How heart-to-heart talks can teach kids relationship skills

Learn about: How heart-to-heart talks can teach kids relationship skills from John Badalament, EdM,...
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How heart-to-heart talks can teach kids relationship skills

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It is really important to make sure that you have a regular heart-to-heart talk with your child. And what I mean by that, a regular heart-to-heart is a dialog. And I have created an activity for this called the relationship check up and it is very simple. There are a series of questions that both the dad and the child and this can be done from a very young age all the way up into adulthood between a father and child. The questions are focused on the relationship, so the dad answers them; the child answers them. Questions such as: What is one thing I could do to strengthen our relationship? or What is one thing I do to make our relationship more difficult? What is one thing you do to make our relationship more difficult? And by then having the dad and child come together and share their answers, the child gets a chance to give dad feedback and build his voice or her voice. And that is something that is very new for many dads. Most of us did not grow up giving our dad´s feedback about what they were doing well and were not doing well. But as a dad, don´t you want to know what you are doing well and what your child thinks you could improve on? That does not mean you have to do it if your kid says one thing you could do to improve our relationship is let me stay up until 12:30. Well, no. But it is about listening to the child. So that what your doing is actually teaching them relationship by doing relationship. You are giving them the language and the skills that in a relationship we talk, we have a dialog about here is what I think, here is what you think. So the regular heart-to-heart, the relationship checkup, is important to do on a regular basis. It is about teaching your children the vital skill of being relationally healthy.

Learn about: How heart-to-heart talks can teach kids relationship skills from John Badalament, EdM,...

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John Badalament, EdM

Author & Educator

John Badalament, EdM, is the author of the acclaimed Modern Dad’s Dilemma: How To Stay Connected with Your Kids in a Rapidly Changing World and Director of the PBS documentary All Men Are Sons: Exploring The Legacy of Fatherhood. His work has been featured on ABC NewsNPR, in Men’s HealthPregnancy, The Los AngelesTimes, and on HuffingtonPost.com. He serves on the Honorary Board of the Ties Never Broken Campaign, a partnership with The White House. John is a Harvard-trained educator who speaks internationally to schools, parent groups and organizations. 

 

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