Expressing care is fundamental to strong and healthy family relationships. Because of that, it’s important to tell family members we care about them and that we want the best for them. But we can also express care through other ways, such as these actions:

• Being dependable: Be someone others can count on and trust.
• Listening to each other: Pay attention to each other and have open, respectful communication.
• Believing in each other: Share with others that they are known and valued.
• Be warm to each other: Let each other know that we like being together.
• Encourage each other: Praise each other’s efforts and achievements.

Watch this short video to learn more about Expressing Care:

How Well Do We Express Care?

According to a Search Institute survey, 80% of participating parenting adults considered expressing care to be the strongest developmental relationship element in their family relationships. Are you wondering how you and your family would stack up? Take the Express Care Quiz and share it with other members of your household.

Learning Ways to Express Care in Your Family

On our Keep Connected website, you’ll find lots of ideas to practically express care in your family. There you can find:

• The express care family quiz
• Discussion starters (Talk About It tab)
• Family activities (Try It tab)
• Books to read together (Read It tab)
• More Iinformation about expressing care  (Learn About It tab)

Free Download: Talking Tips for Expressing Care

Finding time to talk can be a challenge when we’re pulled in so many directions. Click below to download a few talking tips for everyday conversations and for tougher conversations too.

Download Talking Tips for Conversations  

Note: This is part of a five-part series on developmental relationships in families. To read other posts in the series, visit Challenge Growth, Provide Support, and Share Power and Expand Possibilities.

Today’s parenting adults and families are saturated with advice about what to do, what not to do, and what matters most. They’re told to get involved, but not to be helicopter or lawnmower or tiger parents. Or perhaps they should be free-range parents. Or . . .

The problem is that most of these approaches begin with the mindset that the primary role of a parent is to shape or mold kids into what they are supposed to be—or what we think they are supposed to be. So we create checklists of strategies we’ll use to be sure our kids turn out the way we want them to be. If we just follow the recipe . . .

Parenting as a relationship

Of course, it doesn’t really work that way, does it? Part of the reason is that the heart of parenting is a relationship. It’s a bond, a connection, not a strategy. As psychologist Alison Gopnik wrote:

“Parent” is not actually a verb, not a form of work, and it isn’t and shouldn’t be directed toward the goal of sculpting a child into a particular kind of adult. Instead, to be a parent—to care for a child—is to be part of a profound and unique human relationship, to engage in a particular kind of love. (The Gardener & the Carpenter, 2016)

Tools to connect in families

KeepConnected.info is a new website from Search Institute that focuses on strengthening family relationships. Based on extensive research on five key elements that make developmental relationships, the online resource provides tools to help families connect, reflect, and grow together. It offers ideas and tools for you and your family to:

Take quick quizzes that reflect on different aspects of family relationships. Invite other family members to take them too. Then use the results to deepen your connections.	Talk together about what makes family relationships strong and to get to know each other better. Some discussion-starter questions are for kids and parents together. Others are for groups of parents.
Spend time together in interactive family activities that explore family relationships and how you might be more intentional and consistent in how you care, support, challenge, share power, and expand possibilities for each other.	Explore research on different aspects of family relationships and why they are important for how young people grow up, learn, and thrive.

Resources for those who work with families

In addition, KeepConnected.info offers insights and tools for people who work with families, including those who use Search Institute’s signature family engagement program Keep Connected for middle school families. It highlights the power of shifting family engaging strategies to emphasize relationships and building trust as the foundation—just as these are essential in families themselves.

Take time to connect

We live in a time when it’s easy to feel both isolated and bombarded with connections and information all at the same time. Each of us—parenting adults, youth, grandparents, and others—all need meaningful, real connections to keep us grounded and help us grow.

We’ve created KeepConnected.info as one resource to help you do that. Very little on the site is designed to be done alone. It’s designed to stimulate a conversation, an activity, or a new family practice or ritual that brings you closer.

In the process, we hope you discover new strengths and opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive.