Faith in Parenting

Whenever my daughter sees my husband and I hugging, she runs up and presses herself in between us. It’s a great joke to her, and she giggles the entire time she’s working to interrupt us.

While that’s cute, it’s also important for our kids to know that our marriages are priority relationships. Today as we were driving home from preschool, my daughter mentioned that Daddy came by to say hello to her (since he works right upstairs!). And we got to chatting about how “Wasn’t that nice of Daddy? He sure does love you.”

And she said, “Yeah, and he sure does love his WIFE!” It was one of those adorable moments when out of a four-year-old pops this wisdom you didn’t know was there. She gets it!

So here are some tips for how we can all practice the art of making our marriages a visible priority - even in the busy, chaotic midst of raising kids, working, and more:

• Let your kids see that you’re affectionate with one another.
• Get a regular babysitter so that you can have a “date night” together out of the house.
• Ask (older kids) for privacy when needed to work out disagreements, discuss hot topics, etc.
• Demonstrate forgiveness and letting go of old grudges.
• Be kind and considerate of one another.
• Speak kind works about and toward one another.
• Be clear in stating your own needs, and give your partner a chance to meet those needs.
• Create time and space to focus your attention on one another (turn off all the other distractions).

These are just a few tips. What has been most meaningful for you personally? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 3:38 pm and is filed under support, children. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.