Moms and dads, whether you are a couple or single, here are some tips that can increase your individual and family happiness quotient!
Create a family sharing ritual:
Across the seasons, holidays break the monotony of work and school week, creating opportunities for family rituals experienced together: Christmas, New Year, or even birthdays. Having rituals that are repeated gives the child a sense of security, helps them to form their identity, fosters a sense of belonging and a wealth of good memories. You don’t have family rituals at home? Why not take this opportunity to try them out! No complicated programs! A ritual can also simply be the choice of one dinner a week – a pizza night or something similar – that the family shares. Then everyone can casually enjoy time together around board games or a good movie. A ritual can also form around doing something together, like baking a new dessert on Saturday afternoons. Sharing such family rituals reinforce the bonds between family members and are vital to a person’s development. If you are a single parent, include the extended family or rally the support of another mom or dad to create such a ritual. Still doubtful? Read our previous news: “Parents, why your love is not enough”!
Develop your sense of gratitude:
After a few years together, couples are known to become critical and take for granted whatever contributions the other makes. In maintaining an enriching and valid relationship where both partners feel complete, expressing gratitude serves as an essential tool of appreciation. Be on the lookout for opportunities to say thank you. An easy way to keep thanking each other all over is to find the small things. Thank your mate for setting the table, changing the lamp, taking the trash out, ironed a shirt or just buying something. You could also just pop your partner a surprise thank you for no apparent reason and see how long it takes for your partner to ask you a question about what prompted this seemingly random expression of gratitude! If you are in a relationship, thank your partner for giving you beautiful kids, or simply for existing. For their part, children can be encouraged to learn gratitude towards most things life brings to them. One way is to have them list, every day, three things they are thankful for that made them happy. Noticing the positives is a sure key to a happy life, or at least to living a bit happier.
Create special moments for two!
Family life cannot replace couple life. Partners should make time for one-on-one rituals, moments for sharing, and direct communication! Associated with communication is always listening. And hearing means being available for the other. This creates special moments for just the two of you. There needs to be no ruckus about it. Simply take turns planning an evening around a deliciously cooked meal or movie of mutual interest, hiking, or designate a gift day when you give each other something special, however simple (even a poem). Staying aware of the other person is the most important. Nothing kills a relationship more than trying to fathom that you know your partner by heart and there are no new mysteries to be discovered. Keeping up harmless curiosity, showing interest in the partner’s pursuits and ideas, plans, dreams, and gripes becomes paramount. Attention makes us feel loved.
Tell each other things with kindness, but without a filter!
To speak kindly, it is wiser to avoid being angry! Such is advised by the psychologist: when both get angry, the best way is to get out of the room and calm down. To address significant matters, it is much healthier and effective to wait for the right time or create one! One could be creative: have a drink before or after dinner to talk with one another calmly and amicably, or, for the more imaginative minds, find a funny way of saying things. The key advice from the new cognitive therapies is to speak about what you’re feeling rather than pointing the finger at what the other person did! So if you feel upset that your partner is making noise when you want to go to bed early, instead of saying to them that they are making you unable to sleep, you can express it from your own feelings without blaming: “during the time that you are making noise and I’m wanting to sleep, I feel that my tiredness doesn’t count, I feel that I’m not important.” Additionally, you want the other person to feel free of defensive posturing. And better to avoid, in this exchange, terms like “always” and “never.” “Why do you always displease me,” “you’re always mad,” “you never help me,” “you’re always late”… The word “always” and “never” destroy all the work that your spouse has put in in the past (however insufficient you find it), and put him/her in a situation of failure, fury, depression, or resentment. In a word, since you’re already dishing out your thoughts, do it constructively!
Don’t contradict yourself in front of the children.
Given whatever differences that arise, ensure that your child doesn’t have to alternate between dialectically opposed instructions. Did your spouse allow your child to stay up, eat sweets, watch TV, or mess about with something you didn’t agree upon? Let it go, and don’t give a counter mandate; just discuss it as a couple, face to face. And should it arise again, be patient. Either way, children know how to play their parents off each other! Working together, you are far better when it comes to raising your children. If you can’t see eye to eye on things, however good your intentions may be, open a dialogue! Compromise means you agree with your spouse on the following point in exchange for their agreement with you on an important point further on! And if your spouse doesn’t give in on the point, however inconvenient it may be, you can at least share this with your child: “That’s how it is with mom/dad; this is how it is with me.”
