Inside: Discover how to connect with your kids even when your days have been filled with outbursts, tantrums and meltdowns. (Hint: it’s completely counterintuitive)
Brush your teeth for real this time, wear clean socks, and please, for the love of everything, change your underwear.
As a mom, we’re constantly nitpicking, nagging, and reminding our kids to ensure they’re healthy, clean, and the best versions of themselves.
We don’t want to beg them to wear clothes that don’t smell, but it’s part of the mom job.
And we can often forget in the day to day mom chores of feeding our kids, helping with schoolwork, and getting them to wear clothes that aren’t stained, what’s really important.
We want to connect with our kids, share the better moments, and focus on the sweetness of their childhoods.
We want to feel connected to our families.
But sometimes, it’s really hard.
It’s hard to remember to slow down and enjoy our children when they’ve left dirty socks on the kitchen floor, or had a meltdown, or got in trouble at school for something that was out of their control.
But it’s crucial.
And we have to make sure that all of our positive interactions with our kids outweigh the negative ones.
Because we need to make sure they have a childhood they enjoy.
We need to make sure they are part of a family that feels connected to one another.
And we need to make sure that we purposefully stop talking about dirty clothes long enough to take the time to connect with our kids.
Even on the bad days.
Why We Need to Connect With Our Kids, Even On Bad Days
My family is really good at connecting with each other on the “good days.”
We rock this parenting gig when there are no meltdowns, and schoolwork is completed without a fight, and the picky eater tries a new food.
It’s easy to remember to celebrate those good moments and connect both during, and after, those parenting wins.
What’s harder, is finding the connection on the not so good days.
Our family has its fair share of “bad days.”
With my son’s sensory processing issues, we probably have more bad days than most.
And those “bad days” often end with little to no connection with our family. No glimpse of a happier moment. No hope for warm hugs and “I love you” moments.
But on those bad days, the need to connect with each other is even greater.
The need to feel part of a warm and loving family is a necessary reminder that we’ll get through it, we’ll get to the “good days” again and we’ll do it all together.
How to Connect With Your Kids, Even on the Bad Days
So while it’s easy to connect on the good days and set aside quality family time when all is well, we have to purposefully set aside time on the bad days.
In our family, we schedule 4-5 connection activities on random days throughout each month.
And here’s the tricky part…We keep our plans, even if it’s been a bad day.
Especially if it’s been a bad day.
Because we need to turn it around. We need to make the bad day into something more positive.
And we need to remind our kids that while we might not like their behaviors or their choices, we love them. And we still want to spend time with them.
So on good days, we go celebrate the good day.
But when we’ve had a bad day, we go out and celebrate the things we’ve learned that day.
We celebrate that we still love each other.
Which honestly is more valuable to my family and our ability to connect.
Those moments are our time to feel thankful:
- thankful we have each other.
- thankful we know we’ll get through this particular bad day.
- thankful to know we can have these bad days and still be loved.
- thankful to know next time, maybe the bad day won’t be quite so tough on all of us.
- thankful to know that tomorrow is hopefully going to be a better day.
These moments are our time to celebrate our family, for better or worse, on good days and bad.
And because we have open communication and talk about what’s working and what’s not working in our family, our connection times after a bad day are my favorite times to connect.
Simple Family Date to Connect:
One of our favorite ways to connect as a family and spend quality family together is by celebrating “Odd Holidays,” like Pi Day/Pie Day (3.14 so March 14th) and Star Wars Day (May the 4th Be With You) and National Hamburger Day.
This year, we are definitely setting aside time–whether it’s a good day or a bad day at home–to celebrate National Hamburger Day at Culver’s to eat their ButterBurgers.
ButterBurgers are our family’s favorite because the food is always freshly made with 100% Midwest beef. And Culver’s doesn’t start making our dinner until we order it.
So because of that, our family can customize our ButterBurgers exactly how we like to eat it.
Which is perfect for my pickier eaters.
My kids and I can each create our own perfect burger that’s made hot and fresh. We can add lettuce, tomatoes, sweet red onion, bacon, mushrooms, 3 kinds of cheeses and 3 different condiments…or any combination of the choices.
We may all order our burgers differently, but we all agree that the lightly buttered bun is what makes Culver’s hamburgers so incredibly flavorful every time we visit.
And the best part of eating a family dinner at Culver’s?
Since my kids get to order their hamburgers exactly how they want, it leads to fewer complaints and leaves more time for meaningful family dinner conversations.
Plus, I didn’t have to make dinner or clean it up.
It’s like a triple win.
And if you need one more reason to visit Culver’s, you can enter their ButterBurger Believe It Sweepstakes. When you purchase a Value Basket or medium soft drink, you get the chance to win the $25,000 grand prize, $1,000 daily prizes, and more!
Visit ButterBurgerBelieveIt.com and enter the code you’ll find on your cup. Sweepstakes runs from May 7–June 10, 2018
Good day or bad day, it doesn’t really matter.
Either way, we’re eating dinner out tonight at Culver’s, talking about things that really matter and taking the time to connect with each other.
And it’s one more night where I don’t have to remind my kids to pick up dirty socks off the floor.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Culver’s. The opinions and text are all mine.
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