Best friends for life

We’ve just had half term. Its been nice to not have to do the school run and I’ve had my parents stay which has been very helpful. What I’ve really enjoyed is watching Harry and Lucy play together. They really are great friends.

I follow a few different parenting podcasts and one of them is crazy cool family. They have a philosophy that

“the strength of your family will be determined by the strength of your family relationships”

There is what they call a family dashboard which basically is a picture of all the relationships in your family.

Here’s ours...

I’ve found this really helpful especially as a prayer prompt. It makes me focus on particular relationships and nurturing those. The sibling relationships are ones I’ve been a bit more focused on recently especially as Lucy and Sophie have had rocky times! What I’ve taken is the statement that

‘siblings can and should be best friends’

and tried to invest in that.

I think a key thing is encouragement. I saw a quote recently from Care for the family which is another great source of wisdom:

“Wherever you find families where relationships are strong, you will always find the same ingredient, people encourage each other.”

I definitely need reminded of this with Sophie at the moment. I think 2/3 year olds are here to grow our patience but its just trying to find those things that can encourage her like “you are so funny and make me laugh” rather than “stop being so annoying” or “its nice you want to play with Connie” before saying “try not to stand on her head”

I’m trying to encourage the kids to encourage each other and it’s so nice when you hear things like Sophie saying “Harry that picture is amazing”. When I do get those moments of sibling unity I try to take note of them. I take lots of pictures when they are holding hands or hugging and remind them of these when they can’t stand each other!

See it is possible for siblings to be best friends even Lucy and Sophie...

Resources

Crazy cool family (https://www.crazycoolfamily.com/) Crazy cool family basecamp – if you sign up you get access to different courses which basically take each relationship and give tips on how to nurture these (https://basecamp.crazycoolfamily.com/)

Care for the family (https://www.careforthefamily.org.uk/) Check out their kitchen table project for great ideas and tips on faith in the home too (https://kitchentable.org.uk/)