Do you find it hard to connect with your kids every day, Momma? Sometimes, as parents, connecting with our children can be a struggle, especially because we are so busy!
When we are running here and there, taking care of household responsibilities, managing the family, starting an online business, and everything in between, it can be incredibly hard to find small moments during the day to connect with our kids.
But that’s why it’s so important – because we are so busy. And if you’re struggling to make that emotional connection on a daily basis, I can help!
I’ll show you how I:
- create routine moments where I automatically connect with my kids every day
- connect with my kids at different ages
- use daily rituals to connect with my kids
- maximize the weekend to connect with my kids
Even stay-at-home moms struggle to connect with their children on a daily basis! Being a stay-at-home mom doesn’t mean you have more time to give to your children. You are busy busy busy all day long!
There’s always:
- a house to clean
- bills to pay
- meals to cook
- snacks to prepare
- gardens and flower beds to weed
- school activities to run to
- school stuff to volunteer for
- homeschooling and faith-based activities
- babies to feed and change
- errands to run
- groceries to buy
- a community to volunteer and care for
- clubs and activities we enroll our kiddos in
- a side hustle or wahm business to run
- 😅 and we can’t forget self-care!
It’s absolutely nuts, rushing from one activity to the next, all day long, checking stuff off of our list! In all the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day, it can be so easy to “manage” our children without ever really connecting with our children.
And most moms fall into bed utterly exhausted at the end of the day from “doing”, without ever fully realizing that they didn’t emotionally connect with their child that day.
It is possible to spend the whole day with your child, without ever really connecting with your child.
In fact, a 2014 study found that 40% of all children develop an insecure attachment to their parents!! Forty percent! That’s slightly less than half of all children!
Nearly half of all children do not have an emotional connection with their parents. 😱
What happens if we don’t connect with our kids?
If we spend our days checking stuff off, rushing our children here and there, and managing our children’s behaviors, without ever really fully connecting with them, on a deeper emotional level, what happens to their development?
What happens if we don’t develop a secure attachment with our children?
If you don’t connect with your kids, it can seriously hurt their development
Building a relationship with our children is oh, so important to their emotional, physical, mental, and social health!!
Plus, if we don’t give our children attention….they get naughty. 🙄 Children are very good at getting their needs met, in very creative ways.
If our children don’t get the attention they want (and need) they will start to demand our attention. Because, when they are being naughty, we can’t ignore them. We have to stop what we are doing to take care of that naughty behavior.
And they prefer negative attention over no attention at all.
If you don’t connect with your child:
⇢ your child will act out, to get your attention
⇢ your child will develop insecure and unhealthy relationships later in life
⇢ your child will suffer emotionally
⇢ your child will struggle academically
⇢ your child will have a hard time making friends and entering social situations
⇢ your child may develop mental health disorders
⇢ in severe cases, your child will not physically grow and develop as he or she should
If you don’t connect with your child, it can also harm you
But if you don’t connect with your child, it not only harms your child, it harms you, too. It’s harder to love and care for a child that we have no emotional connection with. It’s easier to neglect our children and not tend to their emotional, physical, and psychological needs if we haven’t created a strong attachment with our children.
Plus, parenting won’t be fun! It’ll feel like a chore. Something you have to do during the day, just another responsibility. We don’t want caring for our children to feel like just another obligation, something more that we have to blindly check off our list in order to go to sleep at night!!
If you don’t connect with your child, you may:
⇢ easily lose your patience with your child
⇢ be inconsistent with your parenting
⇢ find it hard to implement and enforce rules
⇢ find yourself building an inappropriate relationship with your children, such as being friends rather than parent and child
⇢ use harmful parenting techniques and styles
⇢ base your affection on your child’s behaviors and not on unconditional love
There are some instances where it is extremely hard to form an attachment with your child. No matter how hard you try to connect, it just doesn’t seem possible. These may be instances where either you or your child suffers from a mental or emotional illness.
If that might be the case, you need to seek professional help immediately. Mental and emotional illness will affect your parenting. You can contact your doctor, counselor, or therapist.
If you don’t know who to contact, you can start with your county social services, community action agency, Head Start agency, or public school system. Any one of these places should be able to point you in the right direction.
If you don’t connect with your child, it can affect your parenting
Finally, if you don’t connect with your child, it will seriously affect your parenting. This is where you will rely on behavioral management and discipline techniques in order to raise your child, instead of relying on your relationship with your child.
