Every weekend I like to throw up a question someone sends in and let you readers have a go at it. This week a reader asks about stewarding our time, as parents and as a couple.
My husband and I have 2 small children. I want to spend as much time with them as I can because they are only little for a short time. He says we should be spending more time with each other and send the kids to someone’s house more often because once they are grown and out of the house it will only be him and me. I love him very much and do enjoy spending time with him, but I also like family time. What should I do?
What do you think, ladies? How do you negotiate this?
I wrote an article called, Are You a Better Wife or a Better Mom? that speaks to this, as well.
Don’t forget this summer: The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex makes a great gift for any woman about to get married!
Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 25 years and happily married for 20! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 8 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
It’s a matter of balancing time. There should be a balanced mix of mommy with kids, daddy with kids, mommy and daddy with kids, and mommy and daddy alone time. How this family is balancing their time, I don’t know. It may be that the mom IS spending too much time with the kids and not giving enough time to her husband. She should seriously consider that this may be the case and listen to her husband’s thoughts on this. Every marriage needs regular couple time where they are alone together and can talk and unwind together. A marriage won’t thrive on only “family time.” On the other hand, if the husband wants to send the kids somewhere every Saturday so it can be just the two of them all day, that’s not balanced either. The children need to spend time with their father and to see their parents interacting with each other and with them. Family time is important too. Sending the kids to someone else’s house is a valid option on occasion, but there are other ways to get couple time (such as after the kids are in bed, during nap time, or while they play during the day).
Easy, spend more time with him. Sounds like his love language is quality time, so make sure you two have quality time together. Go on dates. Go on bike rides. Go for walks. Take weekend vacations without the kids. Make sure your sex life is great.
This is not an either/or situation, but if your husband is complaining that you’re not spending enough time together, then you’re probably not spending enough time together.
Now, if he never wants to do anything as a family, then you have an entirely different problem, but that’s not the impression I get from the question.
Finally, it is very important for women to understand that while we men love our children, we do not bond with them the same way you do. Children can not and do not meet our emotional needs, that is why we married you. 🙂
So, love your kids, but don’t make them the center of the universe. If you neglect the relationship with your husband until the kids move out of the house, then don’t be surprised if you end up as a divorced empty nester. It happens. A lot. And it doesn’t need to be that way.
Absolutely correct. Jesus first, husband second, kiddos last (but not least). All the quantity mommy time you can give the kids won’t mean a thing if they aren’t growing up in a family where daddy and mommy love each other and the kiddos know it. Do you want a husband whom you love and who loves you, or who feels like nothing more than a used wallet and has no reason to hang around other than “for the sake of the children?”
As a mom of 3, it is difficult to manage to spend just the right amount of time with each family member. But it could be the husband of the questioner thinks like I do.
My husband enjoys playing video games. It takes a large portion of his time at home. He believes that we are “spending time together” because he is sitting in the living room while the rest of us are in the house. I believe that he needs to turn off the tv and “spend time with us”. (we have gotten this mostly worked out so that both of us feel we have the right amount of time together)
My husband has been deliberate about making sure we go walking just about every night that he is home. Without the kids. He takes me for rides on the motorcycle and we go get a drink at a local fast food place and chat for a while before heading back home.
One of the biggest needs a child has is to know their parents love one another. If there is only a focus on the children, how will they ever see that love toward the spouse?
I like this last comment…. spending time with your spouse inadvertently is ALSO doing something for your children! They do need to see good, loving, Godly marriages modelled for them!
Yes, it’s important to spend time with your kids and enjoy them while they’re little, BUT, it’s also important to make time to spend as a couple. Your husband is right, someday the kids are going to be grown and gone. My attitude about that is I don’t want to turn and look at my husband when our last child has moved out and go “Um…hi? Who are you?” It’s important to maintain the bond you and your husband have. A marriage is like a living, breathing organism – you can’t just put it aside for a few years. It’ll starve. It needs to be fed and cared for. And it sets a good example for your children, too. After all, you’re the very first impression they get of what a marriage looks like. 🙂
I heard it said once that the love you have for your child is vastly different than the love you have for your husband. You have to love your children in a way that they will grow up independently because they will one day leave you. Your relationship with your husband has to be cultivated with love in a way that will keep him around forever. it was explained more eloquently than that! But I hope I got the point across. Time with your children is important, but you should love your husband more than our children.
