How to become your child’s best friend?

The day my first child was born, I had promised myself that no matter what, I will be his friend before being his mother. It was not just an emotional outburst, but something that I practice today also. Let’s see how to develop friendships with kids.

With the birth of my second child, my daughter, I learned that I can build trust and love with my kids through simple things that I do in my everyday routine. 

As they are all grown up today, I can proudly say that as my kids grew from an infant to a toddler to a child and now to teenagers, and I have very tactfully built a balance between motherhood and friendship. 

How did I do that? Let me share some key factors that helped me to build a lifelong friendship with both my kids

How I developed friendships with kids: 

1. Participate in the activities that interest your child: Playing games with your child is the easiest way to build a strong friendship with kids. 

When someone tries to listen to our part of the story we suddenly become more interested in the conversation. It’s exactly the same with your child too. They want to be heard and they want a lot of your attention, too. You can do that by simply playing with your kid. 

From crawling together to playing football with my kids, I have proudly done it all. And honestly, I quite enjoy playing with my kids. It is so relaxing and de-stressing to spend time with kids. Not only is their vibe positive but they also teach you to enjoy the small joys of life.

2. Avoid saying “No“:

Don’t touch that, don’t jump up too high, don’t spill water, don’t make your hands dirty. 

Do we even realize how many times we say no to a child? No, we don’t and we absolutely don’t realize the kind of negative impact this word NO has on our child.

By saying no so many times in a day, no loses its value. And Our child begins to think that Mom is always saying no. She never wants me to play and enjoy. We absolutely don’t want our children to think like that. 

Not that I never say no to my children. I always correct them whenever needed but for the silly small things that happen every day, I just avoid saying no because I know they are also human like me and will learn from their mistakes just like me. 

3. Trusting him:

Now trust is a very big factor that cannot develop overnight. You need to do things over the years that make your child realize that no matter what my mom is going to understand me. For example, remember how while going to the market, you told your toddler that you are going to the doctor and he cannot go with you, and later your toddler finds out that you actually went to the market. That’s exactly how you start breaking the trust in the first case. If you don’t want them to lie, you should not lie to your children at all.

Instead try saying, “I have to go to the market to Buy something important and I trust you to take care of yourself and the rest of the house. Till the time I come back, you are the boss of the house.”  

You will see a world of difference in your child’s personality once you start treating them like your partner, who you trust the most. 

4. Sharing my heart out to develop friendship with kids:

After having an exhausting day at work or when your day has been emotionally weak. What do you do? You absolutely don’t have the energy to entertain your kids, but you do want to share your feelings with someone who understands you. Right!?  

 That’s exactly what I do when I feel I want to share how I feel. I pour my heart out to my kids and not an adult. Why? Because I truly believe that my tiny humans are my most understanding friends.

Honestly, when I first started sharing my problems /feelings with my kids, I never realized this one simple act would have such a powerful impact on my children. 

Not only do my kids understand my situation but they also respect me and my work more. They have learned to acknowledge the value of money because they know the hard work that goes behind it to earn. 

There have been days when I find it difficult to share how I feel because I know that I can’t share all the silly things that we adults do. On such days I just share the lesson I learned.

In my motherhood journey, I have learned that children are far more sensitive and trustworthy than the adults around us.

5. Breaking the glass barriers: 

Breaking the glass barrier becomes the most challenging part. Especially with your sons. You want to give your children all the education about sex, but yet find it difficult to put it in words. 

Neither can you over talk about it and if you make sexual education l, there are chances that your kid.

I faced it too. When my son entered his teenage years, I really wanted to have a talk with him (especially because of the pandemic and staying at home). I was pretty sure that his hormones were kicking in. 

How I gave sexual education to my kid!

I am a mother who is very open about discussing everything with my kids because I think sexual knowledge is something very important and there is nothing bad in it.

So, I obviously tried to have a talk with my then 12-year-old boy. He had zero knowledge about anything sexual because of staying at home. 

How am I so sure about it? Because there had been instances where he asked me questions (thank you Netflix) which clearly gave me signals that it is time for him to get the right education from his parents.

Here is what I did:

• I introduced him to books like It’s Not the Stork!, Just for Girls, Just for Boys, and so on.
• I said yes for him to watch the popular 90’s series friends on Netflix. During the series He asked me a couple of questions which I answered with a straight face. (Straight face is very important 😀)

These two actions helped me majorly. Today, I don’t fear that anyone will provide wrong sexual education to my kids because it’s not taboo for them at all.

Conclusion: it always takes two people to build a strong friendship and if you as parents don’t treat your kids as your friends then you should never expect the from your kids.
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Cheers

Aakriti Dhawan.