If you are parenting on your own, I want to assure you that you can raise perfectly sound, healthy, happy kids. You would be the first to admit there are extra challenges with having to do so much more on your own but you can do a great job of parenting. However, if you are parenting as team, the health of your relationship with your partner really impacts your kids. In fact, when I was recently asked for a list of my top parenting tips, I put ‘put your spouse first’ right near the top.
“What!? Ahead of your kids!?” It is not a competition. It does not mean taking love away from your children to give it to your partner; instead, more love between the parents usually means there is a lot more love in the home and that ‘spills’ onto the children.
It was advice I received early on in my parenting and I think it has worked well: as a dad, the best thing I could do for my kids was to love their mum, and I am sure the advice works the other way around too. I never found there was any conflict in my affections. Maybe in a dysfunctional, sputtering relationship there could be, but I have never been thrown into a dilemma where I had to choose between loving my wife or loving my kids.
Kids thrive in the security of knowing their parents love each other. When you make your spouse the priority for your greetings and affection, it helps kids realise that they are not the centre of the universe and not even the centre of the family: the real centre of the home is the love between Mum and Dad and I think they get a sense of security from that.
Two people are always going to have different ideas about all sorts of things, including how to do parenting, but let your kids see that you are ‘working from the same page’ as much as possible. Support and cheer for each other. This is not just an ego-stroking exercise: if kids detect disparities between parents’ rules and standards they will often try to exploit that gap, playing off the differences between you with amazing political skill!
I know I sometimes get it wrong. It is sometimes tempting to ‘cross the floor’ and side with your kids against your partner but, unless it is something truly crazy, wait for a good moment when the kids are out of earshot to raise your objections. Be especially cautious of showing contempt: we all deserve to be respected, especially in our home, and I can think of few things more toxic to the happiness of the family than encouraging derision from children for their parents.
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