parenting
America’s Bureau of Census reports that 1300 blended families are formed daily. When two separate families unite through marriage or partnership, they embark on a unique journey filled with joys, challenges, and a whole lot of adjustment to new roles and norms. There are bound to be challenges along the way. Preparing to meet those challenges goes a long way to ensure family harmony.
Typical Parental Challenges Encountered within Blended Family Structures
Role Confusion and Issues of Authority:
The main challenge of blended parenting is finding out who does what and who has command over whom. Stepparents often feel unsure about how much control they should exert as disciplinarians. Simultaneously, biological parents may struggle to relinquish control or find a balance between their parenting style and that of their new partner. This can cause confusion and tension among family members.
Loyalty Struggles:
Children in blended families often feel torn between being loyal to their birth parents and wanting to accept their stepparents and grow close together with them. They might also feel guilty about enjoying time with their stepparent as it might upset the biological parent. This could be achieved through open communication coupled with mutual respect for each other’s role in bringing up children for step-parents living apart from the biological parents may be delicate negotiations.
Emotional & Psychological Adjustments:
Creating a blended family involves making significant emotional and psychological changes besides logistics alone. If still grieving or healing from earlier family breakups, children may have trouble accepting new additions into the family structure. They may choose not to make connections at all, but instead express themselves through defiant behavior patterns. These emotions have to be recognized and accepted for the children to settle in this new environment.
Difficult Communication:
Blended families have a special challenge with communication, which is a cornerstone of any healthy family. Misinterpretations and misunderstandings are very easy when there are different caretakers who all expect different things or use dissimilar means of communication. If feelings, desires and expectations are not openly discussed then resentment may begin to build up leading to dysfunctional family patterns.
Effective Parenting Techniques for Blended Families
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Establish Clear Roles and Boundaries.
Couples should sit down together and honestly define their respective positions within the family unit including those of biological parents and stepparents. How will parenting decisions be made? Everyone must respect each person’s privacy while still working together.
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Create a United Front.
Children need predictability and structure, so presenting them with a consistent approach to parenting is crucial. Parents must take time to align their rules, expectations, and consequences without sending mixed signals through punishment methods. On-going check-ins will ensure that everyone stays on track toward goals that do not conflict with each other.
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Foster Open Communication.
A family meeting is organized on a regular basis to allow for those present to voice their concerns, feelings and solve problems as a group. Developing skills like attentive listening and showing understanding helps parents and stepparents make each member of the family appreciated.
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Create Strong Relationships.
It is not easy for stepchildren to have close relationships with their step parents. This kind of relationship cannot be forced as it takes time. Genuine concern or care about the kids’ lives, attending events involving them, and being there when they need you are some ways that trust can be established over time.
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Flexible Parenting
Parenting children in blended families requires parents who can adapt to different situations. A method that works for one child may fail completely on the other, while an approach that worked well in the previous unit may not be effective at all. Therefore, it’s important for parents to openly listen to what children and other members of the family feel coming up with new ideas of approaching matters to ensure peace prevails among themselves.
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Individual Relationships should be Maintained.
As much as unity should be created among all members of a blended family, individual relationships also need nurturing within this context. Having alone time with each child is one way of making him/her feel loved by his parent hence valued by others too. Balancing between activities meant for the whole family unit and spending lone moments with every child usually develops strong parent-child bonds leading to satisfaction of each child’s personal requirements.
Parenting in a blended family is a journey filled with unique challenges, but it is also an opportunity for immense personal growth and the creation of a loving, supportive family unit. By addressing common struggles head-on, establishing clear roles and boundaries, fostering open communication, building strong relationships, and seeking help when needed, blended families can thrive.
Seeking additional support and guidance? Consider exploring resources like Marriage In a Box. This platform offers access to professional tools and techniques to help you navigate the complexities of blended family life. With features like goal-setting, rewards, and marriage coaching, Marriage In a Box can be a valuable companion on your journey towards a harmonious and fulfilling blended family experience.
