already difficult family situation. Each family member will handle their problems differently. Family members should be patient with each other as they make life changes and seek to strengthen their family relationships. 

Sometimes, family therapy can be a good method to reduce family problems. Other times, it’s better for individual family members to meet with the therapist in order to communicate difficult thoughts and feelings that have come about from a broken family situation. 

Communication

Create a safe environment so family members feel free to openly express their thoughts and feelings. This helps provide an opportunity to mend strained relationships. Set aside time each week to allow family members to express their thoughts and emotions about daily life and their personal struggles.

Encourage each family member to express his or her thoughts about how you can strengthen your family. These open communication sessions should be about sharing feelings, not blaming others. And it’s also okay if someone in the family doesn’t want to share their thoughts or feelings. Forcing an unwilling person to share will only undermine the purpose of the conversation in the first place by leading family members to feel unsafe. Instead, try to encourage family members to express their emotions without overly pressuring them. Do this by reassuring them that their opinion matters and will not be put down, dismissed or made fun of.

Scheduling this time as part of regular family life can be helpful. When one person is taking a turn speaking, the other family members should not interrupt. Avoid using electronic devices during this time and try to prevent distractions from hindering the conversation.

Although your first attempt may actually flop and feel like a failure, don’t give up. Trying again shows your family that you are committed to improving. Yes, it will take time and patience, but open discussion can offer valuable insights for everyone involved. 

In additions, it’s a good way for adults to become aware of any serious issues that may need to be addressed more thoughtfully, and if necessary, with professional support. Proper communication can offer insight into the family dynamics and family structure and allow for better understanding and compassion towards each other.

Daily Structure

During difficult life events, sometimes the only thing that we can rely on is the structure and routine of each day. These daily habits and activities can provide structure and a foundation for family relationships during times of change.

For the mental health of younger children, the routine of going to school or daycare, and having a consistent dinner time and bedtime can provide comforting stability to their ever-changing and insecure world. These predictable events allow a child to have something they can count on when they need it. Whether it is spending time at a grandparents’ house every Saturday night or taking regular trips to the park, a routine provides comfort and security to a child in need. 

While a daily structure is important, you don’t need to become a slave to the routine itself. Parents and caregivers should pay close attention to how each family member is feeling about the daily routine.

Family Time

Through therapy, open communication, and structure, family relationships can be improved. Another helpful way to improve family relationships is to spend some quality time together. Some examples include watching a movie together, playing a board game, preparing a meal together or taking an evening walk around the block.

These shared moments and family traditions work to develop the bonds between parents and children, as well as the relationships between brother and sister. This special family time can allow a child to see that life can include happy moments despite the current family struggles. Time together also helps define a set of family values that help promote a better state of mental health in the family. It helps remind family members of the importance of being a family. 

During these moments together, relationships can be mended. As the family enjoys a movie, board game or family meal, people can begin to forgive, and family bonds can be reformed. 

It’s also true that family time can trigger conflict in families that are trying to heal. For that reason, it’s tempting to simply avoid each other. While some time apart may be needed, forming a pattern of isolation in families will only make things worse in the long run. If you are worried “family time” will basically become a “family fight,” consider doing an activity that has low potential for conflict, such as a movie instead of a board game, or a sporting event instead of an escape room experience. In addition, you might start out with short activities, or even activities that only includes the more challenging child, and then work to include all family members as it makes sense to do so. 

Time and Patience

It can take time to process and resolve family issues. Negative thoughts and emotions experienced in childhood can impact a child’s life for a long time, even as they age and get married. There are often feelings of confusion and feelings of doubt.

Each family member needs time and patience to learn how to adapt to a new situation. The process of healing emotionally and growing can be frustrating and difficult to handle. While going through this process, children and parents may feel as though they will never recover. Some of them may even feel like certain family relationships will remain broken forever. It’s important to remember that these things can get better with time.

Life is challenging even for a family that isn't separated or divorced. When serious problems tear a family apart, the issues of daily life become so much more difficult. This can create insecurities and other negative thoughts and feelings. Patience and love during these moments is necessary for healing to begin. 

Support Outside of the Family Unit

It’s important to have a support system outside the family. Friends, colleagues, neighbors, and church leaders can help provide support. An objective perspective can go a long way toward helping resolve family problems. Having a community that’s able to offer support can help make daily life less stressful and reduce emotional problems.

Assistance from the community is extremely valuable. Some ways that friends and others in the community can help is to take a child to school while mom heads off to work, play a game with the children when dad is sick, or offer some one-on-one time with a teenager who needs to talk but doesn’t want to talk to his parents. 

Forgiveness

The cause of a breakdown in the family structure can have an impact on when and how forgiveness is offered. Each parent and child will process the situation differently and come to forgive at different times. It is important that this forgiveness isn’t forced before someone is emotionally ready. 

In time, a parent, son, or daughter will hopefully be able to offer forgiveness. A licensed family therapist can help everyone see other points of view which can help this process along.

The person or people seeking forgiveness may have feelings of guilt, embarrassment, anger, or conflict. A trained therapist can help them come to terms with these feelings. Each family member needs to take time to process their conflicting emotions in their own time and way. Trying to hurry the process along will usually only prolong it.  

How to Cope with a Broken Family

Asking questions of other family members can help you to gain insight into why this family situation may have occurred. Family members should try to consider all questions asked and be as open and honest as possible when answering. This honest sharing of feelings will help every family member have a better understanding of each other.

Maintaining structure in the daily routines of family life (such as school, work, and playtime) can help every family member cope more effectively during times of change. 

There are several ways a broken family can affect a child’s development. A broken family can create difficulties in school, friendships, sleep patterns, and eating habits. Depending on the age of the child, unresolved issues can lead to drug and alcohol use and even criminal behavior.

How Can Broken Families Be Prevented?

One of the best ways to help prevent a broken family situation is to have open communication from the start. This creates a place where thoughts and emotions can be expressed in a non-threatening way. Expressing individual perspectives allows everyone to know where the others stand as it pertains to problems that arise in a family unit. Evaluate your family communication type by taking the family culture assessment developed by Kinmundo.com therapists and researchers. The foundation of your family culture is the ideal place to start evaluating the needs of your family and start the family improvement process. 

Additionally, problems and threats can be addressed before they become severe and cause significant rifts in family relationships. This doesn’t guarantee that a family will never struggle, but it does provide a way to prevent many of the issues that lead to a broken family. 

Being respectful, understanding, and forgiving also go a long way to help prevent a broken family.

Can a Broken Family Be Fixed?

While a broken family is a very difficult situation, there is hope. Stay focused on the importance of family and encourage family members to focus on being loving, respectful, and honest with each other. Even if a family can’t be restored to its original structure—which is almost always the case for divorced families—each individual in the family can feel loved and believe life will get better. 

Family struggles can often help family members grow closer. When everyone works together to overcome challenges, family bonds can be strengthened, and forgiveness can be freely given and received.

The post What Is a Broken Family and Can I Fix Mine? appeared first on FamilyToday.