Relationships with our children usually begin in infancy and are powerfully influenced by biology. Bonding between parent and child is enhanced by brain chemistry stimulated by hormones and touch. Much of what occurs is instinctual. We are well aware that in time our relationship with our children, especially teen-age and adult children, will be a relationship of choice and not dependency. The foundation begins early and is immensely important because your relationship with your children will influence all the other relationships in their lives.

Our culture is plagued with myths and common beliefs about raising children. Examples are that parents deserve respect simply because they are parents; obedience makes a child strong; responding to a child's cry will spoil him; parents are always right; the way you behave is more important than the way you are; high self-esteem makes a child self-centered; and children are responsible for a parent's anger ("You make me so angry..."), etc. Because we have absorbed these myths, we may use the following methods in parenting children. We may lie to them, manipulate them through scare tactics, withdraw our love, or isolate them. We may humiliate or ridicule our children at home and sometimes in public; perhaps we coerce them into bending to our will.

After years of this, we want to have a relationship with our children and then feel hurt and betrayed when they do not. We begin to see this with adolescent children who are still somewhat dependent but have begun to have personal power through jobs, strong relationships outside the family, mobility and other forms of independence. Teens are apt to be compliant part of the time and then zap us with anger in the form of disrespectful attitudes, limit testing, avoidance, passive-aggressive behaviors like forgetting, and rejection of the family values. It has been said that only when you have been autocratic and rigid will the child test limits and push your buttons. If you have respected them as children they will respect everyone else.

You can create the relationship you want with your children if you build a solid foundation early in their lives. Although respect, unconditional love and quality time need to be ongoing, a working knowledge of age-related developmental needs is helpful.

In the first year and a half, children need attachment and parents who are consistently available and warm toward them. The following year and a half are individuation years. Now the child needs to have protective limits, but the freedom to explore. During this time the parent must be available when needed and willing to back off when the child begins to explore on his/her own.

Children ages three to four need to build identity and need to be mirrored. This means that as the child tries on new roles (imaginative play) parents notice and affirm the child. Mom or Dad might say something like, "Wow, you are a race car driver today. I'll bet it feels great to go fast." The inappropriate parent at this stage might inject a scare tactic and say, "Race cars are very dangerous; you would probably get killed."

The four to six year old child is building competence and needs affirmation of his/her interests and effort, as well as all the appropriate information for the activity. Parents respect a child by allowing activities that the child chooses in addition to activities the parent chooses.

You can depend on a solid and rewarding relationship with your children if you nurture trust, acceptance, empathy, and their belief that they are precious to you. Children must really believe that you listen to them, allow genuine feelings to be expressed, and are able to understand their experience of the moment. This requires skill and effort on your part. It requires that you reject many of the myths about children and parents that you have inherited from your parents and society. Most of these skills are communication skills and can be learned in counseling, workshops, school programs, parenting classes, etc. They are not different from the skills needed by all adults in caring relationships.

If you could change only one thing in your relationship with a child in order to improve that relationship, I would encourage improvements in communication. This is difficult for most of us because really listening to children and allowing them to express genuine feelings increases our anxiety. If your children are quite different than you in temperament and interests it will make your life more challenging and complicated.

One of the "commandments" of parenting is "Your children are not you!" Loving them requires you to see them as they are and affirm them as they are. To love is to allow and respect another person's reality. If you can accomplish this with each child that you parent, you will have created the relationship that you want with that child. Wounded and unhappy children often say, "My parent just doesn't understand me." No wonder they turn to peers who offer understanding through sameness.

A second commandment of parenting is "Suspend all judgments." A child who hears his behavior labeled all the time will eventually think of his "self" in that same way. I am suggesting that you suspend good judgments as well as bad judgments. If you judge behavior as bad the child feels like a bad person. If you judge the behavior as good, the child feels like it is necessary to walk a tight rope to keep being loved. Remember the "unconditional" love requirement? Replace all judgments with statements about how you feel. Examples are, "I feel worried when you are late and don't call," and "I feel frustrated when you don't complete your chores," and "I feel hurt and disrespected when you speak to me that way."

Finally, the relationship you want with your child will not exist without trust. Children must feel safe with us and that requires trust. Trust in turn requires honesty. We are often dishonest in communication without realizing it. Does your tone or body language send a different message than your words? Do you make promises that you don't keep? Are you a bundle of tension on the edge of explosion because you are trying to fit a 36-hour schedule into a 24-hour day? Do you pass your feelings from another relationship (your spouse or boss) onto your children? Does your mood change unexpectedly and do you blame your children for your bad mood? Do you ever appear to be out of control, especially when angry?

You will create the relationship you want with your children if you live in a climate of love. Here children will conclude that they are separate and unique individuals who have value because parents enjoy, understand and respect them. In this climate children don't have to be a carbon copy to be loved and they are cherished even when their unacceptable behavior has to be limited. Because they have been respected, cherished and genuinely known, your children will choose a loving relationship with you...the best relationship that you can create.