Raising teenagers can be one of the most challenging phases of parenthood. It's a time when your children are navigating the complexities of adolescence, seeking independence, and pushing boundaries. For parents, this period often brings about significant stress and can put a strain on even the strongest of marriages. In this article, we delve into the various ways in which raising teens can impact a marriage and provide strategies for couples to navigate this tumultuous time together.
The Strain on Marriage
The teenage years are marked by a myriad of changes and chaos, both for the teens themselves and for their parents. Adolescents are grappling with identity formation, peer pressure, academic stress, and hormonal fluctuations, while parents are faced with the challenges of setting boundaries, managing conflicts, and balancing their roles as nurturers and disciplinarians. These stressors can easily spill over into the marriage, leading to tension, disagreements, and feelings of frustration.
One of the most significant challenges couples face when raising teens is communication breakdown. As adolescents strive for autonomy, they may become more secretive or resistant to sharing their thoughts and feelings with their parents. This can lead to conflicts between parents who may have differing approaches to parenting or who feel disconnected from each other due to the lack of communication about their children.
Another common issue that arises during the teenage years is the shifting of priorities within the family dynamic. As teens become more involved in extracurricular activities, socializing with friends, and pursuing their own interests, parents may find themselves feeling sidelined or neglected. This can lead to feelings of resentment or jealousy within the marriage if one spouse feels that their needs or desires are being overlooked in favor of the children's activities.
Raising teenagers can also bring about financial strain, particularly as children enter high school and college. The cost of education, extracurricular activities, and teenage socializing can add up quickly, placing a burden on family finances. Financial stress can exacerbate existing tensions within the marriage and may lead to disagreements over budgeting, spending priorities, and long-term financial planning.
Strategies for Strengthening Your Marriage
While raising teenagers undoubtedly presents its challenges, there are steps that couples can take to strengthen their marriage and navigate this phase of parenthood together:
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Prioritize Communication: Make time to regularly check in with each other and discuss your feelings, concerns, and frustrations about parenting teenagers. Encourage open and honest communication, and actively listen to your spouse's perspective.
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Maintain a United Front: Present a united front when it comes to parenting decisions and discipline. Avoid undermining each other in front of the children and work together to establish consistent rules and boundaries.
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Carve Out Quality Time: Despite the demands of parenting teenagers, try to prioritize quality time together as a couple. Whether it's going on a date night, taking a weekend getaway, or simply enjoying a quiet evening at home, nurturing your relationship is essential during this time.
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Seek Support: Don't be afraid to seek support from friends, family, or professional counselors if you're struggling to cope with the challenges of raising teenagers. Having a support network can provide validation, perspective, and practical advice to help you navigate this phase of parenthood.
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Focus on Self-Care: Remember to prioritize self-care and individual hobbies or interests outside of parenting. Taking care of your own physical, emotional, and mental well-being will enable you to better support your spouse and navigate the ups and downs of raising teenagers together.
Raising teenagers can be a stressful and challenging time for couples, but it can also be an opportunity for growth and strengthening your marriage. By prioritizing communication, maintaining a united front, carving out quality time together, seeking support, and focusing on self-care, couples can navigate the stresses of raising teens while maintaining a strong and healthy relationship. Remember, you're in this together, and with patience, understanding, and mutual support, your marriage can withstand the challenges of parenting teenagers.
Consider using marriage In a Box for professional support, helpful suggestions, and guidance. Marriage In a Box provides access to tools and techniques that professionals use to address relationship issues. On the site, you can set goals, earn rewards, and find marriage coaching. Check out the available kit and sources of information online.
Partners learn to reconcile their differences and establish a new culture which strengthens their bond when they come together because every individual comes from a unique family system. Bringing together two people with different family values and family backgrounds does not come without challenges; therefore, couples should discuss and reconcile these differences before having children so that they both feel comfortable with parenting.
Three Parenting Styles
The Authoritarian Parenting Style
Authoritarian parents use strict control to discipline children with rigid rules enforced by threat or punishment. Authoritarian parents tend to be conservative and believe in traditional roles, values, and regulations to be followed without question, and misbehavior is unacceptable. The authoritarian parents' vision of the world is only black and white, right, or wrong, etc. Children may be looked upon with a critical eye and subjected to judgment, and open discussion with a give-and-take dialogue is not encouraged.
