Teach your children how to Love

I married my best friend, as most people do. And as the years go by, most people will still say they are married to that same best friend but they have kids, jobs,  and have to try to snatch time together after the kids are asleep. They don’t intentionally demonstrate their absolute love for each other on a daily basis, and never in front of the kids.

But why not? I don’t mean he should lay you out on the dining room table ten minutes after the family meal, but showing the kids that you crave time together is a good thing. It’s even a great thing!

Most of us hope to raise well-adjusted children who will grow to marry their best friend and find happiness and love throughout adulthood. We hope someone will love our child and shower them with that love daily. But how will our children do this if all we show them is our busy lives, devoted to them and work. If we save our love for after they’ve been tucked in, how will they know what to do? Again, I obviously don’t mean inviting your children in to watch! But really, if you never pit your marital relationship first, how will the next generation know how to love?

My husband and I frequently take holidays together, often at home. Our kids go to Gramma and Grampa’s, and we take a week off work too. Most families would use this time to be together, but we believe that showing our children that mom and dad want to be together, just us because we love each other, is good for them and good for us.  Our children know we like to have a honeymoon every year, they also know we lock our bedroom door in the middle of the day on a hot Saturday because we’re tanning together on our deck. They know we LOVE to be together, and they know we love them because we loved each other so much we made them!

My husband and I would truly prefer to be only together than with anyone else, even our kids. Don’t get me wrong, we adore them! We are so proud of the young people they are and the amazing adults they will become. But the fact is, when they do leave us we will be just us again. So if we didn’t put any effort into not just maintaining our relationship but building it, we could find ourselves very lost in a few short years. So while we do have our children with us, we relish the family times, the soccer games, homework, dates, parties and heart breaking break-ups. But at the end of the day, we still have each other and delight in each new day together.

So hopefully, when the time comes to walk one down the aisle to her waiting groom and welcome a daughter -in-law into our family, our children will have learned to cherish the first love that makes all the new loves to come, and to continue to build that love over the years, as we have.