The parent-child relationship IS the foundation to all things parenting. Without it, EVERYTHING about parenting will be hard. Everything.
If you don’t connect with your child, your parenting will:
⇢ be haphazard and inconsistent
⇢ resort to behavior management and discipline techniques that do not work
⇢ consist of parenting styles and techniques that do not work
⇢ involve a lack of trust and respect
⇢ be ineffective and exhausting
⇢ ultimately drive your child away from you
And because your relationship with your children is not good, your children misbehave. You will forever have trouble managing their behavior and parenting them.
And the teen years will be even harder than they should be.
But I’m going to help you fix that.
Because it’s so super important!! It literally affects the rest of your child’s life.
💜 How to connect with your kids every day 💜
It’s so easy to connect with your kids on a daily basis once you know how to build quick little connection moments into your daily routine! Then you do it without even thinking. It’s just a natural part of your day.
And it makes all the difference in the world to your kids, your parenting – and you!! 💕
So, let’s get started!
1. To connect with your kids, build it into your daily SAHM schedule
Just like everything else in parenting, we need to be consistent about building a relationship with our children. We can’t shower them with love one day and totally ignore them the next. That is detrimental to their health and completely goes against everything we are trying to establish.
The best way to be sure we connect with our kids every day is to build it into our daily routine. Once we do that, it becomes a habit. And before we know it, our relationship building is on autopilot!
Create routine moments to connect every day
So how do we create routine moments to connect with our kids every day? The same way we create a daily routine, of course!! We take our day, chunk it down, and build one connection moment into each section of the day.
And then wha-la!! You have three already-established regular moments to connect with your kids on a daily basis!! 🙌🏻 🙌🏻
Every morning
As a SAHM, you are way ahead of the game on this one. The one thing I really loved about transitioning from working-out-of-the-home life to SAHM life was not having to rush out the door in the mornings.
So, instead, we slowed things down a bit and used the mornings to ease into our day.
You need to take a look at your morning schedule and find a moment to add in one activity that will connect with your kids. For me, that meant snuggling on the couch the minute they woke up. (I used to rock them on the rocking chair when they were babies.)
After we “connected” that way for a few moments, they’d hop down and go play. And I’d start breakfast.
We ate together at breakfast time, my three little guys and me. The big boys were off in school at this time. And even though my boys were little and didn’t communicate much, I stayed off of my phone and kept the TV off.
I am a strong believer in using mealtimes as a connection moment. Electronics are not allowed at the dinner table. We spend the time talking.
But when my kids were little, we spent that time laughing, being silly, singing songs, or whatever. Often, I chattered away while they listened, because their communication skills were not as strong back then.
It didn’t matter what I was saying or what we were doing. What mattered is that I was giving them my undivided attention while we ate.
☛ To get started
Here are a couple of posts you can use, to get you started with adding connection moments into your morning routine:
How to Love Your Kids in Five Minutes or Less
How to Create a Daily SAHM Routine Using Time Chunking
The Secret to a Great Daily SAHM Schedule
How to Structure Your Days as a SAHM
Every afternoon
I built connection moments into my afternoon as well.
When the kids were little, we spent the early afternoon reading stories and running through nap-time rituals. Rituals are amazing for connecting with your children.
In the later afternoon, we played outside.
And I did this, day in and day out.
Now, however, my kids are older, and our connection moments consist of snack time. 😂 🤣 I’m telling ya – don’t underestimate the power of food!!
During snack time I slow down from my day’s work and connect with my children while they snack. We just hang out and talk. I make sure the TV is off and no one has electronics.
(When they were younger, I spent the majority of my day with them, so I often let them watch TV while they snacked and used snack time as a way for me to get something done quick.)
My kids play by themselves for the majority of the day now, so this moment to connect at snack time is super important, to them and to me.
And then, if my work is done earlier than expected, I’ll end my day around four and spend that time playing with my kids. It’s summer now, so we eat at seven instead of six. Which means I have more time before I have to make supper. 😀
☛ To get started
Here are a couple of posts to help you get started with creating connection moments every afternoon:
Seven Reasons to Play with Your Child
The Best Summer Toys for Fun, Quality Time with Your Kiddos
How to Create an Awesome Summer Routine
112 Fun Things to Do with Your Kids This Fall
Every evening
Evenings are made for reconnecting with your family.
Even if you work outside of the home, unless you work a late shift, you can – and should – spend the evenings together as a family.
