Comments on: The Marriage Challenge http://theattachedfamily.com/?p=2462 Connecting with our children for a more compassionate world. Wed, 22 May 2013 10:05:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Elaine http://theattachedfamily.com/?p=2462&cpage=1#comment-1825 Elaine Fri, 24 Feb 2012 08:33:52 +0000 http://theattachedfamily.com/membersonly/?p=2462#comment-1825 It is tough. Breastfeeding means having your baby around you all the time. Breastfeeding a toddler at bedtime means being there every bedtime for your toddler. Working (to earn a living) means that you leave your child with a nanny therefore any remaining time in evenings and weekends you feel you ought to be spending with your child and handing your child over to a nanny at a weekend after a whole week feels like you are neglecting them. Working and child rearing and night parenting is tiring, which means when you do get a free hour or two in the evening, you just want to sleep. When baby gets up at weekends in the morning, so do you. Time spent with your partner with a child around ends up being about the child and not about the couple. Time alone as a couple = zero. Couple = exhausted parents. Recipe for disaster. If couple break up, child suffers emotionally. No way out.

What I am starting to realise, with the help of my husband, is that it is better to take time alone, use the nanny even at weekends to get extra rest and then spend time as a couple. A few hours of happy parent spent with child is better than a few more hours of exhausted unhappy parent spent with child. If that means that I spend even less time with my child (work time plus weekend rest time plus couple time) then so be it. My child needs happy parents who have a good relationship with each other.

]]> By: Stephanie http://theattachedfamily.com/?p=2462&cpage=1#comment-69 Stephanie Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:13:20 +0000 http://theattachedfamily.com/membersonly/?p=2462#comment-69 For API Reads we’ll be reading The Five Languages of Love for Marriage in December. So we’ll be able to expand upon this subject. For my husband and I we did experience the lack of marriage the first 3 years. Our daughter was very medically high needs and it really left no time to be together since I was so drained. My husband was so understanding and would actually ground me because he would be the one to say, “this is only now, this isn’t forever”. We spend time talking to each other, giving hugs, respecting each other, watching movies together, and trying to meet each other’s needs. We never really need a date together since we spend time together in the evening. I believe a bedtime is very important for the kid(s) because it provides that evening time to be together.

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