Bond With Your Teenage Kid: 11 Ways to Connect Emotionally

As parents, you might find it difficult to sometimes bond with your teenage kid. You might find it tough to stay connected with your grown-up children. Adolescence is a time of big changes, and your child may be experiencing emotional ups and downs. It is an age when your teen kid strives to be independent of his parents and develops his views on every subject.

It may be unnerving when you find your adolescent kid unexpectedly turning rebellious. During this phase, parents only need to have the patience to handle their kids.

A positive parent-child relationship can be built with mutual understanding and love and affection. It helps a child’s cognitive, emotional, and social development. Your kid begins to display positive social behaviours that put them on the path to success.

Parents must spend some uninterrupted, unstructured time every day to understand their kids’ emotional needs and to connect with their teenage kids.

The article provides some tips as to how to emotionally bond with your adolescent kid and ways to strengthen a parent-child relationship:

1. Encourage Honest Interaction

Spend some time every day with your teen kid and encourage honest communication. Share your emotional struggles and dilemma from your teen days and the plenty of blunders you made when you were young. Your teen kid will surely appreciate your honesty and will realize that he can trust his parents. In no time, your grown-up kid will begin to reveal his true feelings to you.

2. Staying Connected

Parents can try to stay connected with their teenage kids as much as possible. Listening patiently to their child daily will help them to understand the reason for the emotional ups and downs. You can go for a casual drive with your child or watch television together and share conversations. The relaxation time spent together will enhance your emotional bond with your teenage kid.

3. Express Emotions

Allow your child to express his genuine emotions if he is disappointed, hurt, frustrated, or angry for some reason. Show your solidarity and camaraderie with him and let his emotions flow. Share a candid talk with him. Your child will have the courage to deal with the situation. Avoid giving lectures at this moment as your child will feel that you are not supporting him. It would prevent him from expressing himself openly.

4. More Space

Give your child more space as he begins to learn new things and gains new experiences. Your child is learning to be independent as he begins to solve his problems and handle his emotions. Assure your child that you are there for them whenever they need you.

5. Allow Kids to be Who They Are

Most parents have their views about what makes their children happy. But do not compel them. Allow your child to follow his instinct and let him make a choice. It would give your child the independence to trust his feelings and increase his confidence and self-belief. Parents can encourage their kids to be more self-disciplined and opt for hard work, keeping in mind their child’s personality, not their own.

6. Giving Solutions

Allow your child to contribute to solutions if any problem arises. Your child will have more confidence in handling them as they feel that they are a part of the solution. It will help to increase your child’s self-confidence as he will become more adept at problem-solving skills. Your child will begin to trust you more as you begin to apply your child’s judgement that concern their life.

7. Need Guidance

 

Parents keep on nagging their kids constantly and advising them frequently as to what needs to be done. It provides a wrong signal to the kids as they feel that they are at fault. It might weaken the bond with your teenage kid.

Teens begin to resist their parents’ behavior since they want more independence and more choices in their life. It is the job of the parents to guide them to make appropriate choices. They can help their kids to realize their goals of what they want to become. Moms can gently tell their kids as to the apt steps they can take.

8. Managing Emotional Stress

Adolescent kids face a lot of emotional stress as they grow up. Changing hormones and managing emotional ups and downs independently is quite challenging for most of them.

Moms can lend their support and help their kids to cope with this passing phase. Parents can sit together and list out various mood busters. It can help your child feel better as he has a choice of indulging in activities like going for a brisk walk, getting a hug from parents, playing with his pet dog, listening to a favourite song, playing a sport, etc. Some of the options would work best for your kid as it would help him to manage better with his emotions.

9. Show Interest in Kid’s Activities

Parents need to show interest in their kid’s activities even if it doesn’t appeal to them. Moms have to get engaged with their kids if their teen daughter insists on reading out a poem that she wrote, or your son could be showing you a video clip that he shot. The clip may be boring, yet as a parent, you have to give a smile and assure your kid that it is one of the best clips ever that he has shot.

Parents have to make an effort to engage in their kid’s world if they want to strengthen an emotional bond with their children. They might insist you accompany them to a talk show or go to a theatre or listen to their favourite songs or play their favourite sport. Engaging in their activities can brace up emotional bonding with your kids.

10. Role Model

Your child looks upon you as a role model and begins to adore your qualities. He observes how you cope with difficult situations. The strategies that you use to handle situations provide a morale boost to your teen kid. He begins to admire your moral strength and gains lessons from your experiences.

11. Committed Time to Strengthen your Bond with your Teenage Kid

Try to give a committed time every day so that you can have informal conversations with your teen kid. Such warm intimate conversations will allow parents to bond emotionally with their kids. It could be spending some spare time before bedtime or during mealtimes or while driving that you could start an unexpected conversation.

The opportunity to interact will help you to understand each other better and gain mutual trust. Sharing talks will make it easier for you to connect closely with your teen kid.

The above steps taken by a parent will help to understand his teen kids better and to bond with a teenage kid. Most parents will find noticeable changes in the behaviour and personality of their adolescent kids. It is quite normal. As parents, support your teen kid as much as possible without any judgement or criticism. Provide them with your love and affection selflessly and you will observe that they will accept your guidance easily without any ado.

This is a difficult time and you might often doubt yourself. Hope this article helped to ease some of the doubts. We look forward to your insightful comments!