Eat together as a family. (Of course, with no electronics.) And after the meal is finished, clean up together as a family. Even the young ones can help out by at least carrying dishes to the kitchen or emptying the dishwasher.
One thing we used to do that my boys and I absolutely loved was playing music while we did the dishes. We’d take turns picking out songs on YouTube! 😂 🤣
Of course, this was before they had Spotify. But it gave me a chance to introduce them to ‘my’ music (I had a blast playing 90’s songs for them! 😂 🤣) and it gave me a taste of what they listen to (some of it’s not all that bad! 😝)
After the dishes, play together!
Depending on the season, you can play outside or inside. Things like family video game nights, family board game nights, and family movie nights are great in the winter. We even loved dancing along to YouTube videos or those stupid little snap chat filters! 🤣 😂
And summer evenings, of course, are meant for walks, bike rides, and playing in the yard. ❤️
☛ To get started
Here are a couple of posts to help you to get started creating connection moments in the evening:
20 Easy Things You Can Do Every Day to Show Your Child You Love Him
Bedtime Tips: Routines & Rituals
2. To connect with your kids, create connection moments based on your child’s age
As you can see, I keep saying, “when the twins were little” or “when my kids were younger”. I do this because you have to create moments to connect based on your child’s age. As your child grows, the way you connect – and when – will change.
Also, the younger your kids are, the more opportunities you will have to connect throughout the day. And it will be easier to build those connection moments in. It becomes harder as our kids get older.
Younger than five
When our kids are little, they need us, for nearly everything. They can’t entertain themselves for very long either. So, we have ample moments to connect with them throughout the day.
Plus, our days are more structured and routine when our kids are little. This makes it easier to build in connection moments as well.
☛ To connect with your preschooler or toddler, try any of the following:
1. Eat meals and snacks together without electronics or TV
2. Create morning rituals and evening rituals
3. Create bedtime and nap time rituals
4. Build playtime into your morning, afternoon, and evening routine
5. Create bath time rituals
Older than five
As our children get older, they spend less and less time in our direct care. By five years old, they should be able to play by themselves for extended periods of time. This makes it easier for you to get things done, but harder to connect with your kids.
You need to be very deliberate about setting aside time to connect with your child at this age. It’s too easy to go the whole day without making that connection…and it’s way too important.
Tips for connecting with your older child
1. Keep the same routine they had when they were younger
To connect with your elementary-aged child, try to stay as close to the above list as you can. Keeping the same routine you had when they were younger works really well. You just need to change the rituals as they grow and you can cut the amount of time it takes in half – or more.
They need your direct attention less at this age, so the connection moments don’t need to be as long. Sometimes, five minutes to play together or a quick three-minute snuggle in the morning is all it takes.
2. Get silly
Also, don’t be afraid to let your hair down and step out of that mom role from time to time. Break into a pillow fight, sing a goofy song or make an unexpected face for absolutely no reason at all!
Kids at this age love to see mom act silly. It makes you human and approachable. They eat it up!
3. Surprise them with random acts of kindness
Finally, don’t overlook random acts of kindness. They are so easy to do, and they mean a lot to this age group. For instance, yesterday, I received a HUGE bear hug from my Little Prince Ali all because I made his bed for him. ❤️
My boys make their own beds and it’s hard!! They have about 20 stuffed animals, five blankets, and three pillows. 😂 🤣 They have very little bed space to actually sleep. Plus, they have a shelf right above their headspace full of little “special” things that they don’t want their brothers touching.
It’s usually overflowing.
So, when they make their beds, they really struggle with the finesse part of it. They can get the job done – it’s just not pretty. Sometimes it’s barely even functional. 😂 🤣 They are only five, after all.
So sometimes, I will sneak in there and make it before they do. And not tell them. And they LOVE the way I make their beds (because I line all of their stuffed animals up along the wall!), so they are thrilled that I thought of them and took a moment to do that.
#connectionmoment
Teens
It is so important to connect with your child as a teenager!! But sooo hard to do. Because you have to balance connecting with your teen and giving your teen the space and privacy that he needs. It’s a fine line.
If you’ve done your job right thus far, it’ll be easier to continue building and strengthening your relationship with your teen throughout these years.
But if you’ve struggled to build a relationship up to this point, then you have a lot of work ahead of you. It’ll be harder to establish a connection with your teenage child, for sure. But it can be done.
Tips for connecting with your teenager
Connecting with a teenager is tricky. I can give you all kinds of tips – things that have worked for me.
