Continue reading Special Kid Time Everyone likes to go on trips and do activities as a family.  It is usually fun and builds strong family memories.  Although this is very important we must also realize that good parenting depends on building strong bonds with each individual child as well.  This not only establishes trust but it also creates unbreakable bonds between a parent and their child.  The key first step is trying to figure out what each child likes to do with you.

Every child has their thing that they love to do with you and a parent can usually tell what it is just by watching what happens when you try to do that activity with them and the other children (or spouse) want in too.  Usually it turns into a fit of some sort.  Now if you have an only child figuring this all out may be easier.  Before we started having kids year after year, I pretty much new what our child like to do with me and which activities he liked to do with my spouse.  Of course as your children grow older their activities evolve, but take solace in the fact that there is always something that your child likes to do with just you…after all, it’s your time together.  Just remember, try and get them at an early age because then when they start growing they will progress to other activities with you naturally and they won’t feel uncomfortable or ‘weird’ about doing things with you like teenagers tend to feel and act.

As important as it is for you to find something you and your child can relate too is the importance of having a spouse that doesn’t get jealous or snippy about it.  It is bad enough to have other children biding for time, we definitely don’t need our spouse upset about leaving them out of something.  Your spouse must be made aware of the significance of individual activities and time with each child.  I’m sure in the reasoning process an example or two can be brought up of how they have their time as well, even if they don’t realize it yet.

The main point of this is to not only find time for your children, but to find time for each individual child.  In today’s hustle and bustle world we tend to glob everyone and everything together; this is not always a good thing.  If you take the time to build individual bonds you will find that you will have a stronger love, respect and mutual admiration for each other for the rest of your lives.