Never fall asleep angry with each other
Not as a couple, let alone as parents, a child’s utmost reassurance stems not from reasons of this sort. Kiss your kid at night without fail, holding them close to your heart. Tell them again and again how much you love them. The trick may sound less blatant to you as a couple, but making a habit to fix anything that arises between the two of you before going to bed each night is the most effective approach for keeping the couple going. And if you fell asleep angry that night, come the following morning tell her, “You were really not nice, but I love you,” working some charm in that or modify the statement to address the male partner, to which he might respond something like, “Same with you!” It is a method for both parties to let go of tension in a conversation, because a conversation is possible only after calming down and getting much rest. When growing into quarrels, there, in fact, resentment set in, and it poisons relationships.
Make love often!
Being big fun: if there’s more sexual intercourse, there’s more lust, and vice versa, where there’s less, there’s adversely lesser. Get your sexuality into a reinvention in the imagination, just like in “Sex In the City,” where Samantha-Kim Kattrall confects role-playing games with her partner in desire. Not your piece of cake? Try a light version like whispering erotic things in their ears or even sending alone sexts if that is the case. Are you lacking in inspiration? Buy erotic cards (for example “Truth or Dare, the couple’s edition”) and enjoy an experience with sexy challenges! Not really convinced for real? Have sex just to be healthy. According to Dr. David Weeks at the Royal Hospital of Edinburgh, people who have sex three times a week look ten years younger than people who have sex only twice.
Accept the other as he/she is!
Are you mega organized and your partner the complete opposite? Are you an early riser and your partner addicted to sleeping in? You can’t change another person, so you might as well accept it and remember – at the moment when you can’t stand their flaws anymore – all the qualities that you love! Easy to say? Yes, okay, but adding philosophy to your life can help!
Take time for yourself!
Even with your children overrunning your life with joy and your partner being adored, make yourself time at one point or another to nurture a secret garden. A very loving couple is not necessarily within each other’s boundaries in a way that can’t be crossed. Indeed, preserving what makes each of you smile and enjoy life on your own basis will allow you to have a much healthier balance. Having personal interests should not exclude you from doing other things as activities that are meant to keep the couple and family life in balance. This is a question to mediate. A smart way could be to approach life in the form of a pie chart: draw a circle, and decide how many slices of it you are going to give yourself. For a young family or a single parent, the challenge is keeping a teeny piece for oneself!
Love yourself!
It sounds foolish, but it’s true: the more at peace you are with yourself, the more peace will reign in the outer world of yours. Easy to say for an exhausted parent who is completely bereft of energy to even think of herself, let alone love herself. Oh, how much more courage it requires, to seek help from those around you, just to get a breather, even if merely physically. Set up with the circles of your parents to help each other out with babysitting once a week, or…if no luck, check out your PopMoms application and discover in your own neighborhood other parents willing to be a part of a virtuous circle of mutual aid! There is exchange of babysitting hours, mutual collection of kids from school, car pooling, and many more… All one has got to do is get into the application to discover services offered!
The Importance of Having a Happy Family
The social and emotional well-being of any person relies on their family relationship. A happy family boosts confidence through constant support that allows love, trust, and security to shine forth, making everyone feel valued. A happy family nurtures good relationships and not only nurtures the bond between the family members but encourages free communication and respect towards each other. When members of the family share emotional bonds, feelings of togetherness are created that enhance one’s ongoing self-esteem and happiness.
Stable emotional well-being is one of the advantages of a happy family. Studies suggest that a loving and supportive family helps build high self-esteem and coping strategies in children. Besides, they teach appreciation of kindness, patience, and solving conflicts, which are important in developing interpersonal and civic skills as children grow into adulthood. Adults experience the benefits of family relationships in tough situations since they become a source of support constantly over time.
Physical health, too, suffers when families are unhappy. Happiness nourishes physical health because it breeds a culture of spending time together in different activities-cooking, playing, engaging in fun- which nourishes a healthy lifestyle. Positive home environments decrease stress and consequently present a lower risk of anxiety, depression, and chronic illnesses.
A happy family also supplies moral training and life skills. Parents and elders do their best to become role models for their children by allowing them to become responsible while teaching them empathy and respect toward others. A conducive environment molds human beings into compassionate and responsible citizens of society.
Last but not least, a happy family becomes a haven for love, laughter, and encouragement to be based. It is an anchor in such unpredictable storms that world interaction frequently leads us into an area where warmth and stability soothe and bless our lives. Happiness in the family means joy, that empowerment, that success in every aspect of life.
Read also: How to find peace of mind and happiness
