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of To Raise Happy Kids, Put Your Marriage First. “Many couples believe their marriage is strong because they rarely argue,” he says. “But the real marriage killer is when we distance ourselves from our spouse to keep the peace: We throw ourselves into parenting or work to avoid dealing with issues that cause conflict.” And if you and your spouse become distant, it
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places pressure on your kids to fulfill your emotional needs. After all, when you put your marriage
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on the back burner, your kids can sense the lack of closeness between you. “Kids
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whose parents’ relationship has cooled are more likely to have behavioral or academic problems than kids of happy couples,” says Philip Cowan, PhD, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied families for decades with his wife, psychologist Carolyn Pape Cowan, PhD. Think of your relationship as the emotional environment in which your kids live. Just as you want them to breathe
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clean air and drink pure water, you want them to grow up in a loving atmosphere. “Even if you can’t see yourself going out on a date for yourselves, do it for your kids,” says Cowan. Consider the following ways to make your marriage more of a priority.
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Schedule a Weekday Update You always find time to listen to your best friend when she needs to vent. But if your husband seems irritable when he comes home, you might just hand him the baby and rush out the door to do errands. In these days of tag-team parenting, those lazy hours spent talking about everything can feel like a distant memory. To stay close, Code suggests that you each share a highlight of your day (like when your son winked at you across the room) and a low point (that parking ticket). Discussing your worst moments may seem like a downer when you have limited time together, but when you understand what the other person is going through, you’ll be more of a team.
Don’t Coast No matter how great your marriage was before you had kids, you can’t just leave it on autopilot now. “A lot of family life is about putting out fires,” says Linda
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