F A M I LY
How to build
Strong Family
Relationships
By Ilze Alberts
Families are special, and belonging to a family with close family relationships is extra special
Every couple who gets married and
decides to have children has dreams of
having a happily-ever-after ending – a
great marriage with kids who get on
well. But the reality is relationships are
tricky and building good, solid
relationships take skills, know-how
and perseverance.
Let’s have an in-depth look at the basic
principles of solid family relationships.
Build warm caring relationships
There are three types of relationships:
careful, careless and caring.
A careful relationship is when you walk
on eggshells around the other person. A
wife too scared to speak her mind to her
husband, or a father too insecure to say
no to his child because he doesn’t want
to lose favour with his child, are examples
of careful relationships.
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Being too careful to be real means you
will battle to build a relationship of
mutual respect and comfort, and the
relationship will be characterised by
dishonesty and insecurity.
A careless relationship is a relationship
characterised by you not caring about
how your actions impact on the other
person. For example, a husband not
caring about the impact that his long
hours of watching or playing sport has
on his family; or a child not caring about
the impact of his rudeness on his sibling.
This is a relationship where the members
of the family would prefer to be further
apart from each other than close
to each other.
A warm and caring relationship is
characterised by each person caring
about their impact on the other person.
It is a relationship skill where you consider
how your decisions, behaviour and
actions impact on the rest of your family.
It is, for example, a father who
understands when he plays golf on a
Saturday that he gives his wife “time off”
on Sunday to do something she likes
while he takes the kids to the park. A
caring relationship is built on the mutual
understanding of giving and taking.
It is human nature to fluctuate between
careless and careful behaviour: you
become careles s when you place
yourself on a pedestal and put the other
person down and careful when you put
yourself down and place the other
person on a pedestal.
A warm and caring relationship is where
you consider your family member and
yourself as equals, even when the other
person is your 1-year-old child. All
humans deserve to be treated with
respect, dignity and unconditional
acceptance and that includes everyone
in the family from a baby to an adult.
4/30/14 2:53 PM