Strengthening the parent-child relationship by sharing emotions

Our family relationships are both beautiful and challenging. At the same time. :)

It's especially true of the relationship with the kids. We take care of them, we are a guide for them, we bring them up to live in the world. We offer advice and consolation.

Parents all over the world care about that - of course! - but the world around us is rushing: we have our work obligations, tasks around the home, bills to pay, our ambitions and dreams. More often than not, we need to stop and devote one hundred percent of our time to our kids. If it's not 100%, it will not be quality time. 

Since our daughter Helen went to school, we noticed that there is less and less time for this "100% family-spent time". And there will be less and less of it as time passes, until the point when our kids will fly out of the nest.

Children grow up, get to know the world and meet new people. We won't even notice when childhood is over and our kid leaves home. That's why it's important to be mindful and to celebrate the moments that we have with our kids now: bike ride to school together, a trip to the playground, a family dinner. 

We like those moments when we sit down together at the table or on the floor. We take the Journal of Emotional Bond, crayons, pens and we begin our conversation. We talk about our day, about our feelings, we recall the emotions we felt and how was our day.

Storytelling by drawing is a great tool for our daughter to open up and start talking to us. We can also see how curious she is about what we have to tell her.

Was I happy that day? Has anything made me sad? What happened? How I dealt with it. 

Our daughter's favourite part of working with the journal is the colouring of the feeling-symbolizing "coolkas".

Children like to talk about their emotions. It is important to them. They feel connected and loved when they do it.

Since we record our emotions and the events from our days in the journal, it is easier for us to talk about them. It is easier for us to catch shared moments and keep them on paper.

We describe our life and our memories together and we keep them stored in the journal as memories for the future - it will be so fun to open the journals in 10 years and see how we felt, what were our challenges at the time and how we overcame them.