It is garden time at my house.  I really love putting in a garden with the family!  We spent a good amount of time today in the garden pulling weeds and planting new, good seeds.  

Raising children is similar to gardening.  We have to keep nourishing, and planting new seeds to strengthen the garden.  Keep your relationships with your teens, and other children alive and growing by having lots of good talk together, play together, and work together time.  

We can all think of long lists of things we need to weed out of our child’s garden, but if our nourishing relationship isn’t being worked on then the weeding will not work as well as you hope for.  

Focus your best efforts on bonding, talking, playing and working together and you will find correcting and directing your children much easier.  
If your child won’t talk to you, schedule regular talk times each day or week.  

If you think you are too busy to repair your struggling relationship, change your schedule.  What is really most important?  Schedule a set time each day for relationship building time and make sure your child knows the schedule too.  Don’t just surprise her each day with it.  Make a plan and then start progressing each day.  

Nicholeen Peck, author of “Parenting A House United” and BBC television star, has worked for many years with troubled teens to help them learn Self-Government. Nicholeen’s free parenting advice blog is http://teachingselfgovernment.com
Buy her book here http://teachingselfgovernment.com/catalog/products-0