Once you have analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of your relationships, you will be better able to manage those relationships. As with any aspect of health, managing your relationships means setting long-term goals (such as marriage) and short-term goals (such as finishing college in order to afford marriage), constructing a plan to reach those goals, and revising plans as you change and grow. For many people, goals
include improving relationships with family, making new friends, finding a mate, improving their ability to relate to others, and dealing more successfully with conflict.
Improving Relationships with Family
With planning and work, you can improve your relationships or at least your feelings about your relationships with your parents, brothers and sisters, and kids.
Relationships with Parents
Begin improving your relationship with your parents by forgiving them for any damage they may have done to you in your childhood. Remember they are only human, and probably did the best they could. Chances are you will be a less than flawless parent,too. Don’t expect them to change their behavior toward you. You will always be their son or daughter.But that does not mean that you are still their child. If you want to be treated like an adult by your parents, start with two basic steps:
communicate your needs to them,and break the pattern of acting like a child around them. Ask for advice if you need it, but make it clear that you, as an adult, are responsible for making decisions about your life. Then live up to that
responsibility. If you move back in with your parents because things are not going well, you perpetuate their and possibly your own-view of you as still are a dependent child.
Relationships with Siblings
Although some rivalry is normal and healthy, don’t get so caught up in competing with your siblings that you lose your own identity. Don’t make older siblings idols whose every action must be imitated. You have unique talents,
interests, and needs of your own.Very competitive sibling may benefit from going to separate schools or engaging in separate activities that allow them to develop as individuals.
Relationships with children
Improving your parenting skills is a
lifelong task. Indeed, one of the hardest aspects of parenting is the need to keep changing skills as your children grow. To meet your infant’s smallest need but later allow teens to make more decisions (and take the responsibility for them), you must develop a strong base of stability within yourself while still remaining flexible and open minded