And I will. But I need to warn you…I can’t control how your teen responds!
If doing any of the activities below is new to you and your teen, your teen will either:
- not respond
- barely respond
- respond inappropriately
- or think you are nuts 😂🤣
And that’s okay! That is actually a normal and appropriate response. Your job is to show them that you mean business – that connecting with them is important to you and you are not going to quit.
So just keep doing it! Eventually, it will become a normal part of your day and your teen will get used to it – and maybe even respond back!
1. Give your teen respect, privacy & trust
Not kidding. Hard for us to do, for sure. But we need to start backing off on parenting a little, and trust that our kids have been raised right.
At this age, we want to start letting our children have a little more freedom. This means they have the freedom to make mistakes. And it’s okay.
We want them to make those mistakes under our roof – while they still live at home with us. That way, they can learn from them with our help.
We are there, to shelter them from the full-blown effect of the consequences of their mistakes. Think about it. A child who doesn’t budget his earnings well will still have food to eat if he is living at home.
A child living on his own who doesn’t budget his earnings well will literally starve.
So, let your teen make mistakes while living at home, where you can still help. Use those moments as teachable moments. It’ll make all the difference in your relationship and in their lives after they move out.
2. Try to eat at least one meal a day together
It gets really hard at this age, for sure. Because teens are on the go and seldom home! But every chance you can, try to eat a meal together.
And be sure to keep your rule of no electronics at the table. Enforce it!! Putting away the phones opens the table for conversation. And you need that, at this age!
Also, don’t be afraid to have your teen help with the dishes afterward. That also opens the floor for more connection moments.
3. Keep communication open
Everything about connecting with a teen is hard. Heck, everything about raising a teen is hard! 😂 🤣 But communicating with your teen is especially hard.
Work really hard to keep that communication open. Truly listen when your teen talks.
Bite your tongue and keep all judgmental comments to yourself. Remember, he is a human being with his own opinions and ways of looking at things – and they are bound to be different than yours.
Don’t try to force your own beliefs on him. He’ll hate you for it. Plus, he’ll eventually learn!
Kids at this age have to learn from doing and making mistakes. Very rarely will they trust what you say and just take it as fact. 😂 🤣 So, give him the space to freely express himself with no repercussions from you.
Just a little side tip: the best way to get your kids to open up is to do something while you talk. Go for a drive or a run. Shoot some hoops. Do some baking. Keep their hands busy. It opens up the lines of communication. 😉
4. Let your teen know that you love him
This one’s not hard to do at all, is it Momma!
We love our children and it’s easy to show it. But, go out of your way to show your teen how much you love him. At this age, you need to be more deliberate about it.
You know your teen – use his love language to your advantage.
I have one who loves a good meal. So, I will be sure to cook him his favorites from time to time. I will also be sure to cook a yummy meal when his girlfriend comes over.
Figure out what your kids like and do it.
☛ To get started
Here are a couple of posts you can use, to get started with building connection moments into your day based on your child’s age:
Younger than five:
The Secret to Understanding Your Baby’s Cry
Seven Steps to Bonding with Your Baby
Older than five:
20 Ways to Show Your Child That You are Thankful for Him or Her
Listening to Your Child: How to Be an Active Listener
Teens:
Seven Steps You Can Take to Build a Better Relationship with Your Teenager
Get to Know Your Teenager in a Deeply Personal Way
3. To connect with your child, create daily rituals
Rituals are amazing. I absolutely love what they can do for a relationship.
There are a few different kinds of rituals you can (and should!) create:
⇢ holiday traditions used to build memories surrounding holidays and birthdays
⇢ celebratory rituals used to celebrate accomplishments and milestones
⇢ daily rituals, meant for connecting during the small, daily moments
Why rituals?
Rituals are the secret weapon to put connecting with your kids on autopilot! That’s why! 🤣 😂
If you do something over and over again at a certain time or point in the day, with the intention of establishing and/or strengthening an emotional connection, it becomes a ritual.
It also becomes part of your daily routine.
Terry Levy wrote, for the Evergreen Psychotherapy Center, that “Family rituals are emotionally meaningful and convey the message, “This is who we are; this is what it means to be part of this family.”
He went on to say, “Rituals foster a sense of belonging and identity and are especially important for children with insecure attachments. Children from families with meaningful rituals do better academically and socially. When rituals are disrupted or lost, children develop behavioral and school problems.”
Huh. Who knew? 🤷🏻♀️
Rituals show our children that we love them.
