Marriage can be a tricky thing. Committing to spend the rest of your life with the same person, regardless of the ups and downs that will come in your life together, can bring out both the best and the worst in anyone. And when you add children to the mix, things can get even more complicated. But while you might feel the pressure to teach your children all the things they need to know before becoming adults themselves, one thing you might not realize you and your partner are teaching them is what it means to be married. So to help ensure that you’re sharing the right information with your children, here are three things that your kids are going to learn about marriage from watching you and your partner.
Behavior To Model
The way you interact with your partner and how that affects the functionality of your home is a big thing that your children pick up on. Because of this, it’s important that you strive to model appropriate behavior for your children. According to Jenna McCarthy, a contributor to Parents.com, children will start to model the behavior of their parents before they can even speak. With this in mind, you might want to be a little more cognizant of what you and your partner are doing and saying in front of your children and what those things could be teaching them about having healthy relationships.
What A Bad Marriage Can Produce
While you should try to be showing your children the ideal ways that they should act in a family or a marriage, you’ll also undoubtedly eventually do something in front of your children that you’re not proud of. Especially if your marriage is going through a tough time, you could be showing your children exactly what an unhealthy marriage relationship looks like. According to Sean Grover, a contributor to Psychology Today, unhealthy marriages will teach your children negative things like tension, bad sense of self, fears of intimacy, and issues with mood. Because you don’t want your children to have to deal with problems such as these, you might want to seriously consider divorce if this is the type of environment your children are seeing on a very consistent basis.
Healthy Or Unhealthy Problem Solving
Some of the life skills that your children will learn from watching their parents interact include problem-solving skills. Depending on how well you and your partner work through issues together, your children might later become good or bad problem solvers when it comes to relationships. According to Everyday Health, some things you should try to show your children about problem-solving include how to communicate, respect, and understand someone they’re having conflict with.
If you’ve wondered how your marriage really affects your children, use the information mentioned above to help you learn just how important a healthy marriage is to the life and livelihood of your kids.