3 Things To Teach Your Kids About Healthy Romantic Relationships

While most parents recognize that they should be teaching their kids things like how to read, write, and be good citizens, many parents don’t realize just how important of a role they play in teaching their kids about healthy relationships, especially when it comes to romantic relationships.

But because every parent wants their child to find love and happiness in their life, it’s crucial that you show them the way to get to this point in the relationships they find themselves in throughout their life, even when they’re very young.

So to help your children in this way, here are three things to teach your kids about healthy romantic relationship.

Be Clear About What Constitutes A Healthy Relationship

For many parents, they wait to have any type of conversation about romantic relationships until it’s arguably too late and their child has already gotten some skewed ideas in their head. To combat this, it’s important that you start talking about what makes up a healthy relationship, both with their friends and with potential romantic partners, from a young age and in very clear terms.

For example, TalkWithYourKids.org shares that you can make it a point to remind your kids about the type of friendships or relationships that you want for them. In many cases, this will involve things like mutual respect, being comfortable around each other, and being able to stay close with your other friends and family members.

By putting these definitions around what makes a healthy relationship, you’ll be helping your kids recognize when a relationship their in either is or isn’t healthy.

Set A Good Example For Them

One of the best ways you can teach your kids anything is to lead by example. But in some situations, you as their parent might find yourself in a situation where you’re in an unhealthy relationship.

If this is ever the case for you, you should do what you can to get out of that relationship, including going through a divorce, as a way to model for your children what they should expect out of a healthy relationship and what to do if they aren’t in one. Additionally. Marcia Mangum Cronin, a contributor to HealthyWomen.org, shares that you can use examples from life or from the media to further illustrate what is or isn’t a healthy romantic relationship.

Teach Them How To Set Boundaries

An important aspect of creating healthy relationships in life is having correct boundaries. But because these things aren’t often innate in use, it can be helpful for your children if you teach them what boundaries are and how to set them.

According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, boundaries are set when people talk about what is or isn’t acceptable in their relationship. This can include all sorts of things, from how you’ll speak to each other to the physicality of the relationship. But by teaching your kids that it’s okay to talk about things like this with others, they’ll be better able to find themselves in healthy relationships in the future.

To help your children have healthy relationships throughout their life, consider using the tips mentioned above to teaching and modeling correct behavior to your kids.