Praise and reward are believed to lead children into becoming 'too full of themselves' and cause them to stray off the good path. Kids with authoritarian parents typically are well-behaved and willingly obey authorities, do well in school, and avoid deviant behavior out of fear of punishment. They are not used to making choices or taking full responsibility for themselves and are also more prone to suffer from low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. They may have more limited social skills than kids from authoritative or permissive families.
The Permissive Parenting Style
Permissive parenting, also called indulgent parenting, desperately focuses on maintaining a friendship with their child rather than being a parent. Many people believe permissive parenting is a curse of the modern age: The child is too much at the center of this parenting style, which uses reasoning, bribes, or manipulation to achieve some control. Permissive parents believe in the ability of the child to decide, make decisions, and act according to their desires and motives. Permissive parents believe in responding to the child's desires and accept children as equals, and they are included in decision-making and encouraged to communicate. These parents fear and tend to avoid confrontations and the use of power to shape and regulate their kids' behavior.
The effect of the permissive parenting style is that due to a lack of limits, the child has a sense of insecurity. The child may become dominating, impulsive, show problematic behavior, and do poorly in school. As these kids believe they are equal to adults, they are well equipped in dialogue, have high social skills, high self-esteem, and low levels of depression.
The Authoritative Parenting Style
Authoritative parenting is one of the three styles considered ideal by many people and child experts. Authoritative parenting uses firm control, high standards, fair reasoning, and positive reinforcement for good behavior. Authoritative parents are not restrictive as a preventive measure for bad behavior and strive towards letting their children live out their potential but within boundaries. They watch and impart clear standards for their children's conduct, and disciplinary methods are supportive rather than punitive, but crossing boundaries is not tolerated.
Permissive parents desire their children to be assertive, socially responsible, self-regulated, and cooperative. Authoritative parents feel that a child needs to have a degree of say; still, parents have the final word. Authoritative parents try to understand their children, teach them how to understand their feelings, problem solve, and follow independent but still norm-supportive practices. The effect of the authoritative parenting style on children (because of the use of praise and rules that are fair and carried out in a warm, caring manner) is that the child has learned that behaving and following the rules feels good and gets them positive attention.
According to research, kids of authoritative parents tend to do well in school and are self-confident and goal-oriented with well-developed social skills and emotional regulation.
How to Divide Childcare Responsibilities with Your Partner
Make a list of all the responsibilities involved in caring for the baby.
- Anticipate and communicate.
You must tell each other what you want and need.
With your preferences in mind, you and your partner can schedule household responsibilities.
- Shed traditional expectations.
It's easy to fall back on safe traditional roles. But doing so can leave one parent resentful and the other in the cold.
Make room for two experts and work together. Mothers and fathers have different parenting styles, but parents sometimes have difficulty respecting and valuing those differences.
- Consider hiring help.
- Let go of perfection.
- Reward yourself.
Communicating and being flexible with your spouse is critical to parenting your kids. Couples want their children to have the best outcomes and bond as a couple and family. Consider using Marriage in a Box for helpful suggestions and guidance in parenting kids and working through being on the same parenting page as a couple.
Marriage In a Box is an excellent resource for simple tools and tips professionals use for relationship issues. You can set goals, earn rewards, and find marriage coaching on the site. Check out the available kit and sources of information online.
It is innate in a child's nature to test limits, like doing something you don't want them to do or reaching for something they shouldn't. On the upside, setting boundaries with children is integral to growing up and becoming independent. Kids must flex boundary-pushing muscles and sometimes disagree with you to assert their individuality. As a parent, the mission is to teach kids to test their limits respectfully, without being defiant, and to know that you are in charge.
Benefits of Boundaries and Expectations.
Boundaries set by parents allow children to grow up to understand they can't always get their way and to be more patient and mature. The mild disappointment often brought about by boundaries can help children to develop empathy and disrupt the selfish thoughts that the world revolves around them. We all learn from struggling a bit; if we always acquiesce our parental authority to our children, it may not help them long-term. Children will have more maturity, resilience, and adaptability and feel safe and connected if you set boundaries.
