Make Your Marriage a Parenting Tool
Parenting by Example
Everything you say and do to your children has the potential to impact on their development. You probably know that already. But did you know that everything you say and do to your spouse also impacts on your child’s development? In fact, the way you interact with your partner shows your child how to function in intimate relationships. It shows him or her how to show love, how to communicate, how to manage anger and much more. The way you live your marriage becomes a pattern ingrained in your child’s brain. Even against his will, he will find himself repeating patterns from your relationship in his own life. His partner will thank you or curse you, depending on what you’ve instilled in his psyche in the “relationship” section of his mind.
Children Live Our Marriage
Your marriage is not a private affair between you and your spouse. Certainly there are private aspects but by and large, your marital relationship is public property in your home. This means that anyone living in your home lives your marriage with you. The ones who are most impacted by this arrangement are your children.
Your children live and breathe your marriage. How many fights a month would you like your daughter to have with her husband? I’ll bet you say “none.” After all, why would you want your daughter to have frequent conflict in her marriage? How many fights do you have monthly (daily, weekly, annually…) with your spouse? Can you teach her how fights are avoided if you haven’t figured that out yourself? Can your daughter sit by your table for twenty years watching you insult and hurt each other and walk away knowing how to be kind and sensitive in provocative or stressful situations? Of course, it is possible that she’ll do better than you for a myriad of reasons: better inborn “nature,” other healthy models that she can observe, her own free will to improve herself and your prayers for her, among others reasons. However, this does not exempt YOU, the parents, from providing the best education you can offer. Is your marriage the best educational opportunity you can offer?
How Do You Handle Conflict?
When you’re upset with your spouse, do you sulk? Do you slam doors? Do you stop talking for days on end? Do you yell, swear, insult or otherwise become verbally abusive? What’s your style?
Whatever you do is being carefully watched. It is being absorbed. In order to teach your kids how to communicate respectfully under conditions of stress and provocation, you must do it yourself. Has your spouse hurt your feelings? Can you just tell him so? “Ouch,” you state when harshly criticized. “I understand you’re annoyed with me. Do you think you can tell me about it just a little more kindly? I do want to hear what you have to say.” Letting your kids hear how you handle a provocation gives them skills that can help them enjoy a lifetime of loving relationships. Similarly, your failure to show them this skill can lead them to a lifetime of pain, hurt and loss.
How Do You Negotiate?
Are you flexible? Do you give in almost always? Or almost never? What is your style? In a healthy relationship, spouses must be able to give up and give in about 50% of the time. They must be able to get what they want the other 50%. Modeling the martyr will do your children no good. Assertiveness—the ability to ask for and receive what one wants and needs—is a skill that builds happy relationships. However, it must be matched with compassion and the ability to compromise. The “my way or the highway” philosophy achieves short term benefits at the cost of long term relationship misery. No one enjoys living with a bully and few people put up with it nowadays. Showing your children how you respect each others wishes while you simultaneously respect your own, can help them function in a healthy way in their relationships. Win some, lose some. It will work for all of you.
How Do You Show Love?
Do your children see the two of you working on your relationship? Do they see you spending time together, laughing together, helping each other, nurturing each other and generally being kind and affectionate toward each other? Watching you will give them a “love map.” Through listening to you and your spouse compliment each other, encourage each other and support each other, they will learn skills that will help their own relationships feel warm, safe and loving. Kids need to see how couples make love happen. No matter what your spouse is doing, think about your own behavior. If kids can see at least one healthy model, they will have the opportunity to learn. Two parents who provide a model of cold, unaffectionate or angry patterns of communicating will raise children with a deficient love model that will fail to serve them well in their adult relationships.
How Do You Handle Responsibility?
What does it mean to be a partner? Healthy relationships consist of two people who are willing to carry their weight: they both contribute to the work load and they both function independently. Children learn how to be a responsible, and therefore loveable, marriage partner by watching their parents get up in the morning by themselves, do their jobs at home and at work, pay their bills and carry out all other tasks required in running a home. Irresponsible partners who make messes for others to clean up cause aggravation in their spouses and consequently become less likeable and less loveable. Irresponsible partners fail to do their share or require constant supervision from a more adult partner. They may fail to manage family assets properly (overspending or gambling) or fail to take care of themselves physically (by indulging in health threatening addictions, for example), or fail to protect the marriage (by engaging in extra-marital affairs). Irresponsibility and conflict go together to create unhappy relationships. Children who live with two responsible parents have an excellent chance of becoming responsible adults themselves. This will increase their relationship satisfaction throughout their lives.
Watch Yourself Because Your Kids are Watching
These are only some of the ways in which your marriage behavior affects your children’s long-term development. Keep your eye on your own behavior (not your spouse’s behavior!) and ask yourself: is the model I’m providing one that will serve my kids well? Will they be happy if they copy me?
When your marital behavior is at the standard that your kids really need to see, a surprising “side-effect” will occur: your marriage will improve and YOU will enjoy the benefits! Try it and see for yourself.
