Tag Archive for: Parenting

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The Digital Lives of American Teenagers

Parents, teachers, coaches, gather round. If you have a teenager in your life, listen up. I may have stumbled onto some insight into the secret digital lives of teenagers.

I have some reliable info about their phones and the things they experience on social media. If you have witnessed a teen with a phone grafted onto their hand, you know that this is big stuff. Oh, and parents – lean in closer here- I’ve learned some interesting things about you, too!

I recently put together a little survey. I had my 6th grade son and 12th grade son send it out to their friends on social media. It took off. I also went to several area high schools and had a number of classes get out their phones and take my 10-question survey and pass it on to their friends. It really took off there, too.

Eight hundred completed surveys later… I have been reliably informed that my survey has popped up at a variety of area schools, public and private, and has even travelled out of Chattanooga via the information superhighway into several different parts of the country.

“Sounds good! What did you find out?”

Hang on, I’m getting there.

“C’mon… if you have good intel about teens and their phones, let’s hear it!”

Okay, but before I help you with this information, I have to confess it really hit me between the eyes as a father of five kids. I have to do better.

There, I said it. My kids need me to do better.

Here is what over 800 teenagers said about phones, social media and their parents.

Vampires that feed on Wi-Fi connections.

Right away, I noticed that some of the most alarming information wasn’t even gleaned from the students’ answers themselves, but was embedded in the survey metadata. Even though the survey is completely anonymous, each one is timestamped – showing when it was completed.

Many of the surveys were completed between 12:00-6:00 AM. My eyes widened as I scrolled through the timestamps. 1:07 AM, 1:18, 1:22, 2:03, 3:30, and on all through the night. This happened on school nights, as in nights before days when teens have to sit through classes covering Geometry, U.S. History and Shakespeare.

Google “sleep and academic performance.”

Life happens on screens.

According to research much more rigorous than my little survey, teens spend between seven and nine hours a day in front of some kind of screen. While these numbers shocked me, the students I have shared this research with have just kinda shrugged and said they think the number of hours is actually higher. Teen faces are in front of phones for a shockingly large amount of time each day. But you already knew that.

The older generation often has a hard time understanding this, but for people who grew up on phones and social media, their life happens online. They have a digital “self” that they often perceive as their “real” self. Relationships are digitized, and the phone is where they hang out.

I had a student tell me recently that 90% of her relationship with her boyfriend takes place over social media. Understand that for teens, being bullied and stalked aren’t simply not-so-great things that happened on their phone. These are traumatic things that happened to them and trigger responses similar to if it happened to them in “real life.” For teens, digital life is real life.

The meme streets of the digital city.

What exactly are teens experiencing on these devices that they are on 24/7? According to the survey, almost 60% are fending off complete strangers that contact them. Between 40-50% of teens are being sent sexual messages and pictures, as well as being solicited for sexual pictures of themselves. They are dealing with intense relationship issues like being broken up with, ignored and lied about. Almost a third of teens reported being bullied, threatened, or stalked. I had a student tell me that 10 minutes after she left a restaurant, the creepy waiter found her online and began messaging her.

Online life is real life; online pain is real pain.

What is the emotional toll of these experiences on teens? Recently, I helped lead a focus group at a local high school. When we asked about the emotions and feelings that teens struggle with, many students were quick to answer “stress” and “depression.” When pressed to explain what they believed contributed to these feelings, “social media” was the first response and was quickly affirmed by several other students.

The observations of the kids in the focus group line up perfectly with the survey’s findings. While a third of respondents reported that “social media has NEVER made me feel stress, anxiety or depressed,” 58% indicated that social media has made them feel stress, 48% indicated social media contributed to anxiety, 40% connected feeling depressed to social media, and 28% of students indicated that social media made them feel all three – stress, anxiety and depression.

Filtering these responses by grade level strongly indicates that stress, anxiety and depression resulting from social media use INCREASES as kids get older. In other words, middle-schoolers were more likely to say that social media didn’t create stress, anxiety or depression, but the number of kids who felt stress, anxiety or depression increased steadily from 9th to 12th grade. Whoa.

Social media is killing our children. There is a growing body of research on social media and mental health. Mom, Dad- get Googling.

No sheriff in the Digital Wild West?

