Studies show that once your children become teenagers, their friends become their confidants and their mentors. Therefore it is very important to strengthen your mother-daughter relationship by establish good communication and trust before they become teenagers. That is why weekly or monthly mother-daughter dates with your tween are so essential.
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Get To Know Your Tween
One way to strengthen your mother-daughter relationship is to get to know your tween. Even though, you may think that you know your daughter pretty well, yet kids interests and friends change so often that there is always something new on the horizon. That is why, it may be a good idea to have an activity where or perhaps ask your tween to make a list of 10 things that she is most interested in and that bring her joy.
Come Up With Date Ideas SHE Will Enjoy
Once her list is completed, it is time to come up with some creative dates. Both of you can sit down together, grab 10 strips of paper, and write down 10 things you would like to do together based on the things she enjoys.
Once this step is completed you can read each date idea out loud to make sure that you don’t have the same thing written twice and that she likes all the ideas. You then fold the papers and put them into a jar.
Schedule Weekly or Monthly Dates
The more often you connect with your daughter, the easier it will be to strengthen you mother-daughter relationship. But the reality is, not all of us have time to go on weekly ‘dates’ with our children. So decide on what works best for you.
You could decide on doing something special together every Wednesday. Or perhaps making time for this special outing every second Tuesday of the month would work better for you.
To make your date night obvious and special, give your tween some markers and get them to write ‘Mommy & Me Date Night’ on the family calendar so that both of you have a visual reminder that your date is coming up soon.
Planned vs Surprise Date
Then, only one question remains: should you pick out the strips with your dates at that moment and write down on the calendar where you are going for the next few dates, or should you leave the papers in the jar and pick one out on the day of your date?
You can decided to do both. You can pick out a few pieces of paper and write out what you are going to do on every second date. Then, under the remaining days you can write down SURPRISE DATE. For those days you can pick out the strip from the jar on the day of your date.
Date Ideas to Strengthen Your Mother-Daughter Relationship
Your daughter may enjoy reading, drawing, painting, manga, Nintendo video games, crafts of all sorts and many other things. I bet you will be able to come up with a ton of ideas to strengthen your mother-daughter relationship.
But to get you started, here are some of the ideas my daughter enjoyed.
1. Going to paint pottery at the ceramic shop. (I got a great two-for-one coupon on Groupon for this one)
2. Grabbing a hot chocolate at Starbucks attached to our local bookstore and going in to find our new favorite book, and of course, picking it up for our summer reading.
3. Going to a local coffee shop with WiFi and learning more about some of her favorite YouTube channels and Podcasts
4. Taking a cupcake decorating class at our local Michael’s. This also involves making two dozens of cupcakes, which we can do together as well.
5. Going to a local art museum together.
6. Going for ice cream tasting at one of our favorite ice cream shops.
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7. Spending an evening at our local library.
8. Taking a drawing class together.
9. Window shopping at our favorite craft store.
10. Going for a walk at our local marina, watching the yachts coming in for the night and chatting.
11. Pastry shop hopping. Going to at least three pastry shops in the area, picking up a treat in each and coming home to share them with other family members.
12. Visiting a used book bookstore.
What About You?
Do you have a tween in your home? What do you do to build trust, to keep open communication and to strengthen your mother-daughter relationship? Share your ideas in comments below.
This is a great list. Sounds like we all enjoy the same things with our girls.
One to add was a photo fun day. I Live in Savannah and enjoy walking downtown exploring so we walk around to the different sites and take pictures of our favorite architectural and historical funds. Then share our favorites over lunch at a new fun cafe or restaurant.
Danielle, that is a fantastic idea! My daughter loves taking pictures and drinking lattes (mama’s girl 🙂 ). I will try it out next time we go for a walk downtown. Thank you so much for the suggestion.
I have read this a couple of times…I love it!! Thank you for this inspiring post!!
Wooow. It is great. Very helpful.
My daughter is already an adult, so we already went through basically all the stages. I agree, building up a strong relationship helps to ‘survive’ the bumpy part. You have to build up trust in her – and in yourself as well – and then you can just let go and do not have to feel insecure during these periods that her friends are closer to her than you; than you seem to be, that is, because once you have a strong bond, you are part of her life, no matter what.
This is a great idea! I remember when I became a teenager I started drifting away from my mother :(. But now our relationship is much better and we go on mommy daughter dates!
Great idea…thanks for sharing
This is a really great advice to all parents . Now a days everyone so consumed with technology and social media they have no time for such things . I date my mother . I usually take her out to do what she loves . It makes her happy and that makes me happy 🙂 Really your article is a must read .