How to Improve Your Family Relationships

Perhaps one of your New Year's Resolutions for this year was to get along better with some member of your family-your mom, your dad, your children, or even your husband. Maybe improving family relationships is something that you wish could happen but feel is hopeless, so you have given up. You could be one of the people whose family relationships are positive. No matter what the situation, we can all use some tips from time to time on making our relationships with family even better-here is a guide to improving them:

1. Improve family relationships by building better communication.
Before you speak, ask yourself if what you are about to say really needs to be said. Try to stop saying critical words, and instead build your family members up with what comes out of your mouth. If you are not having effective communication with your family on a regular basis, see if you can create times where your family can enjoy talking with each other. One good idea is to sit down and have a family dinner a few times a week. Turn off the television more often, and talk to each other instead. Ask your children about their days at school and your spouse about his/her day at work. No relationship can be formed or improved without a normal and positive level of communication.

2. Improve family relationships by not holding grudges.
One of the biggest barriers to positive family relationships is bitterness and grudges over things that have happened in the past. Some adult children are unable to forgive their parents for things that happened years and years ago, even when their parents have asked forgiveness. Do not wait until someone is dying or dead to let go of a grudge you have held from the past-life is too short and precious. Besides, the only one that bitterness hurts in the end is you. Do not waste your life or squander precious time you could spend together with family members by holding grudges.

3. Improve family relationships by spending quality time together.
Go on a family vacation. It does not matter whether you like to camp or stay in a five star motel, the important thing is that you are spending time together, creating memories. Weekly or at least a couple of times a month, take time out to be with your spouse alone and rekindle those romantic fires. Spend quality time with your children-jump in the autumn leaves with them, bake cookies, or even sit with them while they complete a homework assignment. Time is one of our most precious commodities-spend it wisely.

4. Improve family relationships by not "sweating the small stuff".
This is particularly important as a parent-not everything is worth getting upset about. Think twice before you yell over a spilled glass of juice or a stain on the carpeting-will this really matter to you when your children are grown and gone? Is it truly a huge deal if your child eats the icing off the top of his/her cupcake and leaves the rest? Should your spouse's irritating habit of leaving the toilet seat up be such a big problem to you? Not getting upset over the little things of life not only improves your family relationships, it helps you to become less stressed out as well.

The saying goes, "you can choose your friends, but you can not choose your family." This is so true. No matter whether you like them or not, in a sense, you are "stuck" with them. If at all possible, the best thing to do is try to form positive relationships with family members, and work at constantly growing and improving them.