Guidelines for Setting Boundaries.
● Plan to prevent problems. Thinking through a situation and all potential pitfalls can save a lot of aggravation later. Talk with your child before you attempt a new boundary to ensure you both understand the expectations for behavior.
● Build success into your expectations. Break large tasks into small pieces for younger children. Structure things to make the boundary doable. Remember, not all children are the same.
● Be sure that expectations are clear and positive. Focus on dos as opposed to don'ts. Explain the 'why' behind a limit. Keep expectations simple and easy to understand.
● Give choices. Children can grow into adults who can make intelligent life choices. Start teaching children how to make choices by offering lots of them.
● Model the behavior you'd like to see. Children will copy the adults in their lives. Set a good example.
● Expect setbacks and testing.
Examples of Summer Boundaries to Set
Discuss expectations for the Summer Routine.
Brainstorm together a list and favorite activities you want to participate in over the summer and write them down. Include some ideas for solo activities that are away from digital devices. Hang the list somewhere; you can refer to it throughout the summer. Talk about the changes in your routine while your family is together. Consider all times of day and include bedtime, mealtimes, and other transitions. This talk can help set expectations for the summer and provide a sense of stability children can thrive on.
Set a Daily Quiet Time.
Consider assigning a time of day to be quiet whenever you are around the house. Turn off devices and media. Get out blankets, books, and snacks, and have a time when the household can slow down and relax. Kids will adopt it as part of their summer routine if practiced initially.
Assign a List of Daily Summer Jobs.
Hopefully, children understand their household responsibilities throughout the year. Consider adding age-appropriate duties to the household since there is more time in the summer. If your child is eager to earn money, put together a list of jobs beyond their typical responsibilities, such as vacuuming the first-floor carpet for a fee. In this way, they will practice taking responsibility for a job and have a chance to earn money this summer while helping you out.
Encourage all family members to work together on chores. Teen children may engage in the world of work to gain job experience, make money, and learn the responsibilities and commitments required of an employee. Developing essential job skills and logging experience for their resume will help them acquire future jobs. A place or environment that gives your teen joy can help engage them in the learning and hard work required of a new entry-level position. Volunteering their time is also valuable in discovering their ability to contribute to others.
Help them prepare for summer activities with a checklist.
To set your children up for success in getting ready and out of the door quickly, consider using a checklist to remember what to put in their backpacks for day camp or the pool. Use a simple list of what's consistently needed (bug spray, suntan lotion, water bottle) to help them take responsibility for their preparation.
Establish Computer, TV, and Phone time limits.
Encourage kids to flourish using multiple non-screen activities in the summer. Emphasize, as a family, the reasons why it's important to limit screen time. Focus on the benefits of using time in other ways and be clear together about what limits you'll agree upon.
It is critical to set boundaries and provide structure to kids during the summer to offset developing destructive behaviors while having quality time and making memories. Consider using Marriage In a Box for helpful suggestions and guidance in setting limits with kids during summer vacation.
Marriage In a Box is an excellent resource that provides access to the simple tools and techniques professionals use for relationship issues. You can set goals, earn rewards ,and find marriage coaching on the site. Check out the available kit and sources of information online.
The birth of a baby is a joyous occasion in the majority of couple’s lives. However, most couples are unprepared for the demands of parenting. Every waking hour is spent feeding, changing, and tending to the needs of the baby. Parenting is challenging on your body and mind because you don’t have time to get proper sleep, eat healthy meals, exercise, socialize, or focus on keeping the home fires burning. Approximately two-thirds of couples see the quality of their relationship decline within three years of the birth of a child.
As children get older, the demands change to overseeing homework, and taking children to and from sports, ballet, music lessons, school functions, etc. You spend so much time taking care of their needs that it is easy to neglect your own. Yours and your partner’s needs take a backseat to the children. Don’t let the stress of parenthood destroy your marriage!
