Tips to help your child always feel loved when they are not around their parents

Young children are very attached to their parents and want to be with them as much as possible. Research has shown that children who experience high levels of stress at school and kindergarten are more likely to be separated from their parents – which can have a negative impact on their brains. However, this can be improved if parents know what to do.

Clinical psychologist Deborah MacNamara talks about the importance of attachment between parents and relatives for a child. This is extremely necessary to shape the child's personality. Deborah gives 3 simple rules to help children always feel loved when their parents are not around.

1. Get the child's attention

Focus is one way Deborah mentioned to increase the bond between parents and children. With this, you can give your child a warm connection. To do this, you need to make eye contact with your child and get close to them.

Or approach your child, join in on the games they're playing, ask them how their day went... Over time, this will help you build a warmer, closer, more meaningful relationship with your child.

2. Build your child's communication circle

Parents cannot spend 100% of their time with their children. Instead, parents can create a circle of friends around their children - which indirectly helps develop the parent-child relationship. This means building trusting relationships between your children and people you can trust with them.

Shyness is a natural instinct of children, so sometimes, they will not be ready to open up to building relationships with people who are not attached to them. Therefore, the way to overcome this obstacle is a friendly and warm introduction - it helps children activate the "friendship" mode with the other person. The introduction can be done as follows:

- Be proactive: Parents should introduce their children to people they want them to be closer to. This helps children understand that their parents accept this relationship and at the same time, parents can maintain their primary role with their children.

- Find commonalities: Another way for a child to feel connected to another person is through commonalities. To do this, parents can mention the child's appearance, interests, experiences, or concerns that the other person shares.

- Maintain a sense of trust and communication between adults: Children tend to imitate their parents' attitudes towards other adults. When a child sees that his or her parents are confident and act well when communicating, the child is likely to do the same when interacting with others.

- Maintain a hierarchy of people around: No matter how large a child's social circle is, parents should always take the lead. To do that, parents should be clear when explaining to their children who they should approach if they need help in an emergency.

- Create routines and strengthen connections: This is a way to make the surrounding environment safer and more understandable for a child; at the same time, it helps the child feel confident.

For example, if you always do an action every day when leaving the house and picking up your child from school, it will help maintain a good attitude towards the environment in general and towards the teacher in particular. It could be a greeting, a hug, a kiss or a conversation about evening plans.

3. Create a connection between you and your child when you are apart

Children always find it difficult to be separated from their parents, especially children under 6 years old. If you have to leave your child temporarily, you can entrust them to someone else who is responsible and try to "bridge" the gap between you. This could be a picture, a letter, a video call, a toy that smells like you or anything else that your child can associate with you.

Talking to your child about future plans after you return, such as visiting the zoo, will help them get through the time apart.