Tip 73: Communicate proactively to settle any misunderstandings with your child

I have been thinking about communication and just relationships in general. I think the key to having bilingual, trilingual children at a young age is when daddy and mummy communicate with their kids lots. It seems like an easy task, but communication and relationships are never easy especially when children grow up and have a mind of their own, their habits, likes and dislikes. Each human being has different temperaments, personality and its hard to please everyone especially when they grow older, smarter, richer and more independent. When that happens, somewhere along the way, trust is loss through misunderstandings and differences in values, culture and expectations. How to ensure trust is always built? By trying to understand each individual and saying the right things to different individual. By trying very hard to demonstrate that you actually care and not doing it for any personal gain or to manipulate your child. After understanding the child's needs, meet it and hopefully the trust bank builds up. Hopefully, blogs like this helps to demonstrate to my children one day when they start blogging, that I do value them since Day One.

Haruka is starting to scream more whenever she wants something. I took her to the playcenter today and put her down to play by herself and sat closeby at a sofa. I heard her screaming and thats because she could not open a drawer of toys inside. I went over to open the drawer for her and she continued to play with a smile. I looked into the future and could see her screaming whenever I instruct her to do something she does not like, or when she wants something that I do not want to give. It surely gets worse during adolescence. I looked back at my own childhood and reflected on why I did not have a good relationship with my dad but instead had a better relationship with my mum. My dad watched the TV much and did not make many initiatives to start up chats, wasn't too intellectual and intelligent, had some screw ups in his career and the whole family did go through tough times and my respect for him began to sink. As a result, I did not learn the Hakka dialect from him and even had few English conversations that felt productive to build relationship bridges. My mum while having a penchant for nagging, has a strong desire to ensure we grew up well. Did dad not have that same desire? Was he more selfish than mum? Its hard to say. Only God can read into hearts, yet we humans think we can as well. This further emphasizes the need for proactive communication to settle any misunderstandings. Always saying I am sorry, touching and patting the child to assure the child that you really care despite losing the temper, sharing your heart's content on why you made certain decisions to try to get your child involved in your life. Could Haruka be thinking why is daddy not playing with me today and is disinterested? What I need to do is to continue to reassure her by meeting her needs that I do really care indeed. That I love her always, although I am also human.