Get the proper amount of sleep.
Experts say that your body needs 7 to 8 hours of sleep every day to function at its best. When you don’t get enough sleep, you are sluggish, irritable, and less effective. It will take you twice as long to do things, you are likely to make more mistakes, and you’re prone to getting into arguments without proper rest. Set a bedtime and stick to it. Since it can take a while for your mind to calm down enough to sleep, start setting the stage for bedtime by turning off the technology at least an hour before bedtime.
Share the workload.
Parenting and taking care of the household is tough to do alone. In today’s world, both parents may work outside the home or in a home office, or one may work while the other takes care of the household. Either way, both partners need to share the responsibility for the children and the household. AS an example, one partner may decide to take care of the cooking, laundry, and daytime childcare. The other partner may agree to take care of the outdoor maintenance, garbage, and nighttime childcare. Both of you may decide to share the household cleaning once per week. Carve out some time to sit and talk and come up with an equitable division that plays to your strengths.
Plan your calendar wisely.
There are so many competing demands for your time, that you need to become very protective of your time as a family and as partners. Don’t pack your calendar so tightly with activities and events that you neglect to leave time for yourself, your family time, and your marriage. Learn to say no to invitations for friends and relatives that take up too much time. If your kid’s activities are packing the daily schedule to tightly, learn to limit the activities. Schedule a block of time for yourself every day to exercise and just unwind. Your partner should do the same. Planning helps control the chaos and reduce the stress.
Prioritize your time with your spouse.
You need to make time to enjoy being with your spouse. This is the glue that holds your marriage together. Set aside time each day to sit alone together and talk about you and your marriage. This is not time to discuss your obligations, vent or spend time on your cellphones. This is time to enjoy getting to know each other better by communicating. Every marriage needs time for intimacy and romance. Schedule a date night once a week and treat that time as sacred. Get a babysitter and go out or put the kids to bed and have a quiet evening in.
Removing the stress from a marriage with children takes both of you planning and working together. The rewards, however, are worth the effort. Your kids will have parents that are fully there, you and your spouse will enjoy your family and your relationship, and you each can breathe a sigh of relief.
Having children is one of the biggest joys in a couple’s life. Long before that bundle of joy comes into the world…the spending begins. Nursery decorating can be such a bonding experience for a young couple as they pick out paint colors, furniture, blankets, sheets, mobiles, baby monitors, clothing, car seats, bath accessories, etc. While children bring many happy moments of love, they also require a long-list of child-related expenses. Out of control child-related spending can unravel even the best of marriages.
According to a U.S. News & World Report, the cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in the U.S. in 2021 was $267,000, or more than $14,800 per year. Every parent wants their child to have the best of everything. However, some can go completely over the top in buying their child the newest and latest toys and clothes, hosting the best celebrations, and insisting on the top of the line everything for their child. Before you know it, you are overextended and stressed out over how to pay the stack of credit card bills. The average American family had $6,270 in credit card debt in 2021.
Credit cards, loans, buy now and pay later deals are NOT free money! Eventually, those cards, loans, and deals will come due, and you will need to come up with the money to pay them off. A recent survey of Certified Divorce Financial Analysts revealed that 22% of marriages end in divorce because of money issues. The good news is that there are steps you can take now to get out from under that debt and get your family spending under control.
Before any financial plan can be made to get out of debt, you will both need to be willing to do some work to understand where you want to be, where you are, and how you got there.
- Make a Financial Date.
Make a date with your spouse to discuss the family finances and financial goals. Approach the matter in a positive light.
“Honey, I feel like we have not really determined our long-term goals for ourselves and our family. I would like to set aside some time to talk about our future. What is a good day, time for us to do that?”
Notice that there is no anger in this statement. There is no blame. There is no pushiness or nagging. You married you spouse because you love them and want to spend the rest of your life with them. Now that you are married and have children, you simply want to discuss your future together. To do that, you need to start the discussion with “where do you want to go?”
- Remember and Share Your Dreams.
