The Daily Dad

You’ll Want Them To Come To You With Problems

Mar 20, 2020

02:26

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Learn how to create a trusting environment for your children so that they feel comfortable coming to you with their problems and mistakes.

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Quick takeaways

Create a calm and supportive environment for your kids to come to you with their problems.

Demonstrate through your actions and reactions that you genuinely care and want to help.

Deep dives

Being the Kind of Father Your Kids Turn to

As a father, it is essential to create an environment where your kids feel comfortable coming to you with their problems. When your children make mistakes, it is crucial to remain calm and be a calming influence rather than react in a way that worsens the situation. Actively listen to your children instead of rushing to provide solutions. By showing that you genuinely care, giving fair hearing, and not rushing to judgment, you can earn their trust and respect. Reflecting on our own experiences as children, we often hid things from our parents because we feared their judgment or lack of understanding. To create an open line of communication, demonstrate that you make things better and that your love for them surpasses any mistakes they may make.

Creating a Trusting Environment for Children

2min

When your kids mess up, what’s your reaction? Do you freak out? Or are you calm? Do you make the situation better...or worse? Can you actually listen? Or are you halfway through a solution before they’ve even gotten two words of explanation out of their mouths?

The answers to these questions matter if, like a good dad, you want to be the kind of father who your kids turn to when they have a problem. You want them to come to you with their fears, with their secrets, with their dilemmas, don’t you?

Well then you better make yourself the kind of parent that has earned that honor, that has earned that respect. Because it’s a privilege and not a right. Need proof? Think about your own parents and how many things you kept from them. Even more, why you kept it from them.

Sure, some things we hide because we know it’s stuff we’re not supposed to be doing. But a lot of it is stuff we could have used their advice on, that we ached to connect over—but we knew we couldn’t. Because they would rush to judgment. Because they wouldn’t let us explain. Because it would trigger their anxiety or their temper or their moralizing reminders.

You want them to come to you with problems? You want to help them? Then show them. Teach them that it’s worth doing. Teach them that they’ll get a fair hearing. Prove to them that you make things better and not worse.

Let them see how you love them more than you hate any mistake.

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