Date your spouse? How does dating have anything to do with parenting? Apparently quite a lot.
In an article written by Arbinger Company, they look at how we can best teach and correct our children. If the basics are not in place, it will be impossible to teach and correct. You’ve all heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid, right? The Arbringer Company presents a hierarchy pyramid in their article, not the pyramid of needs but the pyramid of parenting needs. It looks like this:
It’s kind of tiny, but right at the top of the pyramid, there is a section called correction, meaning the correction of our children. It is so tiny for a reason because if we follow this pyramid, we will be spending very little time correcting our children. In fact, if the other things are not in place, correcting our children will not be of any help at all. If we need to correct our children’s behavior, we need to be effective teachers. If we want to teach our children, we need to have a good parent/child relationship. The key to a good parent/child relationship is to have a good relationship with your spouse. The relationship to your spouse is affected by “the way that you are”.
Now, I don’t want to talk about each one of these levels in depth. I will, however, encourage to read the article by the Arbinger Company: The parenting Pyramide where all of these levels are talked about in depth. But I do want to talk a bit about the relationship with your spouse.
Now, just because someone has written an article about something, doesn’t mean that it is true. I have a very good relationship with my mother, who raised me and my sisters mostly alone after my parents divorced. I have a very good relationship with my own children even though their father died when they were really small. I too raised them on my own for a long time. I know many single moms who have great relationships with their children. However, there is no doubt that there are more challenges when raising children on your own than when you are two.
In their book Marriage & Family, The Quest for intimacy, Laurer and Laurer point out several difficulties single parents are likely to endure in contrast to couples raising their children. Some of these difficulties are: less happiness, more stress, suffer more fatigue, and having a higher rate of poverty than any other social group (Laurer & Laurer p 31).
What I am trying to say is that I believe that a single parent family can also reach the top of this parenting pyramid, teaching and correcting their children in a good way. However, I believe that it is easier when both parents are involved. I am convinced spouses that have a great relationship make the best base for a happy family. I can only speak from my own experience, but I know that when I have a hard time with my husband, I get so consumed by the conflict that we are having that I can’t see a lot of the other things going on in my life. I don’t see my children like I normally do. I know when the opposite is the case, we have a great time together and understand each other well, I have a lot more energy and time to build my relationship with my children.
When I think back on my childhood, I think of a picture that I have of me sitting on my father’s arm, with his other arm around my mother. We were 6 siblings, so you can imagine that time alone with mom AND dad was not something that happened often, and even though this moment only lasted for a few seconds it meant the world to me. I felt like the luckiest girl in the whole world.
Sadly, a few years later, they got divorced, but I still remember this feeling of being surrounded by the two people that meant the most to me, and that they loved each other. I wish all children would experience this.
Our relationship with our spouse is worth fighting for, not only for our own happiness but for our children, and also because our relationship with them can be so much stronger. So let’s fight for our spouse, let’s go on dates again, like when we first met.
I love this video of Pastor Bryan Sparks where he talks ENTHUSIASTICALLY about how there is NO excuse for not dating. NO EXCUSE. Time, money, babysitters, there is no excuse and you should prioritize it. You can check out the video on this link:
Let us listen to this advice. I am talking as much to me as to anyone else reading this. Don’t delay, ask your spouse out today. You are doing your children a great favor.
References
The Arbinger Company (1998). Parenting Pyramid. Retrieved from https://content.byui.edu/file/91e7c911-20c5-4b9f-b8fc-9e4b1b37b6fc/1/Parenting_Pyramid_article.pdf
Intentional Parenting 