Performing a bedtime ritual, for instance, slows down the bedtime routine and forces us to spend just a little bit more time with our children while we tuck them in.
During this time, if we develop a daily ritual, such as rocking them to sleep, reading stories together, saying prayers, or ‘eating them up’, it shows our children just how much they really do mean to us.
The undivided attention, in the same old way, day in and day out, offers them love and security.
Rituals really are the secret sauce of a daily routine.
When to use rituals
You really can establish a ritual at any time or point during the day. The only requirement is that it makes sense to you and your family. 😂 🤣
But I like to use rituals right away in the morning and at bedtime. We have mealtime rituals and bath time rituals as well.
And I lean heavily on holiday and birthday traditions. They hold a lot of significance to me and to our family.
The key to using rituals is to remember that they will develop, grow, change and die as your child grows. What works now, at two, definitely won’t work at five! And especially not at ten! 😂 🤣
☛ To get started
Here are a couple of posts to help you get started with creating rituals:
20 Ways to Show Your Child You are Thankful for Him or Her
20 Easy Things You Can Do Every Day to Show Your Child Love
Bedtime Tips: Routines & Rituals
21 Ways to Spend Valentine’s Day with Your Kids
4. Use the weekends to connect with your kids
Not gonna lie…I think we all kinda rock at this one! 😁
It’s easier to connect with our kids over the weekend than it is during the busy days of the week. Especially if you work outside of the home.
Still, it requires some sacrifice, from time to time. Weekends are just like the evenings – meant for spending time together as a family. But they are also the only time you really get to socialize with your own friends as well.
So, you have to balance the two.
I’ll share with you three different ways you can get the job done. 😉
Option #1: set aside a day for family time to connect with your kids
You can set aside one day during the weekend to connect with your kids. For most families, it works well to socialize on Saturdays and save Sundays for family time.
And then you can do something amazing during that time, like going to the beach, a museum or shopping. Whatever it is, it is something your kids absolutely love and you can spend the whole day together doing it.
#connectionmoment
Option #2: to connect with your kids, model your weekend after your weekday
Sometimes, our weekends are just too dang busy. I will often find that I need to get stuff done around the house, such as weeding and tilling the garden and the flower beds. This takes most of the day.
In situations like that, I just model my weekend after my weekday; meaning I use the same rituals during the weekend that I do during the week.
It’s too easy, as parents, though, to constantly try to get our own stuff done on the weekend. Before you know it, months went by and you missed prime opportunities to connect with your kids.
Be careful to not fall into the trap of just checking things off your list on the weekends.
Option #3: use the full weekend to connect with your kids
This is actually my preferred choice. It’s too hard to spend quality time with my kids during the weekend at my house…all I want to do then is check stuff off of my list! 🤣 😂
So, my hubby and I go to the lake nearly every weekend. This allows us to get away from the house and all of our responsibilities and focus only on our kids.
Not everyone has a place they can escape to, though. So, it’s good to plan weekend getaways once in a while. Try camping or taking a road trip. Visit some historic places, fun amusement parks, or go see a long-lost relative!
Just get out of the house and spend some time together. 😉
☛ To get started
Here are a couple of posts to help you get started with creating connection moments on the weekends:
14 Basic Social Skills You Can Teach Your Child by Playing Board Games
105 Ways to Spend Time With Your Child
112 Fun Things to Do With Your Kids This Fall
The Best Summer Toys for Fun, Quality Time With Your Kiddos
At the end of the day….
At the end of the day, momma, our relationship with our children is what will make or break our parenting.
Connecting with our kids is important to their physical, mental, and emotional health. It will set the stage for all future development and help them to grow up into healthy, productive adults.
Plus, if you don’t connect with your kids and build a strong bond, then your parenting will suffer. You will have a hard time maintaining your patience with them. It will be hard to set aside your needs for theirs.
And you will rely on discipline techniques and behavior management to guide your children instead of a genuine interest in their care and needs.
The easiest way to connect with your children is to build it into your daily routine, chunking down each section of your day. Build connection moments into the morning, afternoon, and evening.
Using daily rituals is the secret ingredient to putting your relationship-building activities on autopilot! You can strengthen your bond with your child every day, with very minimal effort on your part. 😉
And then be sure to spend a good chunk of time together on the weekend!
Need some ideas? Check out these posts to get you started:
20 Easy Things You Can Do to Show Your Child Love
How to Show Your Kids You Love Them in Less Than Five Minutes