How to Build Strong Relationships With Children — Lessons From a Mom and a Teacher

By A Mom and a Job  ·  8 min read

I still hear from former students. Not all of them, but enough. A message here, a wave across a parking lot, a grown-up face that breaks into a smile when they see me. “Do you remember me?” they ask. And I always do.

What strikes me every time is the same thing: we kids grow up. We get taller, older, busier. But we do not always think about the fact that the people around us grow up too. We get so caught up in our own growing that we forget to notice it happening in others.

Those former students who reach out are not just being polite. They are telling me something. They are telling me that what happened between us mattered. That the relationship we built, in a classroom, one greeting at a time, one question at a time, one moment of being seen at a time, stayed with them.

That is what a real relationship does. It stays.

🌱 Why relationships are built in small moments, not big ones

We tend to think of relationship-building as something that happens in grand gestures. The big conversation, the special outing, the meaningful talk. But with children especially, the real work happens in the ordinary moments that barely register.

The good morning that is genuine rather than automatic. The question that shows you remembered something they mentioned last week. The moment you notice they are not quite themselves today and say so.

👋 The power of a daily greeting

This sounds almost too simple to mention. But I mention it because I have seen what happens in classrooms where it does not happen, and the difference is enormous.

When a teacher greets every child by name as they walk in, every single morning, every single child, something shifts in that room. The child feels that they matter to this place. That someone noticed they arrived. That their presence makes a difference.

That is what a daily greeting does over time. It is not one moment. It is a pattern of moments that adds up to a child who feels safe, seen, and valued.

The same applies at home. Do you greet your children when they come home from school? Not just “hi” while looking at your phone, but actually stopping, making eye contact, and saying something that shows you are glad they are back? That thirty-second greeting matters more than most of us realize.

🏠 How your home shapes the relationships your children build everywhere

Something moms tell me that I love hearing: they love sending their children to my house because they see that I have the same expectations they do. Hand washing when you come in from outside. Clearing up after yourself when you finish eating. Basic things that are simply part of how we do things here.

What that tells me is that expectations travel. The habits and values a child internalizes at home do not stay at home. They go with them to school, to their friends’ houses, to every environment they enter.

This is what relationships do when they are built with intention. They do not stay contained to the room where they started. They travel with the child into every space they enter, every friendship they make, every dream they dare to pursue.

🤝 The five steps to building any relationship from scratch

Whether you are a parent meeting a new teacher, a teacher greeting a child on the first day, or a child navigating a new friendship, the steps to building a real relationship are the same. They just need time and intention.

1
Start small and make them comfortable
Small talk is not shallow. It is a warm-up. It lets both people settle into each other’s presence before anything meaningful is asked. Start with something easy. What did you do this weekend? How are you finding things so far? Give them room to answer without pressure.
2
Share something about yourself
Relationships are not one-directional. You cannot ask a child to open up if you never open up yourself. Share something age-appropriate and real. A funny thing that happened this morning, something you are looking forward to, something you noticed about your day. This models what sharing looks like and signals that you are a safe person to share with.
3
Ask genuine questions and actually listen to the answers
Not questions that lead somewhere you want to go. Questions you are actually curious about. And then listen, not while thinking about what to say next, but actually taking in what they are telling you. Ask a follow-up. Show that you heard. This is rarer than it sounds and children notice it immediately when an adult is genuinely present.
4
Find common ground
There is a social experiment that has been done in several countries where people who considered themselves complete political opposites were put in a room together. People who thought they had nothing in common and possibly even disliked each other. What happened? They discovered they supported the same sports teams. They liked the same foods. They shared the same core values about family, even if those values showed up differently in their lives. The common ground was always there. They just had not looked for it yet.
4
This is exactly what you are doing when you help children find common ground with each other. The moment two children realize they both love the same cartoon, both hate the same vegetable, both feel nervous about the same thing, something clicks. Look for those moments and name them out loud. “Oh, you both love that show? Tell each other about your favorite part.” You are not manufacturing friendship. You are revealing what was already there.
5
Remember the details and come back to them
This is what separates a real relationship from a polite acquaintance. Remembering that Lea’s brother had a birthday party and asking about it the next day. Remembering what someone told you last week and following up. It says: I was listening. You matter enough for me to have kept that. For children, this is profoundly reassuring.

These five steps do not happen in one conversation. They happen over days, weeks, months. That is why the title of this article is what it is. Building relationships takes time. There is no shortcut. But every small investment compounds, and eventually what you have built is something neither of you could have imagined from that first nervous hello.

🏫 What teachers can do every single day

If you are a teacher reading this, you have an extraordinary opportunity. You spend hours with children every day in a setting where trust and relationship directly affect learning, behavior, and wellbeing. Here is what makes the biggest difference in the smallest amount of time.

👶 What relationship-building looks like at different ages

The way you build a relationship with a two-year-old is not the same as the way you build one with a ten-year-old. Here is a simple guide so you know what to lean into at each stage.

That last point for tweens is one I feel strongly about. One of the best things you can do for a relationship with an older child is make it safe for them to bring you the hard stuff. If they are afraid of your reaction they will stop coming to you. A child who knows you will not fall apart when they tell you something difficult is a child who keeps talking to you.

💚 Relationships are meant to be watered

I think of relationships the way I think of plants. You cannot water a plant once and expect it to thrive forever. You cannot have one meaningful conversation and consider the relationship built. It needs regular tending, consistent attention, and the patience to wait for it to grow at its own pace.

The former students who reach out to me years later are proof that tending works. That the small daily investments, the greetings, the questions, the remembered details, add up to something that lasts long after the classroom does.

Your relationship with your child is the most important one they will ever have. And you are already building it, every day, in every small moment. You just have to be intentional about it.