How Lego Can Help You Reconnect With Your Teenagers
There are times when as a mother/father you cannot find a healthy way to face challenges with your children and you don’t decide to share what happens to you because you believe that it only happens to you.
I have been working for years with managers, businessmen and professionals with high responsibility and professional dedication. In the first session I always propose to do a “radar” activity that allows you to identify how the important areas of your life are functioning.
It is an activity that makes it easier to observe the level of general balance. It also helps to carry out a brief diagnosis to see how and where we are putting our energy.
Many times, People with high professional responsibility allocate most of their energy to work-related tasks It is normal for it to be like this.
However, throughout these years and after many conversations, I have detected that some of the important problems that most condition the lives of these professionals are related to the family area
Intervening from the family environment
Time and energy are limited, and this means that in many cases the family area does not have all the necessary attention. The next step: criticize yourself and feel guilty for not doing better with your children.
When the children are small, it seems that this deficit in dedication to the family is not transcendental; However, when children reach pre-adolescent age, they begin to appear. some indicators we should pay attention to
Adolescence has a bad press. Socially, this stage is usually seen as a complicated period and on many occasions we talk about this period with prejudices. I am the father of a large family and I know well what happens when children go through that stage of discovery, change, and need for independence. Is a challenging stage for all family members and many questions arise for which we do not always have answers.
It is also true that those people with high professional dedication, after a day of exhausting work, do not have the energy and clairvoyance necessary to face the challenges that arise in family life with adolescent children.
Time and energy
Making all areas of our lives compatible requires attention and dedication. If you don’t find that time and don’t pay the necessary attention, little by little it opens a gap in communication, presence, support An increasingly greater distance from our children than when they become teenagers that leads us to lose that wonderful bond that existed.
Some of my clients, when we investigate the subject, usually ask me: “And now how do I do it? Now how do I get back to the starting point? What can I do to regain closeness, trust and proximity? Sometimes these questions appear many years later and the feeling of guilt invades us.
There are no magic recipes in this regard. The first and most important thing is to start allocating quality time that allows recover the proximity that brings us closer to communication The next step is to promote sincere listening that allows the deepest needs and the feeling of presence to emerge. This can be learned and exercised.
Lego pieces allow us open a channel of communication with the five senses, which enhances generous listening
When we work intentionally with this methodology, mind and hands connect to build our thinking and be able to explain it more clearly. Telling a story, telling my story, brings me closer to others and increases the level of understanding and empathy. Teenagers love stories too.
When I work in Family Coaching sessions with Lego pieces, we play in a oriented way and we get to align family values and we gently identify the toxins that prevent good communication based on respect and trust.
Family Coaching with Lego is based on systemic coaching and, therefore, although the adolescent is the main protagonist and on whom the process focuses, we also work with parents as a fundamental part of the family system.
Expressing emotions cannot be prohibited in the family Recognizing emotions, understanding what happens inside people, helping to manage different situations, is a task that as parents we should not delegate. Normalize and understand to improve relationships.
In family relationships, the most important thing is to strengthen ties to also enhance parental leadership and get our children to trust.