Remember when you were dating? I will bet that you spend hours talking about what you each wanted to do with your lives. Did you want to get an advanced degree? Did you want a house in the country or the city? Did you imagine beautiful family vacations in the mountains, or at the beach? What do you think your retirement will look like?
Spend some time talking about the things you really want out of your lives and write them down. By sharing goals, you are identifying the things that you feel are worth working and saving toward. Agree to have another financial date to talk about how you feel about money and set that date.
- Identify Your Financial Personality
In your next financial date, each of you should try to identify how you feel about money. Many marital fights about money occur because both spouses have completely opposite views about money. One spouse may spend for quality items without giving much thought to the budget or future goals. The other spouse may rein in their wants, try to control the budget, and focus on saving money for the future.
The saver might feel resentment over the effects of the uncontrolled spending of the spending spouse. The spender might be exasperated with the saving spouse’s constant nagging and lack of appreciation for the finer things of life for their children. Which one are you? Discuss how you feel with your spouse calmly and without anger. Agree to have another financial date to determine the state of your own finances.
- Find out what your financial status is.
You will each need to prepare ahead for this next financial date. Each spouse needs to make a list of their sources of income such as paychecks, alimony checks, investment dividends, or other. One spouse needs to gather the last 6 months of bank statements and the check register or online banking transaction register. The other spouse should gather the last 6 months of investment or savings account statements. Print off this simple budgeting sheet or copy it onto a piece of paper.
When you sit down for your next financial date, together you will fill out the budgeting worksheet by listing all your income and expenses and subtracting the total expenses from your total income. You now both now exactly where you stand financially and can discuss your feelings about it. Please do not “blame” or react in anger because they will only drive a wedge between you and your spouse. Instead focus on whether you suspected the results of the budgeting exercise or were surprised by it. How do the results affect your long-term goals? Agree to have another financial date to talk about how you can change those results by reducing expenses.
Every married couple must learn to work together continuously to solve their problems. Money problems are some of the biggest problems you will face. The key is to learn to face your problems together as a team and learn to communicate with each other about the “hard stuff.” While you want to solve the issue, you also want to preserve the bond of love and happiness in your marriage. Get started on the road to a stronger relationship with a free trial to some of the best exercises and tools used by professional marriage counselors.
Have you ever wondered how couples end up in divorce? It is not always because someone cheated on someone else. Marriages can become stale. Couples can get stuck repeating the daily procedures of life without interacting. Some parents become so focused on their children that they neglect their marriage in the process. Neglecting to take time to focus on your marriage, your spouse, your connection to each other is the most common reasons for divorce.
Parents need time to alone to recharge, reconnect, communicate, and focus on their romantic relationship which brought them together in the first place. You can be a desirable, interesting marriage partner AND a good parent. You don’t have to choose between being a good parent and a good partner.
Here are 5 ways to help your marriage stay strong by building in couple time.
- Schedule a talk with you kids to let them know that you value your role as a partner and parent. Children look up to their parents as role models for relationships between two people that love each other. It is important that you show your children that relationships require intentional effort to maintain harmony, happiness, and love. It is also essential that children don’t feel that you love them any less when you and your spouse decide to spend time alone together.
- Schedule Alone time with your spouse. A marriage study conducted by the University of Virginia showed that married couples who devote time together at least once per week not only have lower divorce rates, but also increased the quality of their marriage. Couples were happier, more committed to their marriage, and more stable parents.
Put a weekly date night on the calendar. Hire a babysitter for the kids or ask grandparents or relatives to watch them for a while. Take turns planning your date nights.
- Schedule time for romancing your spouse. Few marriages will last without that “spark” of romance that attracted you to each other in the first place. You need time to get your flirt on. Remember the butterflies you felt in the pit of your stomach when you anticipated going out with your “date”? See if you can’t re-create that feeling by teasing your spouse a little, sending naughty text messages, whispering in his ear as he leaves for work, or leaving a note on her bedstand, letting your spouse know how much you are looking forward to you date.
Get a hotel room for the evening or let the kids spend the night at grandma and grandpa’s house. Dress up, even if you are staying in. Take your time building the excitement of exploring every inch of your spouse’s body.