Yea, I think if he’s raising it, there is a problem with balance. Even if she feels like they have a good balance, he likely doesn’t. It might be helpful for them both to write out what they perceive to be the situation (how often they spend time as a couple, as a family, and each spouse with just kids), and what they would like the situation to be, and then to be really open to reading (or hearing) what the other person thinks.
It actually sounds like they are both feeling like the balance is skewed: him that there isn’t enough couple time and her that there isn’t enough family time. It might be worthwhile for them to make deliberate once-a-month dates to start and go from there: both family dates and couple dates. Once a month they all take a Saturday and go to the zoo, or something, altogether, and once a month the kids go to grandma’s house (or whomever) and just the two of them spend the day and, probably, overnight together. Once they have it working for a few months, they could reassess from there.
Since she is asking the question, it will be really important for her to listen and really hear him and what it is that he’s missing. If the discussion is always, “Babe, I wish we’d spend more time together,” and her response is, “Honey, I want to spend as much time with the kids as I can while they’re little,” or “We spend lots of time together,” he won’t be as open to hearing her plans for family time. If her response is something like, “Can you tell me more about how that might look?” it opens the door for a discussion.
Anyway, just some thoughts.
Why does it have to be an either-or thing? Why can “couple time” not happen when the kids are in the h ouse? We have five children, ages 1, 3, 7, 10 and 12. There are times when a date night happens and those moments when it is just the two of us are precious and very important, but neither my husband nor I feel like we need to ship our children off for an entire night (or day) to maintain a close relationship – much less an entire weekend. I want our children to see us interacting, being loving, supporting one another, etc. Four of the five are boys and it is *so* important for them to see us interacting together as a loving couple and for them to see Pop treating Mama well.
That time together is very important too, but I’ve really never felt like we needed to leave everyone behind for more than a few hours to keep those ties strong. We talk constantly; love continually; and appreciate fully and often the many little things and services that each does for the other.
I really like Tara’s thoughts on this topic. I found myself rankling at so many seemingly one-sided comments about filling HIS tank and the (seeming) lack of concession that Mom has needs to be met (keeping close ties within her family overall) as well. In modern society there is so much focus put on having “me” time and on having “time away from the kids” and our kids are getting left by the wayside and not having that loving commitment modeled for them. They are an afterthought to so many dads. I hope that the dad involved in this question sees just as much need for family togetherness (true, focused together time, NOT focused-on-the-TV/iPhone/computer-“together” time) as he does time for the couple to be together without his young children. The first time my oldest son went across the street alone to play with new friends, my heart cheered for him – and it also broke as I recognized both his need for monitored independence and a stretching of the bonds of our relationship. I get my time without them as they age. I nurture my relationship with my husband through countless little “gifts” (he makes me fresh coffee every morning, we hold hands, I rub his shoulders and make him fresh bread, etc.) throughout the day while my youngest children still need me close by. Hopefully this family can find a similar balance.
loved your thoughts, Tara 🙂 They really got me thinking!
It’s wonderful that you all spend good quality family time! When our 5 kids were small, we did spend a lot of family time together. It was very special! I wouldn’t give up those days for anything!
Fast forward several years. The children are beginning to leave home, get jobs, be involved in more school related activities, etc. Now is the time that we are spending more time alone together. When this all started, we didn’t particularly know what we wanted to do together. We loved our family time from so long ago, but things were changing. Long story short, we are now spending more time away from home to grow our marriage than we thought we would ever do. We try to get away for a few days every 6 months or so. This has so helped us as a couple to reconnect and spend special time with each other. Our kids call us “gross” all the time, but in reality, we think we are modeling what a good marriage looks like and what it takes to make it work. They’ve seen us at our lowest at counseling and at our best holding hands, sneaking kisses and hugs. We think they like what they see despite their typical-teen comments. 🙂
All this to say to anyone who has doubts about whether leaving the kids for a few hours or a few days is a good thing: There will come a day when it’s back to just you and your spouse. You have to find what works for you. Just be open to whatever that thing that “works” is. I would have never thought that the idea of getting away alone with my husband would make me so giddy! (I was the mom who seldom left her kids 10 years ago) My dear husband spent a good amount of time hinting and flat out saying that he would like time alone with me. His wise words have changed our marriage forever!
