Improving Your Family Relationships
by Peter Benson, MA, LMFT

As a parent, I often wonder what more I could do. What more could we do to improve relationships with my spouse and my children? What more could I do to aid my children in their development, helping them become well adjusted, contributing adults? What more could I do to improve our life as a family? With the help of Dr. Gary Chapman, I have found a small but intentional principle that just may be the answer. An attitude of service.

How Do You Do It?

You might ask, how will this improve my family relationships and how do I do it? Dr. Chapman (author of 5 Love Languages) shares the following insight into these questions:

An attitude of service is far more than getting [the family] work done. In a healthy family members have the sense that as I do something for the benefit of other family members, I am doing something genuinely good … A healthy family develops an attitude of service to each other and the world outside the walls of the family’s home.

Seek To Do Something Kind

As you seek to do something kind for your family, not for any reward but because we genuinely love them, there begins to develop an increased sense of love, appreciation, and togetherness. Does this seem too easy? Give it a try. I promise as you serve with sincere love with no expectation of return, your relationships will begin to change for the better!

How do I help my children do the same thing? After all, Dr. Chapman said “healthy families develop an attitude of service” not just one parent or the other.

I have discovered my children are natural helpers (except for when it comes to cleaning the toy room), it is just innate. Today, my father-in-law went out to cut and split some wood for his wood burning stove. Before long, my daughters were out there helping move the wood and running the splitter. Neither my partner nor I pushed them out the door, they wanted to “help Papa” with his project.