How To Maintain Healthy Family Relationships

By: Esther Lowery

Break Studios Contributing Writer

It is important for every family to learn how to maintain healthy family relationships. Maintaining healthy relationships with a family can affect a family member emotionally, physically, and spiritually. If you expect for your family to be there in a time of need, you have to have developed a relationship with your family. Here are some tips on how to maintain healthy family relationships.

Have a set family dinner time. Try to do this three to four times a week. Since schedules can get hectic, this will probably be impossible to do every night. Discuss current and upcoming events in one another lives and how each other day or week is going. Make sure every family member gets involved in the conversation so that no one feels left out.
Keep an open line of communication. All family members should feel comfortable discussing personal problems and problems among each other without feeling afraid or embarrassed. Keep in mind that you are trying to resolve any family conflicts when discussing problems among each other and not make them worse.
Have family meetings on a weekly or monthly basis. Use this time to have family discussions to work on communication and to possibly solve any problems that need to be dealt with. This can help maintain a healthy family relationship.
Plan family activities and exercise together at least once a week. Family outings or activities whether playing games, going to the movies, bowling, or out to dinner are important to maintain healthy family relationships. Also, try to incorporate weekly exercise with each other to also have good physical health. You can do physical activities such as, walking, biking, or playing a sport.
Have one on one times with your kids. Have an outing with each child at least once a month if possible. Do something that they are interested in doing and that they would consider fun. This is a great time to find out what is going on in your child's life or in their mind, and any problems with friends or relationships that they may be having. Spending one on one time with you kids will make them feel loved, appreciated, needed, and not left out.

Posted on: Nov. 21, 2010

Maintaining Happy Family Relationships

Create a happy family by building close relationships with family members. Foster harmony and loving emotions by positive attitudes of kindness, courtesy, loyalty etc.

Family means relationships. In fact, a family is a connection of relationships. A family is all about relationships. Since relationships are at the heart of all matters, it is vital to maintain happiness in your domestic household.

A happy family practices positive responses to one another. A response that helps, soothes and comforts by virtue of the fact that it is a family member we are interacting with. We remember that family members are the most important people in the world to us. You can change virtually everything in your life but you can't swap your family for another.

To maintain happiness in your family, it is essential to practice good social skills as we are interacting most intimately daily with our family. Courtesy, kindness, loyalty, responsibility, forgiveness and forgetting the wrongs rate the high priorities in a happy family.

All humans thrive on pleasure. Courtesy is the simple pleasure affordable for everyone to give. It costs next to nothing. It gives immeasurable amounts of good relations to family members. It affects emotions, moods and our concepts of a happy family life.

Kindness proliferates in a happy family. Many people forget to be kind to family members. They see the weaknesses and become critical of others. Don't forget that your family is more deserving of acts of kindness and sacrifices form you than your friends. You live with them and need to communicate with them for the rest of your life. Our children learn best by example. We will need their kindness towards us in our old age or times of need.

A happy family is confident of handling tough times. Family loyalty is a valuable asset that will pull the family through testing times. Another instance where loyalty pulls its weight is when one member of the family defends another. Sooner or later, the critic will also be influenced by this positive attitude and his opinion will also change for the better.

A happy family is one that shows responsibility by keeping their promises to one another. A promise is a promise; be it explicitly stated or not. Sometimes, responsibility and keeping promises require great sacrifices. This is the norm expected from family members. You will also like having the confidence that you can depend on somebody's promise because s/he is a responsible person.

To forgive and forget are the hardest things any human can do. We often say we forgive but deep down inside, we bear resentment and grudges against the party for wronged us. This influences our future dealings with that person. Then, a whole lot of negative emotions like anger, jealousy and disagreement will come every time we compare ourselves with that person. There can be no true happiness without truly forgetting others who " trespass against us." Thus, forgetting past wrongs is beneficial to our own happiness.

Maintaining happiness in the family reaps bountiful rewards. Start with the little things and transform your happy into a perpetually happy one.

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