Wherever you are in life right now, may not be where you need to be 10 years from now. 🙂
I agree with the previous comments. Your marriage is so important to your kids. It’s worth it to them to get “shipped off” to someone who loves them house and spend the night knowing that mom and dad are having a date night. Our kids (5, 3, 1) are now asking (well, the older two) to go spend the night at their grandparents so we can have a date night. They like the time with their grandparents and I think they like mom and dad better when we pick them up 🙂 Maybe they don’t have people around who the mom is comfortable leaving the kids with. Plan date nights after the kids go to bed, play a game, roast smores, read a book together, do something to connect whenever you can!
I used to babysit for a family that the kids would tell their mom and dad it was time for them to go on a date so I could come over and play. 🙂
Hubby and i have 4 kids. He wants to spend time as a family together. I want dates or getaways just the two of us once in a while. Guess who wins this. He does. Let’s not only take our kids, but the babysitter, too! She helps me watch the kids, but instead of getting alone time with hubby, he dotes on her as our guest. (Nothing creepy, just trying to be a good host….she is like a niece to us.)
So, as the one on your hubby’s side of the arguement, I say please listen to him! I am STARVING to feel like a wife and not always a mom. Parents are better parents when they take time to be spouses.
Katie, you might just need to plan a surprise night away and not tell him until he gets home from work. Have the kids gone already and have a candlelight dinner waiting or something. Once that happens a time or two, he might realize how wonderful it is.
I don’t know….he gets mighty upset if he comes home and his children aren’t there and he hates surprises. My surprise 30th birthday party for him blew up in my face when he made plans for a mountain trek with the boys instead. His mother tried surprising him for a birthday at a restaurant by arranging for the staff to sing to him and present him with a cake. He seethed and told her never ever do that again. From experience, I can tell you it would be a wasted evening.
Here’s what I’ve decided about my time. http://www.thismomsdelight.com/2012/08/xxx/
I feel the same way. My husband and I have worked out a compromise. Make a regular date night! It can be as little as once or twice a month, but it should just be the two of you. The more dates you have, the more you can mix it up and meet up with friends, etc, but make sure you designate time just for the two of you. Start with dinner, or go to a movie, sporting event, or concert… but it’s very important to stay connected as a couple, and that is hard to do if you don’t spend time alone together. Get a sitter, or send the kids to Grandma’s for the night. Dress up and make it special. Your kids can stand one night away, and so can you… it’s good for all of you! And very worth it. Have fun with your man!
Thanks for your honesty with this question. I think you should be honored that your husband wants to spend time with you. Some men would rather spend their time with the boys or other women. He wants you, and while I’m sure he loves the kids, he’s still excited about being with his bride. I’m sure your husband wants you both to enjoy the children. As yourself, I have two small children, but I jump at the chance to get out alone with my husband. It’s refreshing and it causes me to admire him all over again.
Give your man some time because as your kids get older your time with him will be much shorter.
I agree with the other commenters. If your husband thinks you need more grown up time together, then you need more grown up time together. Just like if you felt that y’all needed to talk more or something like that – even if he felt fine about how much you were talking, you’d want him to talk more because that’s what you needed. Have lots of fun family adventures…and save time/money for some great Mommy/Daddy adventures, too!
