As your child reaches the tween stage, building an even stronger relationship becomes even more essential to maintaining the bond shared by parent and child.

A good relationship has several factors and these include trust, communication, security, protection and love. With a foundation built on these powerful qualities, a great relationship with your tween becomes less complex and enjoyable.

With your guidance, your tween can also create and establish their own friendships and relationship outside of the family. Bear in mind that as a parent, your tween looks to you as their teacher and the quality of all their other relationships stem from the emotional and social development you have equipped them with.

Boundaries

Your tween must understand that there are clear boundaries between the two of you. You are the parent and in charge of the household. You both respect each other and their feelings are taken into consideration however, you have the final word in the house and they need to adhere to the rules that you have set out.

Understanding
Explain to your tween that having a relationship where there is understanding is important and you will listen to their concerns however, as their parent you are here to provide strong moral leadership. This leadership will prepare them to become responsible, independent and well-functioning adults.

Honesty
For any relationship to work, there must be honesty. This also means that deceit and intentionally misleading one is a no go. As the parent, practise what you preach and be completely transparent with your child. That way they can rely on you to be truthful and this paves the way for them to also tell you the truth.

Encouragement
Your tween will make mistakes. That is human. Teach them to fail forward, so each time a mistake happens they should look at what went wrong and resolve to do better next time, not repeating the same mistake again.

Self-expression
Urge your tween to speak out and voice their opinions. Ask them questions and prompt them to share their feelings without being pushy. Independent thinking should be encouraged in your home while clear guidelines about respect and appreciation for self-expression is made clear.

Not sure if you are raising a tween? Take a look at how you will know your child has reached the tween stage below:

• Starts to become more self-aware and questions their role in the family
• Notices how you treat their siblings and may tend to draw comparisons
• May ask to start spending time alone in their room
• Gives you attitude over stuff that’s never been an issue before.
• Refuses to do what you ask.
• Starts questioning authority and phrases like “you are not the boss of me’’ may be said
• Starts having a robust social life and may request to have a cellphone or to have a social media account
• Back chats
• Slams doors, screams or cries regularly.