- Schedule time to talk with your spouse out of earshot of the kids. By talking privately to each other and communicating openly about how they are feeling, spouses build strong bonds that solidify their commitment to each other. This is important for the inevitable hard times that hit every marriage. When either of you are at your low point, talking can help you pull each other back up. Open communication on a regular basis will help head off misguided expectations and strengthen your bond.
Get up before the kids and have breakfast together to talk about what’s going on lately. Meet up for lunch while the kids are at school and discuss something on your mind.
- Schedule time to de-stress and recharge as a couple. Life can get stressful in a busy household. You may be working later at work. The kids’ activities may be taking more time than they used to. Keeping up with household chores and routines may be tending to take longer than normal. If married couples do not make regular time to relax and spend some unregulated time together, they will be too burned out to function well as parents.
Take a relaxing shower or bubble bath together. Give each other a massage. Cuddle up and take a nap together.
Getting creative and fostering opportunities to spend some time together as a couple will strengthen your emotional bond and create the climate for a lasting, happy marriage.
In many marriages, one spouse does the lion’s share of the work in parenting the children. Your kids are the most important job you have as a couple. Parents have the responsibility of ensuring their children turn out to be solid, upstanding, productive people.
A wedding ring does not magically make a couple happy, stable, and child ready. Raising a child is not just providing the income to feed and clothe your children. Children require a solid, intact family structure and positive parenting behaviors to have positive impact on their present and future wellbeing. Parenting is a 24-hour endeavor that takes work from both partners.
How is your parenting going?
Are you leaving the heavy lifting to your spouse?
Do you expect your spouse to meet the kids’ physical, emotional, and spiritual needs?
In a marriage, both parents need to pool their time, money and energy and make their children more of the focus of their home. If you are not used to being the one that tends to the children, start by asking your spouse, “How can I help?” When you get home from work, take some time to decompress and then offer to:
- Entertain the kids while dinner cooks, or
- Takeover “bath time” with the kids, or
- Help the kids with homework.
Both parents can bond with each other and the kids by:
- Teaching your kids household chores like making beds, folding laundry, picking up and putting away toys, taking out trash, washing dishes.
- Family yard work like raking leaves, pulling weeds, or planting or watering flowers.
- Playing games, sports, on playgrounds
- Working together in community projects
- Reading stories at bedtime
How much time do you spend with your kids?
Parenting does not come with a handbook. You don’t require special training. However, you may not know where to start. Most parenting behaviors are intuitive. Children do best in a stable family environment where well-adjusted parents have established consistent routines for the home. Think about what you wanted from your parents when you were a child.
- Unconditional Love. Children need to know that you love each other, and you love them no matter what the circumstances are. You children are watching how you treat your spouse and will someday model that same behavior in their relationships. Do openly hug and kiss? Do you speak affectionately to your spouse? Children need frequent hugs, kisses, and words of encouragement also.
- Talk with Your Kids. You can learn a lot about your child by spending time in conversation with them. Ask them questions on their level. What did you do today? How did your day at school go? What is your favorite princess? Who is your favorite superhero? Not only will you learn what your child is interested in, you will likely be entertained. “Dad, did you know they have lions, tigers, and “Pippohotamuses” at the zoo?”
- Teaching basic life skills. Children are not born knowing how to eat properly, clean their clothes, clean up their rooms, do their homework, and help around the house. It is the parent’s job to train and teach their children. Parents model and talk to their children about appropriate life skills. “Hold you fork lie a big boy.” “Hey, come and help me take out the trash.” “I want to show you how to wash dishes so you can start helping out around the house.”
- Get actively involved with your kids. Get involved in community activities such as soccer, cheerleading, gymnastics, or other sports, Take part in academic science fairs, debate clubs, or international days in local schools and other academic institutions. Volunteer for family projects to help the needy in the community. Remember that adage, “the family that plays together, stays together?” It’s true.
Overall, intact families, where both spouses share the parenting, tend to be more stable. Parents tend to be more involved in their children’s lives and are more highly invested in their children’s success.
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