Family is the single most important socialization unit in our lives. Your behavior, thoughts, actions, and reactions towards life are all shaped by your family. This means that the family unit has to be taken care of and nurtured well. However, regardless of what it should be, it is easy to drift away from family, especially when no effort is poured into strengthening your bond. Here are some tips that will help you and your family strengthen your bond and enhance your connection.
Prioritize Family Time
How can one expect to stay close and bonded to their family if they are not even capable of spending quality family time? Effort matters, and it is up to you to clear your schedules and make the effort to spend time together. Have activities like Friday night games, movie time, and even sporting activities that you enjoy doing together. Plan family trips within your budget and go on vacations, road trips, or other nice destinations in your communities. Whatever the case may be, just make time and spend quality time with your family.
Communicate Openly
You need to make conversations with your family open, safe and regular. This may be regarding family topics or the individual lives of your family members. Don’t promote secrecy but have your family openly discuss their feelings and experiences with you. Don’t allow the conversation to be dominated by one individual. If you can, you can even make it fun by introducing items like communication sticks and rewarding people who are vulnerable with their feelings.
Make Your Traditions
You and your family can create things that are ritually and occasionally done together. This keeps your family interested in spending time together and it also creates structure within the family. It may be Christmas Traditions personalized to your family or the bi-yearly trip to visit grandparents. Whatever it may be, ensure that you make your family traditions as this will help your bond become stronger. If you are enjoying the tips so far, check out our next one.
Stay Supportive
Your life may be very busy, and as we speak, you probably have a thousand things that still need to be checked off by the end of the day on the to-do list. This, however, is not an excuse to be absent and unable to be there for your family during their happy and sad times. After all, what is family if not a support system for each other? Attend those school performances and experiments and comfort your family where there is a need. Be supportive and you will notice how you will strengthen your family bond.
Cook and Eat Together
Good food with the family is equal to increased bonding time. Picture a family, with two parents and two children. The Father is reaching up to the top shelf, grabbing spices while the children are cutting the vegetables. The mother is on the stove, tossing in the just-cut vegetables, and the father starts blending the oranges in the juicer after giving the mother some spices. The children then set the plates and after a nice team experience, they finally get to sit down and eat, faces plastered with smiles. This could be you, getting to bond with your family through your shared love of food and active involvement.
Openly Show Love
Sometimes, people grow up without really knowing if they are loved by their family or not due to the lack of visible cues. Sometimes, beyond just acting like you love your family, you need to them. Hog your parents, children, siblings and other family members when you can and directly tell them that you love them so that they don’t guess but know this.
Strengthen Conflict Management
Conflict is inevitable and as long as there is an interaction between you and your family, you will conflict regularly. What matters, though, is how you manage the conflict. Create Conflict Management Mechanisms like intervention, or intercession. Whatever tools you use for your family, encourage the resolution of conflicts. This will strengthen the family bonds, allowing you to grow even closer after a well-managed conflict.
Make A Vision Board Celebrate Together
This is something that will improve the bond between your family. At the beginning of the year, sit down with your family and create a vision board that everyone participates in. Add the things you want to do together, your aspirations, your family goals and areas that you are improving on. Be artsy, creative and optimistic about the new year together and let your love for a pretty and well-made vision board help you to bond. Remember to allow everyone to openly share the vision that they want and see for the family then build on all these ideas to have one collective idea.
Celebrate Together
What better time to bond than when you are celebrating one of your member’s successes and wins? Create an environment that attracts closeness by ensuring that you celebrate together through all your success, big or small. Encourage your children to share their wins with you and reward them. Make sure that during events like birthdays and graduations, you celebrate the way that the person who is being celebrated wants. This replaces bitterness and feelings of being unappreciated with feelings of being involved, seen and appreciated. Your family becomes stronger if you celebrate with each other and the younger ones will learn.