Ten Ways Fathers Model Healthy Relationships for Their Children
By Steven Stosny
Research shows consistently what children know intuitively: Fathers are important.
Children learn how men should behave in relationships by watching their fathers. Even if he does not live with their mother, they are keenly aware of the way he interacts with her.
Most divorce and domestic violence happens to men and women who grew up without a father who was modeling healthy relationship behavior.
Here are 10 tips to help fathers model behavior for the way they want their daughter to be treated in her adult relationships and also the way they want their son to treat the woman he loves.
1. Value their mother: Children value themselves and others more when they feel that their mother and father value one another.
2. Perspective-taking: (seeing things through someone else's eyes): Show your children the importance of respecting the perspectives of people they love, even when they disagree with them.
3. Cooperation: Show how to participate willingly in work, problem-solving, or task-accomplishment.
4. Negotiation: Show your children how to work out solutions to problems that respect one another's perspectives.
5. Motivation to improve: Approach everything, including disagreements, with the attitude of making things better, not worse.
6. Compassion: This gut-level reaction to their mother's pain, discomfort, or anxiety includes sympathy, protectiveness, and willingness to help but not control. It recognizes that their mother is different from you, with her own temperament, set of experiences, beliefs, values, and preferences.
7. Good will: Learning a positive attitude toward the people they love will greatly improve your children's chances of having good relationships as adults.
8. Affection: Showing affection toward their mother makes children feel more secure.
9. Relationship investment: Successful relationships require that people care about - do good things for - one another.
10. Protection: Loved ones support and protect one another.
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Published on June 17, 2011 by Steven Stosny in Anger in the Age of Entitlement which is a blog at PsychologyToday.Com
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement
