How to build strong parent-child bonds

A strong parent-child relationship is key to helping children with learning disabilities succeed. Building this bond takes time, patience, and being open with each other. And when done thoughtfully, it can make a huge difference in a child’s life.

In this episode, we talk to clinical psychologist Dr. Kristin Carothers. She discusses how building trust can improve a child’s behavior and emotional well-being. Tune in to get tips on building a strong bond with your child and learn how to create a supportive home environment to help them succeed.

We love to hear from our listeners. Email us at opportunitygap@understood.org.

Related resources

• ADHD parenting tips from a Black clinical psychologist

• How to get your child to talk about school

Timestamps

(01:46) Why building strong parent-child bonds is important

(09:02) How to create open lines of communication with kids

Episode transcript

Julian: One of the most powerful tools in helping kids with learning disabilities thrive is not found in the classroom or in a therapy session. It's found at home, their relationship with you, their parents. But building trust and understanding doesn't happen overnight, and it can be really, really tough.

OG, what's going on, family? Welcome to a new episode of the "Opportunity Gap." I'm your host, Julian. Today, we're exploring how to create that supportive foundation between parent and child. And who better to join us than the OG of the OG, Dr. Kristin Carothers.

Kristin: Aww.

Julian: What's up, Dr. Kristin?

Kristin: Hello, thank you for having me Julian. I love being on the "Opportunity Gap."

Julian: Of course, I feel like we have like a Sally Jesse Raphael like Phil Donahue thing going on.

Kristin: They don't even know who those people are.

Julian: The parents do.

Kristin: The parents do. The parents, that's right.

Julian: Maybe, maybe like Ricky Lake.

Kristin: Ricky Lake. Jerry Springer, yes, all of those.

Julian: Remember Richard Bay?

Kristin: Now, I don't know Richard Bay, but I know Ricky Lake in Chicago came on every day at about 3:30. So, I got home from school just in time to watch.

Julian: Same, same. See, I'm right there with you.

Kristin: Yes.

Julian: So, we got a little talk show host thing going on. But I'm excited that you're back because this is really something that I think your expertise is something we can lean on. And it's important for families to know some steps for what to do.

Kristin: Yes.

Julian: So, let's get into it. Dr. Kristin, in your opinion, why is it so important for parents and parenting adults to build strong, supportive relationships with their kids?

(01:46) Why building strong parent-child bonds is important

Kristin: I think the reason it's really important that parents and parenting adults build strong, supportive relationships with their kids because the relationship, the parent-child relationship, the parent-child bond is the foundation for growth. It's the foundation for life, right? So, parents, from a psychological perspective, parents are supposed to be what we call the secure base.

So, think about maybe being like a baby bird leaving a nest. You have to be able to come back to the nest and know that when you come back, there will always be warmth, there will be the opportunity to get food, that there's gonna be space for you, and that your parent has the capacity to care for you when you've made a mistake or you don't know how to do something; they're there to teach.

Julian: Right.

Kristin: And so, it's really important that parents are able to do some things that allow kids to be to go off and explore, return and get nurturing, support, correction. Go off and explore. Return, get support, nurturing, correction.

Julian: Got it. So, like a little bit at a time, right? Like not giving them everything at once, but having that thing to fall back on and say, "If I make a mistake, I can always come back where it's comfortable."

Kristin: Yes. And knowing that there will be natural consequences for mistakes. So, parents don't always have to necessarily provide a disciplinary practice or tactic, but what parents do provide is a boundary, right? A boundary and information about why the boundary is created so that kids know, "OK, my parent is teaching me this, giving me this instruction because they love me and they want me to do well. It's not just to try to control me or to try and make me do what they want me to do, but it's because they're trying to teach me how to live a life that's worth living."

Julian: I mean, all of us were kids at some point, all of us had different relationships with the adults in our lives, and you know, it's obvious. We want to have a strong relationship with our kids, right? We know that.

Kristin: Yes.

Julian: But it's one thing to say it, it is another thing to do it. I'll think about myself, I talk about how I have two kids, my son is 10, my daughter is 9, and there were points where it was monotonous, right? You're just... in the grind. And as they get older, and those of you that are teenage parents, you probably know better than I do, it's hard, right? Like they're starting to feel who they are and they're started to have their own opinions about things. And there's some times where we love each other, but we don't like each other.

Talk us through, you know, what are some of the challenges that families like mine or families like yours they might have when trying to build a strong relationship that's gonna last?

Kristin: OK, I like that. So, this concept of loving each other but having periods where we don't necessarily like each other. I think if we look at what's going on behind the scenes that may cause us to be in these situations where we love our kids but we may not necessarily like them or they don't like us could be related to like some parenting stress.

Julian: Yeah.

Kristin: And I think it's really important that parents be honest about the fact that they are stressed from various sources in their lives. They've got work stress, they've got relationship stress. They may have their own parenting relationships or family relationships that they're trying to manage. They might be financial stressors, emotional traumas that they are trying to work through. And if they have a child who presents with a different personality type, or a child, who seems to question every decision and need lots of feedback, or a a child that's difficult to manage or requires a lot of energy, that can be exhausting. And when you're stressed and when you are exhausted, you're more likely to not be kind.

And so, you get into what's called like a coercive cycle of interaction. So, what happens is you start engaging in a lot of coercive practices to try to get your kid to do what you need them to do because you're stressed, you're low on time and you're really low on emotional reserve. And what happens once you and that kid get into that kind of coercion cycle where you're threatening them to get them to what you want them to, they are tantruming or acting out to get their needs met, you find like, "I just don't want to be around them. I'm dreading going home. Ugh, it's gonna be so loud, I just need quiet."

Julian: Families, does that sound familiar? Definitely sounds familiar to me. "If you don't put that down, we're taking the Nintendo Switch away."

Kristin: Right, all these threats, and then you got to go someplace and you got to give them back the Nintendo Switch because you need them to be occupied. And so, I think parents have to first kind of stop and check in, one, about how they were parented, right? What type of models of parenting did they have? Because your model is going to influence how you provide warmth and support.

So, typically people go to one or two extremes. If I enjoyed the model, I'm going to stick to it. I'm gonna try to do what they did. if I didn't enjoy the model. I may unwittingly still behave in ways that that model behaved towards me, or I'm going to go all the way left field and be totally different than that model. What we want to remember is balance and that we are parenting at a different time than our parents parented us.

Julian: Wait, can I pause you for a second? You gotta say that one more time. That's a word, that's a line. Say that one more time

Kristin: We're parenting at a different time than our parents parented us.

Julian: Yes.

Kristin: Because you can feel judged when you talk to, or you provide certain structure or warm support for your children that is dissimilar to what was provided for you, or that looks a little bit different. And another generation may question the way that you do things, and I think it's really important to remember some of the stuff that they had was really great and we could bring it to now. And some of it is not going to apply as well. We're raising different children. These are technology natives. They're different.

Julian: You know, you and I, you know, we grew up with Black mothers and there's also a part of that, that for me, you now, my mother, she was a single mom, my father passed away when we were young, and she parented to the best of her ability and she did an amazing job. She put in the work, the way that she parent it was very focused on independence and survival, right? And so, those are in values that have been invested in me now as a father.

But I'm not a single parent, right? And I'm growing up in a very different environment with my children, as in I'm going up as a father while I'm raising my own children. You know what I mean?

Kristin: Yes.

Julian: So, and I think a lot of people are in a similar situation, especially Black folks, where we are coming up in different time than our parents did. And how we go about communication, how we about creating environments with our children is different. It's a very different thing from your opinion as a professional, thinking about the idea of open communication with your child. How do you go about doing that? What are some things that we can do to start opening that line of communication with those children?

(09:02) How to create open lines of communication with kids

Kristin: I think when we first approach open communication, we've always got to be aware of like, what is developmentally appropriate for your children. And if you're parenting children of different ages, there's going to be some information that's appropriate for an older child that's not appropriate for a younger child. That's number one. The second part is boundaried open communication. So, I'm going to keep talking about like boundaries and still being able to communicate. Is really important, when I talk about boundaries, parents, it's good for you to share information with your children if the function of your sharing is to educate, inform, to soothe, right?

But if the of your communication is to get your kids to take care of you or to side with you or to protect you, then you wanna be wary of the information you share. So, open communication is important because it teaches our kids to be willing to talk to us when we're trying to enter their worlds. So, there will come a point where it will be our children's choice to let us in.

And if we haven't already established having family communication, having dinners, talking on the way to school, just sitting and chitchatting and watching movies together with screens down, just having random conversations, then over time our kids may believe that having conversations with us is not important or that it's just not something you do and they may become overreliant on their phones, social media, and friends.

Julian: Let's talk about that word friend. Do you think families should seek out to be friends with their children?

Kristin: I think we should think about how we do things with adults, right? So, the minute you meet somebody, they're not automatically your friend, right?

Julian: Right.

Kristin: There's a process that occurs where you learn to trust that person, you learn that you have things in common, you spend time together, they share things with you, you share things them, and then eventually a friendship develops. With children, eventually, a friendship will develop. But starting off, you are not necessarily in a friendship with your children. Your role changes over time.

So, when you've got an infant, you're not a friend to an infant. You're a caregiver to an infant. You're protector of an infant. When you got a toddler, you're a caregiver, a protector, a teacher. When you got school age kid, you're protector, teacher, right? When you've a teenage kid, you wanna start to kind of be a confidant. And I would even argue that school age, ,you want them to be able to confide in you. You want to feel that they can trust you, that they could tell you things and you won't share with other people. That they will go out and you won't always be able protect them, but that they'll return and be willing to talk.

As they go into adulthood, that's when you are on the same level, right? You're not on the level with your kids during infancy, toddler ages, school age, high school age. They can't, their brains are not even developed until they're 25. And if you're thinking about a kid with learning and thinking differences, they have lots of different information that they're trying to process. They need you to be able to set that structure and those limits that they are not able to set for themselves. So, friends are typically parallel. They're on the same level. I would argue that prior to a certain age, children are not to provide that type of support for their parents and they shouldn't have to.

Julian: Right. Learning and thinking differences impact the way that children know how to socialize. So many of the things that we do at home is modeling for what it looks like out in the real world. So, can you talk a little bit more about how the relationship between a parent and child prepares a child, especially a child with learning and thinking differences, to go out to the world and socialize themselves?

Kristin: Absolutely. There's something that many of us have not been taught to do and did not grow up doing with our parents, that's really important from an early age, and that's play.

Julian: OK.

Kristin: Special time, play time, five minutes of special time with a parent is an, like we say it's a dose of medicine for ADHD when it's done the correct way or dose of medicine for oppositional behaviors. You're spending five minutes with a child in a preferred activity that doesn't have rules. So, you're building LEGOS, you are drawing, you're using modeling clay. You are following along behind them in their play and catching them when they make statements that you like by just saying, "Oh, that was really interesting." So, that's giving positive specific praise by reflecting back their appropriate speech. "I just heard you say this."

That makes sure that they know that you are listening to them and it increases their speech. That you describe their appropriate behavior during the play, it teaches them, "Oh, this is what people like. This is what will keep them playing with me longer." If you've got a kid that struggles with learning and thinking differences, it's really important, even for kids who are not, to engage in play.

So, if you can't play, you don't like playing, then what do you do that's quality, high-quality time where there's not punitive commands, corrections, instructions, where it's just us together. So, I'm not saying like teaching tennis because sometimes when parents teach a skill they can be punitive. But it's we're going out to run together. We're going for a walk together. We're gonna take the dog out. We gonna go grocery shop for somebody who needs us to help them. These activities that you do together that don't require you to give lots of commands, lots of criticism, but just allow your child to enjoy being with you.

Julian: And so, families out there, you know, Dr. Kristin and I are saying to you, the more that you just spend time, that's what counts, right? And obviously there's structure that has to be involved, but some of it is just taking time. And it's OK if your children are not doing something that is planned. They just need to have some time with you and they need to see the modeling that's happened.

Kristin: Yes. And we've got to put our phones down sometimes. We are like as hooked on these screens as they are. And sometimes kids will have to do a lot to get our attention because we are so focused on our social lives or social media and or even like our friends. And so, being very deliberate about the time you have with your kids. So, one of my struggles has been as a mom learning that I can't talk to friends on the phone or do social media once I get my son home from school. We only have two hours and I've got to look at homework, we got to do bath, we have to eat. There's all of these things, and then we need to talk and like hang out.

But if I'm focused on other people and other things and I'm not fully present with him and then the message that that sends is that maybe he's not important. And so, yes, he understands that I have a job and there are times when I do have to focus on other things other than him. But I also wanna make sure that there's some space created so that should he have a need or wanna talk that he knows we have time.

Julian: You know sounds similar to what we do here in the Saavedra household. Thinking about practical steps that families can do, again, this is a big open question, but we're talking to a doctor.

Kristin: Yeah.

Julian: And so, let's see what the doctor says about how we can do this.

Kristin: OK.

Julian: How do you nurture a positive understanding and empowering environment at home? What are some specific things that families should do to start this process of building this environment at the house?

Kristin: I think, I always go structure and routine. If you want something to happen, you've got to be like really deliberate about it. The first thing that came to my brain was something that we say to kids in like the high-conflict, co-parenting, separation, divorce world, which is you have voice, not choice. I think it's really important to teach kids how to have a respectful voice and to speak their mind.

Julian: OK.

