Successful Relationships

And how to avoid falling into them.

Walter Winchell
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

Anonymous
To have a good friend is one of the highest delights in life; to be a good friend is one of the noblest and most difficult undertakings.

How true is this!
A good friend is one of best treasures in life, yet at the same time to be a good friend is not always that easy.

We have already looked at some of the attributes of character that will contribute towards creating and maintaining a solid friendship.

Remember, we mentioned

Trust – respect – value – forgiveness and love.

There are also some things you need to avoid doing if you want your friendship to remain strong and solid.

Today in a celebration of Father’s Day weekend, President Barack Obama called upon fathers to be teachers and mentors. This does not mean you have to be a perfect father he stated, just one who cares and tries.

Your children will probably rate you as their perfect father if you simply do these three things:

Be involved with your children as they grow up.
Don’t leave everything to your wife. There will be times when you may need to make some sacrifices in your own agenda, but these adjustments will pay off greatly for the rest of your lives.

There are many memories that you can create in your children that they will carry into adulthood. They will become better adults just because Mum AND Dad were both involved with:

Two major keys to any successful relationship is love and communication. One expression of love is to show a genuine desire to communicate with the person.

When both love and communication are present in a relationship any problem can be worked out.

When some parents face difficulties with their teenagers that seem impossible to solve, they tend to take the “easy way out” and simply ignore their teen. I am sure you have heard of the theory “if I ignore it, it will go away”. This is so often the human way of coping with many situations that are difficult to handle.

However, in actual fact ignoring a problem does not solve anything, but rather it allows time for any unresolved emotional reactions to go deeper and fester.

There will be added difficulties if communication difficulties existed with your teenager when he or she was a small child. But be encouraged, it is not impossible to restore your relationship with your teen to become a successful one. It will take some time, patience and a determination to win. But always expect the best, and you WILL win!

A few days ago there was a period of slack time at work and so I took advantage of this time to ask some questions of my young co-workers who are fresh out of their teens. I decided it would be an interesting exercise to get some ideas from their perspective on their ideal relationship between teens and their parents.

They were eager to answer the questions I had for them. In fact I noticed that they enjoyed their participation in this project. I am thankful too for their input.

Teenage years can be difficult even traumatic for both the youngsters and their parents, but they don’t have to be.