My husband and I have four kids and no family in town that can keep them all for an overnight stay. We have “date night” every night when the kids go to bed. It has become so important to us that we use our time wisely during the day. No TV, we love on our kids and get our work done so we can have our time together when they are in bed. This way when we do get some time alone together out of the house without kids it’s a bonus because we aren’t starving for time together. Our time together at night is a simple thing and I’m sure that that isn’t possible or necessary for everyone but it’s a blessing (and needed) for us. Now we are about to celebrate our ten year anniversary and some friends of ours ARE going to keep our kids overnight. I know that it will be awesome but neither of us feel like its necessary, just a cool perk because we make time for each other every day. So my point here is only that if you aren’t wanting to take the kids to sitters frequently you can still have wonderful dates with your husband right at home. My kids learned that night time was our time pretty quickly. I hope this helps.
Yes, this is a good point. We rarely get the opportunity to go on date nights or weekends away. But we make sure to spend our evenings together, and try to be deliberate about turning off the computers and actually focusing on each other. I think the quality of time together can be important, too. Like if we have a quiet time together and spend some time together in bed talking and snuggling, it feels as though we have had a whole evening together, even if it’s just an hour after the kids are in bed.
I do look forward to a season of life when we have more time/money to have more regular date nights and weekends away! But we are content with the season of life that we’re in right now, and make the most of it as often as we can.
I totally agree that if your hubby is asking for more couple time, you need to find a way to make it happen. BUT I don’t think that means you have to leave the kids with a sitter. My hubby and I make it a point to spend at least *some* time together alone- behind closed and locked doors- EVERY day (usually at night after everyone is asleep). A lot of times on the weekends, we’ll put the kids to bed and cuddle up to watch a movie together. I can’t even tell you when the last time we had a leave-the-kids-and-go-out date was, and you know what? I don’t mind a lick, and he doesn’t, either. We both see how very quickly our children are growing up and realize we have such little time with them. It’s not a necessity to get a sitter and leave the kids if you want to have alone time. You can do that at home with everyone under the same roof. I look at it this way… If I leave my kids with someone, I usually end up worrying about them and missing them (and hubby does, too). We end up talking about the kids the whole time. With them safely in their rooms, we can concentrate better on each other. 🙂 My husband and I have a better relationship than any other couple I know. We’ve been married almost 13 years and are still head. over. heels. 🙂 Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we don’t ever leave our kids and never will. We just *very* rarely (it’s been close to 2 years, I think) make a concerted effort to get a sitter to leave all 3 of our kids just so we can go out and have “us” time. Every day is a “date” at our house. 🙂
My advice for you: Talk. Talk. Talk. Find out what he wants. Tell him what you want. Then, compromise. The compromise might be that if your kids are really small, they can go to bed at 7:00 or 7:30. Mine are a little older and go to bed at 8:30, where they’re allowed to read for 30 minutes before lights out. Start now, while they’re little. Set a bedtime or curfew and enforce it. For example, say 9:00 is adult time. When they get to be teenagers, they’ll know that they don’t necessarily have to be in bed and going to sleep, but they need to be in their room and quiet for the night. Keep on enforcing it (or some type of bedtime) on weekends (or whenever hubby doesn’t need as much sleep) and stay up to watch a movie together. When you make love later, make it special. Light candles, give each other massages, feed each other chocolate and strawberries, and just enjoy each other. 😉 Hope this helps!!!
I agree with others that said make date nights often at home. Nothing wrong with a night out, but it can be logistically difficult, and for moms it is awfully hard to concentrate when the kids are not under our care (Moms cannot just “turn that switch off”. It doesn’t work that way). When my husband is not working nights we make sure the kids know after they are in bed, unless it is an emergency or someone is sick, it’s mom and dad time. We love having date nights where I make a fancy meal and we eat it by candlelight with some nice music in the background. But even when we don’t do that, most every night we make time to connect before bed by doing massages (Hubby is big on this), talking and planning together.
Our modern thinking places so much emphasis on things that we think are “musts”, but when I think about historical families, mom and dad leaving the kids to go out on a date was not even a possibility many times, and yet they managed to have strong marriages. I think the secret is in making the everyday something to celebrate.
I totally agree and have often wondered when the whole date-night-at-least-once-a-month thing started. It seems to me that 100 years ago, “nights out” were scarce but yet the divorce rate was *much* lower. I’m not saying that the 2 are connected as far as if you don’t have a night out, you’re less likely to get divorced. I’m just trying to point out that if they could do it and have strong marriages, we should be able to as well. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with a night out occasionally, but it seems that nowadays our society tries to push the mindset that if we don’t have a date night away from our kids every week or every month, then our marriages are doomed to failure. That is so wrong.
There’s a few more variables in play in society over the last century than just the date night. Isolating that one is not only illogical, but bordering on the absurd. One can also make the point that over the last century we’ve seen the nuclear family distance itself somewhat from the extended family and we’ve become much more urbanized and industrialized. As you point out, there’s not likely a causative link there between date nights and divorce rates, but I would submit that there’s not even a correlation. You might as well link divorce rates to gasoline prices.
The date night came about as a response to the increasing busyness of the family… not every family needs it, but it can be a very valuable discipline for a couple who is having a hard time scheduling time with each other and reconnecting as a husband and wife. The key is for the couple to determine what is needed, and the needs of the couple are going to reflect the felt needs of the person who feels most ignored. If the wife feels like she’s trapped with the kids and needs a break but the husband feels like everything is hunky-dory, then there’s a problem- the couple needs to get out for her sanity; the reverse is also true. When one partner in a marriage sees a problem, then BOTH people have an issue.
You find the relief where you can, but both people have to remember that while kids grow up fast (ten years down the road that toddler can probably hold down the fort by himself for a couple hours), if the relationship between husband and wife is not tended properly by BOTH of them, that evening where the kid no longer needs a sitter doesn’t arrive- they let the marriage wither and die from neglect. Ultimately, you’re married to each other and not the kids, and that is the relationship that must be tended first.
I totally agree with *almost* everything you said, but I think you might have missed my point which was that they can get alone time and nurture their relationship without having to ship the kids off every time they turn around. To get an understanding of what I meant, you could read my previous post. 🙂
Faith, you took the words right out of my… keyboard 🙂 For me the issue was not having alone time or a few hours away from the kids – we all need that time, just as our kids grow to need tie away from Mom and Pop! – for me it was the notion that the alone time needs to be for a stretch long enough to require an overnight stay when the children are still fairly young.
I don’t think anyone said alone time “needs” to be an overnight event without the kids. Such a time would be a good idea, if possible, at least once or twice a year, but not “needed.”
We’re just throwing out ideas. Some will work for you, some will not. Discuss it with your spouse and find something that meets the needs of your relationship.
As for those questioning the need for a specific date night and thinking it is a new development in marriage: as a kid growing up in the 70s, my parents went out every Friday night to the local American Legion hall and spent the evening dancing.
They had a very modest income (dad worked, mom stayed home) and I doubt very much if they ever spent more than $30 the entire evening, but they sure had fun together on the dance floor.
Date night isn’t something new or revolutionary, but forgetting to date your spouse after marriage does seem to be something new in this over scheduled world we live in today.
Of course divorce rates don’t correlate with date nights, and oh my yes, things have changed so much in the past 100 years. I would argue, however, that families back then were doing something right. How much of our over scheduling and busyness do we actually *need*? Keeping expectations simpler could lead us to be happier and more content with what we actually have rather than demanding what may not be feasible while the kids are young.
My husband and I have seven kids and are going on 16 years of marriage. We have lived almost all our our marriage very far away from family, so we learned pretty quickly that date nights at home could be very satisfying. We have worked pretty hard at keeping things simple, both in life and in what we expect to happen. It works! We have an awesome marriage. Once again, nothing wrong with date night. Do what needs to be done to nurture your marriage first. But dont discount the cozy date night at home as a powerful relationship strengthener.
Susan, I look SO forward to the day when Hubby and I can do that: weekends away, date nights when we don’t have to rush home after 2 hours (which is why it is so much more fun for us to stay home right now). We have already planned to go up north somewhere one fall– just the two of us–within the next couple of years. Thanks for the encouragement that the fun will continue after the kids are grown!
I wanted to submit a reader question. Do I just do it here in the comments or do I send an email?
Sure April, you may submit it as a comment or email!