The giving of real respect comes as a heart response from the person giving it. Actually we can’t make our children do anything from their heart. There needs to be ‘willingness’ from within them. We can try to make our children do something and it may result in them complying, maybe out of fear, but it probably will not be from willingness from their heart. This genuine heart response is usually what we as parents are actually really looking for from our children.

What we can do is strengthen our heart connection with our children so they feel in their heart more connected to us. The connection we are talking about here is the feelings of love in the heart of our children for us at any given moment throughout any day. It is from that strengthened heart connection that trust and respect spring naturally from the heart.

So how do we strengthen the heart connection between our self and our children? There are many ways we can do this (we teach 14 skills to achieve this in our parenting courses) however one of the most important ways is regularly to spend time with them and show them that they are special and important to us and of course that we love them very much.

So real respect at any given moment within a day comes from a mutually strong and loving heart connection between parent and child.