So here is where parents swoop in and help their kids, right? This is when we parents step up and help our teens navigate these difficult online experiences and process the real life hurt. Except the survey raises serious questions about whether this is actually happening. Parents, this is where your kids were very open about you.

A whopping 60% of respondents indicated that their parents “never” check their phone and 20% indicated that their parents check their phone “a couple times a year.” Together, this means 80% of parents check their teens phone once or twice a year or never at all.

When asked, “How long it has been since the last time your parents checked your phone?” many teens answered, “Never, because my parents trust me,” or “They don’t check, they trust me.” I remember another survey I did with students two years ago where I asked them “What helps you make good choices with your phone, what keeps you out of trouble online?” The number one answer might surprise you: It was “knowing that my parents will check my phone.” Besides, your teen might really be a great kid, but bad things can still happen to them online.

If parents are not actually checking their children’s phones, maybe they are keeping tabs on their kids’ lives by being connected to them on the social media apps that they use. Some parents make their kids accept their “follow” or “friend” request, which allows the parent to see what their child is posting. Again, the survey results are not encouraging.

29% of parents are not following their teens on “any” social media apps, and just under half are following their teens on “some” social media apps. Don’t let that “some” encourage you too much. When I personally conducted the survey in classrooms, many students were very quick to tell me that the apps that their parents follow them on are not the apps they use to actually socialize with their friends. Only 24% of students indicated that their parents follow them on all their social media apps.

The family that eats together, tweets together.

So if most parents are not checking their teen’s phone and if they are not connected to their teens on social media, are parents at least having some quality conversations with their teens about their digital lives? Dinner time used to be when families sat down together and talked through the ups and downs of the day. When asked about mealtime habits in their homes, 53% of teens said their family doesn’t eat meals together. If they do, they are on their phones or watching television during the meal. Only 46% indicated that their family does, in fact, eat meals together and that during this time, people are not on their phones or watching television. If these conversations are not happening during meals, when are they happening?

You’re on your own, kid.

Connecting all of these dots paints an alarming picture. Teens have difficult and even traumatic experiences that contribute to stress, anxiety and depression through phones that parents rarely if ever check. Parents are out of the loop when it comes to social media. Dinnertime tabletalk is more and more rare. When families do share a meal together, everyone has a fork in one hand and phone in the other. So, when are parents helping their children navigate these emotionally-complicated digital waters? If the results of my survey are accurate, it seems like most teens are on their own.

The ugly truth.

If we are honest as parents, we are often not attentive to the digital lives of our children. Our own digital lives have consumed us. To peer into our children’s phones would require us to look up from our own. In the meantime, our children are wandering alone through a Digital Metropolis. There are many dark alleys, shady characters and dangerous intersections. We wouldn’t drop our kids off on the outskirts of a big city and say, “Have fun! Make good choices!”

My child’s phone is a portal to another world. I need to be walking with them and talking along the way.

Image from Unsplash.com

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5 Parenting Tips for Media Use in Your Home

Knowing these 4 things about brain development and screens are critical.

As a parent, how can you control media use in your home? At the beginning of middle school, Melanie Hempe’s oldest son, Adam, started trading his outdoor time for playing video games inside and she became a Game-Cop Mom. Since Adam was a straight-A student, Hempe let his bad habit slide. 

“But his ninth grade school laptop proved to be too much to manage,” says Hempe, mom of four. “When he graduated from high school I thought he would outgrow his gaming. I did not realize that little kid hobbies become big kid hobbies.”

At the end of his freshman year, Adam dropped out of college due to his gaming. On the trip home, he said, “Mom, ‘World of Warcraft’ did something to me. I’ve been in bed for the last week, depressed.” Knowing that she did not want to have a gamer in her house for the next five years, she asked an Army recruiter to visit. Adam joined the U.S. Army where he could learn to shoot real guns instead of virtual ones.

Her son’s experience set Hempe on a quest to understand gaming and screen addictions.

“As a nurse, I felt like there had to be a scientific explanation for what happened to my son,” Hempe recalls. “I learned that gaming addiction is the number one reason boys drop out of college their freshman year.” 

Like gambling, this addiction can be hard to spot. “After a great deal of research, I decided to present my findings to parents at our school. I was shocked when over 100 parents showed up to that first meeting.” Families Managing Media was founded as an effort to help families prevent childhood screen addictions.

