If you were to put me in an arm lock and demand that I tell you THE MOST EFFECTIVE #1 WAY for you to strengthen the relationships between you and your children, I would have to say, “Ouch! OK, Spend one-on-one time with each child.”

Even though you made me confess under duress, I will still argue that this is the best thing you can do to meet your children’s need for a sense of belonging and a sense of personal power.

Your children need your exclusive, undivided attention. Let me list the ideal way to use this principle:

1. Spend at least 15 minutes
2. With each child (one child at a time)
3. Every day
4. Doing what the child enjoys doing

Allow me to expand on this a little.

1. Your child gets you all to himself without having to share you with anybody; no competition from anyone or anything else. He is treated more importantly than your cell phone or any other distraction. He gets 100% of your attention. If yours is a 2-parent family, he gets to spend time with each of you at different times during the day.

2. If you have more than one child, then each child gets to enjoy spending one-on-one time with you.

3. This happens every day so the experience accumulates over time until you have done it for a week, then a month, then a year, then many years.

4. The child has fun doing what he likes to do with you: his favorite guy in the whole world. 

Imagine that your child has two baskets, one to hold a sense of belonging and the other to hold a sense of personal power. If the contents of those baskets are not replenished throughout the day, the contents will diminish until the baskets becomes empty.

If you don’t fill those baskets, your child will have to. If your child has to fill them, she will do it the only way he knows how, and in ways you will not like.

She will fill her sense-of-belonging-basket by doing things that will get your attention. That might include interrupting, teasing, throwing tantrums, whining and getting into mischief – any kind of attention-getting behavior. Her need for a sense of belonging is that strong. She cannot go very long with an empty basket. What we call misbehavior is her way of saying, “If you won’t fill my basket, then I’m going to have to.”

When your child does something that makes you feel annoyed, irritated, bothered or interrupted, that is your child trying to fill her sense-of-belonging-basket. That is a warning sign that her basket is getting low and needs to be filled. The longer the basket is on low, the worse the behavior will become.

Your child will fill her sense-of-personal-power-basket by doing things that make her feel independent and powerful. That would include saying “no”, acts of defiance, and ignoring – any kind of behavior that would give her a sense of power and independence.

This usually leads to power struggles where children refuse to obey, and parents try to control them with threats and punishments: “You’ll do as I say.” “No, I won’t.” “Yes, you will.” You can’t make me.” “Oh, you wanna bet?” Power struggles never end well.

Imagine what power a child must feel knowing she can make dad angry anytime she wants by doing something dad disapproves of. She learns how to push dad’s buttons. She takes pleasure in ignoring requests in order to get a predictable angry reaction from dad. It’s how kids get their own “power fix”.

When your child does something that makes you feel angry, provoked, and like you want to punish the child and teach her a lesson she’ll never forget, that is your child trying to fill her sense-of-personal-power-basket. That is a warning sign that her basket is getting low and needs to be filled. The longer the basket is on low, the worse the behavior will become.

If you want behavior to be the best it can be, you must fill both baskets daily. Dads who don’t know about their children’s baskets deal with more misbehavior than they have to.

If you have more than one child, then you have your work cut out for you. You have children whose baskets need filling every day, throughout the day, or they will compete for your attention by intensifying their attention-getting behaviors, and try to feel independent with acts of defiance.

Finding Time

Okay, let’s get real for a minute. Sometimes it’s just not practical to spend 15 minutes with each of your children every day. I have 6 children, so that meant 90 minutes every day. I couldn’t do that. So I just did the best I could.

So, my advice to you:  just do the best you can.

But keep in mind, your children’s baskets need to be filled regularly. Don’t let your children run on empty for very long.