Relationship Building

“When you have a baby you have five years of hard labor ahead of you. If you don’t get it over at the beginning, you’ve got it coming to you later.”

- John Bowlby

When we build a house, we want to use the best materials possible. If we simply use what is available to us- some grass, perhaps, and some old pieces of wood, our house may not stand at all. But when we seek out better materials to build the house, and we seek the support of those who have previously built houses, we are more likely to succeed. So it is with parenting and with our children.

Building Healthy Relationships requires an understanding of what healthy relationships look like and what children need from us to develop optimally. When we didn’t have our own early needs met, we may not know what our needs are in the first place. This can have a profound impact on our parenting decisions.

When we can make the shift to a relationship focus in the first few years of life, preferably before our children are even born, we are creating connection that will influence the course of our relationship. There is no better investment!

However, even if your children are chronologically past the birth to age five category, we can all learn from this section. Regardless of our own parenting role in the present time, Building is also about what we needed growing up that we may or may not have received. At one time or another, we were all children under the age of five. This information can give us an understanding of what all relationships really need and what that might have looked like. If you are parenting a child with a trauma history, it may give you ideas about how to go back to meet some of those early unmet developmental needs.