Kristin: But in a way that is respectful and appropriate. It is OK to have an opinion that's dissimilar than mine. It is OK to have thoughts that are different. We are not the same people. But as my grandmother used to say, it's not what you say, it's how you say it.

And so, in having regular conversations with your kids about topics that are in the news, things that they hear on the radio, songs that come on, the Roblox games that they're playing, the other ways that they're engaged, just asking them to teach you about those things, being interested in them, letting them show you things, first sets the stage that my parent will allow me to tell them about my world. They're not just always trying to teach me something.

Julian: And I love that you described active listening. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what it is. You're making sure that you're zeroed in on the child and knowing that they feel heard, and especially for our children with ADHD.

Kristin: Yes.

Julian: And I think for families, carving out some time to have a very specific focus on what the child wants to do, whether it be five minutes, whether it'd be, like you said, "You got 20 minutes to watch this Transformers movie with me?" and that's it. Or whether it be an entire day just dedicated to things that they want to do, those over time are how you build relationships, right? It's not just an overnight thing. But it's not rocket science, right? It's just making the time and the effort to do it.

Kristin: Absolutely. And I just got the feedback that I ask too many questions. It was like, "Sheesh, would you back up?" Like, do we have to? But me, as like, psychologist, mother, who is wanting to make sure that all things are OK.

Julian: Yeah, it comes with the territory.

Kristin: Yeah, sometimes you can go a little bit overboard. So, if you're an anxious parent who goes a little overboard, it's like, relax. Like, let them come to you. Don't always assume the worst. You don't have to ask a million questions. Maybe sometimes share what your day was like. Give them some information about you and let them comment on that. And then naturally they may share information about their day.

Julian: Yeah, I mean, I have my top three questions.

Kristin: What are they?

Julian: You know, we... so the kids, they know that it's gonna be mom or dad, one of us is going to ask, but we always keep the open end and say, "Tell me about your day," just open-ended. Not "Was it good?" Cause a lot of parents go right to "Did you have a good day? Did you have a good day?" and that qualifies. Because then the child feels like they got a pressure to say the day was good, and if it wasn't, they're not going to tell you if it wasn't good. And then my second one that this is credit to my wife, she says, "Tell me who you played with at recess."

And the reason we want names, we want to know like, so that forces the child to think about who did I hang out with? Who was the person that I was with? Or who, and then that opens up, "Oh, I played with this person" or "We did this" or "We did that." And you get a whole gobble group of information just from that one question.

And then the third one, is there a challenge that you faced today? And that's where we open up, and I'll tell them all about the mess I'm dealing with at school or my wife tells them about the mess that she might be dealing with traffic or whatever else. And that where the kids start sharing these are some problems that are happening. So, those are the three and sometimes we get all of it and sometimes you get nothing. Sometimes we just say, "All right, we'll try again later on."

But I think the questions have become, as you said, a routine. It's something that they know to expect. And it's opened up that conversation where hopefully they'll remember their mom and dad were always interested to hear what's going on in their lives.

Kristin: Yes, I love that. My mom used to say every morning, "What's on tap?" Then that meant like, what is the plan for the day? What do you have coming up at school? What I say when I pick up my son, like, "Well, tell me something surprising. Did anything interesting happen?" And that's not open ended. That's a yes, no. But, you know, I love to hear classroom stories. So, now I'm getting some of the information about what happens in the classroom or if the teacher said something funny, what happened? You know, yourself. Just showing interest.

Julian: Dr. Kristin, the OG of the OG.

Kristin: Aww thanks.

Julian: Always here to give us the hits and the information that we need. And so, I just wanted to, again, say thank you so much for coming and talking with us and sharing your expertise, sharing your family with us, and hearing about your son and all the fun that y'all do with your 20-minute movie times and making popcorn.

Kristin: I couldn't not stay, I can't focus in like a Infinity War. What is it called? Avengers Infinity War?

Julian: Don't do that, that is one of the best movies that is ever, please. It is called Infinity War, it is fantastic.

Kristin: I try really hard, but my focus, my attention span is not there, and so. But I'm going to do better.

Julian: So, that wraps our episode for today. Please be sure to check out some additional resources from today's episode on our show page on Understood.org. Until next time, family! We will talk to you soon.

Thanks so much for listening today. We love hearing from our listeners. So, if you have any thoughts about today's episodes, you can email us at opportunitygap@understood.org, and be sure and check out the show notes for links and resources to anything we mentioned in the episode.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia.

The "Opportunity Gap" is produced by The Tara Drinks and edited by Daniela Tello-Garzon. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Ash Beecher is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. Thanks again for listening.