It's possible to restore the balance and not have to reduce your commitment to the activities you feel are essential to your child. You just have to communicate that one of your strongest commitments is your marriage. Here's how:
- Make time for the two of you. Even just 15 minutes of after dinner conversation while the kids clean up, or, even better, some skin to skin contact before sleep might work. A parent's weekend away every six months may do as much for the kids as a family trip, since it increases the likelihood that they'll have married parents. That's at least as valuable as karate lessons.
- Respect your adult interactions. Don't lets the kids interrupt if you and your spouse are talking. Stop what you're doing to greet each other when one of you return home. Make a fuss over adult's birthdays. Do everything you can to communicate that "your dad/mum is important to me."
- Share adults only activities. Marriages become stronger when the two of you are companions and conspirators. Reserve weekly tennis time without the kids. Design and build a bookshelf. Make any overlapping interest your joint activity.
- Put the children activities first, but occasionally put marriage first, explaining, "Mum needs me."
- Stand firm whenever kids complain about these changes. Their short term disappointment reinforces the long term message: Our family extends out to embrace our children. But its strength rest in the relationship that centers it - the one my wife and I have with each other.
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