How to build a family ecosystem: 3 places to focus small (but powerful!) changes

An ecosystem, according to Mirriam-Webster is “the complex of a community of organisms and its environment functioning as an ecological unit".” When we talk about a “family ecosystem” we are talking about our family unit, including the environment, relationships, and our social systems of engagement. To build a family ecosystem is to tend to all of our relationships within the family group as equally valid and important.
​
If a family ecosystem sounds like what you’re wanting in your family, I have three places you can make small changes that will help you shift into a more relationship focused lens.

1. Focus on relationship not behavior

Much of parenting advice is about how to modify your children’s behavior. This perspective makes it likely we’ll make two critical mistakes if we’re also trying to parent our children with care and respect.
The first problem with focus on behavior over relationship is that we start perceiving our kids' behavior falling into one of two categories: behaviors we want, and behaviors we don’t want. When we see behaviors we don’t want, don’t like, or that we feel strongly about, we tend to call those “bad behaviors” and we go about trying to modify them.

If we respond to our children’s difficult behaviors by trying to change them, they never get a chance to learn how to work through the difficulty. They are being shown that it’s better to avoid the problem than to face it. But the behavior isn’t the problem, it’s the symptom of a struggle that they are having. They don’t know what to do about what’s happening and so they get bigger; louder, more physical, more erratic. By focusing on the behavior we ignore the deeper struggle, and so kids learn that they won’t be met and helped. They will instead be punished for their outburst.

This often leads to the familiar accusations we hear from teens; that their parents don’t understand them and don’t care about them.

Instead, if an adult came to them, helped them regulate in the face of difficulty, and walked them through the solution, they learn tools for getting through the actual discomfort. They are able to use some of those tools a little bit better next time, and a little bit better the time after that. Offering a solution that aligns with the way that kids learn (by example and by practice) they are better equipped to help themselves through future difficulty.

The second problem we face when we focus on our childrens’ behavior rather than our relationship is that the goals are different. The goal of behavior modification is really to get the child to comply with your expectations. This ignores the child’s experience that is difficult in the first place, and then it goes on to demand compliance with expectations, regardless of whether the child is actually able to do it or not. It teaches them to override their nervous system, ignore their own experience, and to prioritize others’ expectations over their own needs.

If we are not trying to teach our kids to override their own experience and prioritize others, then we may want to reconsider the behavior approach. Instead, we may want to examine what it might look like to see this child through a relational lens.

We might see a child who is having difficulty. We would notice that they are losing their ability to regulate themselves and behave appropriately. We would step in with the goal of helping them navigate the difficulty going on in their emotional world. We would use age appropriate connection, words, and solutions. We would help them notice what was going on, let them know they’re not alone, and help them start to think things through. We would let them use our nervous systems to self-regulate.

Humans don’t learn to regulate by being isolated or punished. They learn through a calm adult showing up to model it for them. When the adult stays steady and faces their difficulty, they learn that they can do it too.

None of this can be diluted to a meme or hack about how to do this. What connections will be accepted by a particular distressed child is probably only known by a few of the child’s closest caregivers, if even they know. Every person is different about how easy it is to respond to touch, to words, to quiet presence. Think about when you feel distressed, what kind of response by a friend brings you comfort? It’s a really personal thing.

So how this actually looks for everyone will be different. The relationship is built slowly, over time. There is no one right way to do it. And the nuances will be different for every person.

2. Slow down, relationships aren’t efficient, they can’t be done quickly

To build relationships we have to slow down. In the midst of urgency our relational skills fall apart. We lose the ability to observe and listen deeply. We discard curiosity for taking everything at face value and not asking questions. To move quickly we have to make lots of assumptions and we do not spend time checking them to make sure we are working together.

Relationships also require more than one connection. We don’t usually consider people to be “friends” that we’ve only met once. It takes more meetings, more conversation, and more exploration to get to know a person. And truly, that job of knowing someone, is never done. There will never be a day when there is nothing else to learn about the experience of another human being.

Relationships take time, and they take repeated connection points. Therefore, a commitment is necessary for a relationship. A decision to come back again and again to keep being curious and getting to know someone.

It’s so common (and I’m totally guilty of this, ask my 19 year old) that we think we know. This is one of the biggest hurdles to relationship with our children. We remember being kids, we had our experiences, we look back and see how things worked, we better understand what the adults were doing. So, not only do we think we know our kids’ experience, but we feel like we understand the whole thing better than we did as a kid. It’s easy to think we know more than them.

If we are focused on relationship, then we remember that the person in front of us isn’t us. They are not a small version of us, or of their other parent. Not only that, they are living in a different time. So, while we have some idea of what they might be going through, when we slow down and focus on relationship, we find curiosity. We can get interested in what THIS person is experiencing. We can start to check our childhood experience against theirs to see if there is common ground. But we approach the whole thing differently.

Again, this kind of relating isn’t just communication. It takes time, spaciousness, repeated connection, and lots of curiosity to facilitate. But it does have a higher likelihood of resulting in kids that share their experiences with us, are willing to admit their failures and learn from us, and in the long term, they’re more likely to stay in relationship with us as adults.

3. Do family time with less pressure

In the spirit of focusing on relationships rather than behavior, and slowing down, I’ll share one piece of hard-earned wisdom from my own experience. Do less stuff with your kids that requires you to plan or organize or lead. Do more stuff that allows you to be together informally and without structure.

The kids will begin to lead, you will be better able to see their innate strengths, and they will have time to feel more connected to you as fellow humans. It also gives them some experience at being a responsible leader in a low stakes environment, since you’re still there if anything goes awry.

Because family events and holidays can also create a lot of urgency and tons of extra work, especially for moms, I recommend choosing a few holidays or celebrations that you want to make traditions and don’t overextend yourself for the others.

This was a terrible mistake I made early on in parenting.

I wanted to make my children feel special because I was neglected and often left alone in my childhood. So I tried to engage in every single holiday. Not only was I shocked to realize that in the U.S. the kids celebrate some special day at school at least once a month, I quickly became overwhelmed with all of the logistics of keeping up.

Also, I eventually figured out that I didn’t have to do everything for every celebration (I realized that I didn’t have to spend 2 days making special cakes every year for their birthday… they equally enjoyed store bought cakes). Besides, if I focused on having a good relationship with my kid, I was more likely to know the one or two things that make them feel really special and do those, instead of doing a bunch of stuff they didn’t really care about.

If my goal was to make them feel special, then knowing what made them special was way better than a picture perfect birthday celebration.

My advice to new parents is to consider which holidays and celebrations are important to you. Choose no more than three (really, choose what you want, but try to narrow it to three). What about those holidays is important? What values do they exhibit and what do you want your kids to know about those values? What family traditions would you like to pass on? What new things would you like to create?
​
Finding the why behind the celebrations and holidays helps stay focused. If it’s been a tough couple of weeks or months, you can scale back but still keep what’s most important to you. It allows you to have flexibility with less risk that you’ll look back and regret the way you did family holidays. It will also help convey those values to your children because they will be consistent (remember, they learn through repetition and practice).