Are you not as close to your family as you’d like to be? Do you look at other families and wish that your family enjoyed each other’s company as much as they seem to? Do you have a lot of conflict in your family?Well the good news is, it’s not too late to strengthen our family bonds. And the first place to start is with ourselves. Working on improving our own wellbeing helps others with their wellbeing and can boost our relationships. The main reasons why working on our well-being does this are:- Happiness is contagious. Evidence shows, our happiness spreads 3 degrees of separation in our social circles. And what is one of our closest social circles? Our families! Smiling and laughing are linked with people in our lives feeling good too. - Happiness helps with social bonding. Research shows happy people tend to engage more with others, have less conflict in their lives and do kinder things. - If we have good well-being, our partners and ourselves are often healthier and even live longer, which means we have more energy and time to spend with our loved ones. - Happiness affects how we care for and engage with problems in our community and the world, which gives us meaning in our lives.

Here are 8 tips you can try.

1. Share positive things that happen to you with your loved ones. When we do this we foster a positive mood and improve our wellbeing. 2. Practise Active Constructive Responding to your partner when they share something great that happened to them. This builds relationships. 3. Let them see you expressing and regulating your feelings, being resilient and empathising with others. We know it’s often what we do more than what we say.4. Help them to listen and communicate with respect. 5. Share moments of positive resonance with your partner. These are those lovely rushes of warmth we get when having a good time with them.
6. Listen to music with your children. This helps their emotional regulation and helps us to bond with them. 7. Allow your children to express their big feelings. Listen to them with empathy and validate them.8. Take an online parenting course. These have been found to be effective in teaching parenting skills. A wonderful example of online courses is the Positive Parenting Program. Some of these courses are free.
Active Constructive Responding. I’d like to explain Active Constructive Responding to you because I've tried it and it has really helped me to strengthen my relationships. Science shows us when our partners respond to our positive events actively and constructively, we are more likely to see our relationships as strong than when they support us in times of need. Martin Seligman explains this very well in the video on this webpage. It's helpful to see what ACR is and what it isn't. This is what actively and constructively responding IS; We go out of our way to celebrate our partner’s success with what we say and with our body language. We stop what we are doing, look at them with a genuine smile, laugh or touch, tell them we know why it’s so important to them and ask them details so they can relive that wonderful moment.
This is what actively and constructively responding is NOT:-We tell them that we are happy for them but our body language or tone of voice doesn’t look and sound very supportive. (Passive Constructive) -We tell them that it’s bad news, explaining all of the reasons, and display negative body language. (Active Destructive) -We talk about something unrelated, ignoring their message, turning away or leaving the room. (Passive Destructive)
(Seligman, 2013)
References Borelli, J., & Doan, S. (2022). Six ways To Respond To Your Kid's Big Feelings. Greater Good Magazine Science- Based Insights For A Meaningful Life. Retrieved 28 May 2022, from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_ways_to_respond_to_your_kids_big_feelings. Diener, E., & Seligman, M. (2022). Very Happy People. Psychological Science, 13(1). Retrieved 28 May 2022, from http://file:///C:/Users/08746089/Desktop/study/Building%20Wellbeing%20and%20Resilience%20interconnected%20Factors/assessment%202/family%20wellbeing/1467-9280.00415Research%20Report.pdf. Flujas-Contreras, J., García-Palacios, A., & Gómez, I. (2019). Technology-based parenting interventions for children's physical and psychological health: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 49(11), 1787-1798. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0033291719000692 Fowler, J., & Christakis, N. (2008). Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. BMJ, 337(dec04 2), a2338-a2338. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.a2338 Gable, S., Gonzaga, G., & Strachman, A. (2006). Will you be there for me when things go right? Supportive responses to positive event disclosures. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 91(5), 904-917. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.904 Listening together can bring joy, calm, and connection. (2022). [Blog]. Retrieved 28 May 2022, from https://www.triplep-parenting.net.au/vic-uken/blog-and-more/blogs-and-news/post/listening-together-can-bring-joy-calm-and-connection/. Seligman, M. (2013). Active& Constructive Responding [Video]. Youtube; reflectivehappiness.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU3y2ApnG7Y Stavrova, O. (2019). Having a Happy Spouse Is Associated With Lowered Risk of Mortality. Psychological Science, 30(5), 798-803. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619835147 Suttie, J. (2020). Why Taking Care of Your Own Well-Being Helps Others. Greater Good Magazine Science- Based Insights For A Meaningful Life. Retrieved 27 May 2022, from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_taking_care_of_your_own_well_being_helps_others. The right kind of parent-child conversations can boost children's confidence and school success. (2022). [Blog]. Retrieved 28 May 2022, from https://www.triplep-parenting.net.au/vic-uken/blog-and-more/blogs-and-news/post/the-right-kind-of-parent-child-conversations-can-boost-children-s-confidence-and-school-success/. Triple P positive parenting | what is it & how can it help? - Online Parenting Programme | Triple P. Triplep-parenting.net.au. (2022). Retrieved 28 May 2022, from https://www.triplep-parenting.net.au/vic-uken/about-triple-p/what-is-triple-p/. Wood, A., Rychlowska, M., Korb, S., & Niedenthal, P. (2016). Fashioning the Face: Sensorimotor Simulation Contributes to Facial Expression Recognition. Trends In Cognitive Sciences, 20(3), 227-240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.12.010