How To Build A Happy Family: 9 Essential Elements

As much as some try to detract from it and relativize its importance, there are many of us who maintain that the family is not only the unquestionable and irreplaceable basis of any organized society, but also the environment in which the integral development of people takes place. .

We all come from a family structure that “taught and conditioned” us what we think and believe about families.

Those of us who were lucky enough to be born into a functional family have grown easier and better and have registered within ourselves, in our memory, in our hearts and in every cell of our body, the image of the family model that can work.

But regardless of our previous experience, most of us intend, with more or less success, to build for our family a truly harmonious and nurturing family, under the guidance of parents who read with their children, talk with them and with each other, listen and understand them. ; they have happy moments when they are all together.

The functional families or nutritious, as called Virginia Satir, are able to meet the basic material needs and spiritual needs of its members. What conditions must you meet?

Works as a team

Its members are united, in addition to affection, for a common goal, to ensure the well-being of each one of them.

In a family, not everyone has the same abilities and, consequently, the division of tasks, when necessary, should not be equitable but operational. It is about providing each one with what they need, asking for the best of what they are most suitable for. It is not intended, therefore, that everyone contributes the same, but to find the best result.

Teamwork is the highest, most effective, and most satisfying level of interaction between people, and it always begins with a fundamental learning: valuing, and even celebrating, differences.

In this way, those who have more skills or experience also have greater responsibility when it comes to seeking the well-being of each of the other members. In fact, one of the most notable characteristics of a dysfunctional family is the disorder and confusion of individual roles within the family: parents who behave like children and children who are required as adults.

Clear rules and regulations

As with any team, if I don’t know where I play, my best chance of playing well is gone. It is in these cases when the freshness, creativity, and transparency of childhood become lethargic, leaving room for the sharing of blame, guaranteed failure, resentment and the ghost of contempt or the dreaded ridicule.

The existence of clear generational boundaries (parents who behave like parents and children who behave as such) is a norm in strong families. However, the strict submission to the traditional schemes of these roles could at times restrict the personal fulfillment and individual growth of the members.

In functional families there are rules that everyone knows and accepts, but they are flexible.

Plasticity prevents stiffness

A family constantly faces different situations, both because of what happens around it and because of the changes that take place within it, even if these are only the inexorable growth of its members.

A family that works in the same way today with adolescent children as it did when they went to kindergarten has insured problems.

Plasticity implies, in the broadest sense, the ability and readiness to adapt to change.

Respect for individuality

Being a team does not mean forgetting that we are individual beings and that we have needs and desires for things, activities and ties that are, to a greater or lesser extent, outside the family. Wishes that, a priori, others should encourage if they see that they bring happiness to that member (and not consider them a threat of disintegration).

When the family accepts personal spaces, they become a passport to the growth of the group.

In functional families, each member is different from the other and is not pressured to conform, is respected for his or her individuality, and has the same value as a person as the others.

In dysfunctional families, members are not respected as unique individuals and of equal value to others, they are discouraged from trying to be different, and they are blamed and shamed, at the very least, for being “the weirdo” in the family.

Communication as the axis

Inside and outside the family, communication is basic, not only as a tool for conflict resolution and the construction of agreements, it is also the privileged way we have to create ties between ourselves.

In functional families, members are taught to develop honest and direct communication, and all are encouraged to express feelings, perceptions, and needs.

Denial and deception, authoritarianism and hierarchical ladder prevail in dysfunctional families.

Trust as the basis

The trust on which a family must be based is simply to believe in the other. It is the conviction that if he tells me something, it is true (in the sense that he believes it that way).

Some parents say: “I distrust because my son lies” and I invite them to think just the opposite: perhaps he lies because you distrust. For the rest, if you don’t want to be lied to, don’t lie, least of all to save the image that your children have of you.

The presence and the support

We could summarize this point in one sentence: “No matter what the problem is, you can always count on us because we are your family.”

The bonds are strengthened, more than anything, by the times shared, the passing of the days, the routines, the supposedly insignificant things that are enjoyed in company.

Perhaps the family is defined more than any other bond by the fact that we share everyday life.

Take care of self-esteem

A good family self-esteem not only consists in that each one feels valuable to be who they are inside and outside of that environment, but also in that the family is strengthened, proud, by the good opinion that each of its members has of she as a human group.

Needless to say, this is only feasible if it comes from a good self-esteem from mom and dad and from an excellent bond between them as a couple.

“Only two lasting legacies can we leave our children: roots and wings.” Hodding Carter

And in the center, love

Love, understood here as the rejoicing for the existence and the determined commitment to achieve the well-being of each of my family members. Love as a deep satisfaction that the other works to be the best version of himself that he can.

Love as the supreme disposition to accept the other as he is, without wanting to change him so that he is what would suit me.

Give all the love you have and be open to receive that of others. If within a family we manage to love each other like this, it is very likely that we are in the best of places to develop all the other keys that have been discussed here and that the future will present us with.