Think about your child’s relationship with their screen:

  • Is it the only thing that puts them in a good mood?
  • Are they unhappy when you take it away?
  • Do they sneak around hiding screens?
  • Is their usage increasing over time?
  • Do you know what they are doing on their screens; do you have all their passwords?
  • Does their screen time interfere with family time and their in-person friendships?

If you answered yes to most of these, your child may be headed for trouble.  

Hempe believes parents need to know at least four things about brain development and media use to help with screen management.

For starters, the prefrontal cortex (the reasoning center) is the last part of the brain to mature and it is impossible to accelerate this maturity.

Even the most intelligent child can have issues managing time or paying attention. 

“Because Adam was smart, I expected him to be able to control his screen use,” Hempe says. “I now understand that this is a task kids are unable to do. Children are not little adults.”

Second, it’s helpful to know that your child’s brain development is based on the activities they are doing.

Like dirt roads being paved, neuronal connections get stronger with use. The connections not being used get pruned away at puberty.  

“Practice typically makes things better, but unfortunately, with things like social media, practice makes it worse,” Hempe shares. “The longer a child is exposed to one type of experience, the harder it is to reverse that effect.” 

Video games and smartphones stimulate one area of the brain: the pleasure center.

Unfortunately, if the whole brain is not stimulated early, it’s a complicated fix in adulthood.  

Thirdly, screen time is not a neutral activity.

Dopamine controls the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. When kids are on their screens, they get an instant dopamine rush from likes on social media, gaming, etc. The “dopamine feedback loop” becomes activated and a craving sets in. The bad news is that school and other “less-exciting” things can’t compete with the novelty offered by screens 24/7.

Fourth, screens replace many activities that are foundational to healthy brain development. 

Handwriting, real play and playing music are very important for a young brain. 

“Movement is absent when your child is on a screen,” Hempe says. “Without enough movement, children have a hard time maintaining focus and dealing with distractions. Even 30 minutes a day makes a huge difference.” 

Reading is the first activity to go when screens are present, and it is the number one predictor of academic success. Sleep is another critical piece. Screen habits make it hard for teens to get the required 9.25 hours of sleep each night.

With this in mind, Hempe encourages parents to do the following to limit media use:

  • Delay access to smartphones and video games. This allows more time for a child to mature so that he or she can use technology wisely. “No” for now doesn’t mean “no” forever. Social media and today’s video games are very addictive.
  • Follow your family’s accounts and co-view their screen activities. Nothing is private in the digital world, so your child/teen’s digital activity should not be private to you. Know exactly what they are doing on their screens.
  • Foster face-to-face social interactions. Social media is not designed for kids. Try a family social media account managed by you on a home laptop in plain view. They do not need six years of social media “training” to learn how to use it, but they do need face-to-face interactions with friends to learn critical social skills.
  • Spend more non-tech time together. Teens with strong family attachments show more overall happiness and success.
  • Help your kids choose and plan healthier forms of entertainment – they need your help. Don’t give the smartphone and video games all the power in your home.

“Our teens need us now more than ever,” Hempe asserts. “It is easy to detach from them when they are on their screens. They want you to help them say no to screen overuse. After all, the only thing they really want more than their virtual world is more real time with you.”

For more information on screen addiction, reclaiming your kids and reconnecting your family, visit Families Managing Media.

Check out this episode of JulieB TV on this topic, too!

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Parenting a Teenager

Parenting a teenager is a tough job. Since my teenage son has not been packing his lunches for school, he is beginning to understand what responsibility looks like as he experiences hunger during lunch. Should I feel guilty about not taking time off work to take him a lunch while also spending extra money on fast food because he didn’t think about preparing lunch ahead of time? Absolutely NOT.

As they get older, children have to learn responsibility. Picking up the pieces when our children fail to prepare enables them, and it doesn’t give them a chance to grow, learn or teach them responsibility.

As a parent, I don’t want my son to be hungry – but I also don’t want him to grow up and think that my world revolves around him or that his needs are more important than my own. What I hope he eventually learns through this experience is that he is the conductor of his own orchestra. He is capable, smart, and in the position to direct the music how he chooses. If he doesn’t want to be hungry at lunchtime, he will either have to pack it at night or get up early enough to pack it before he leaves each day.

As a parent, I believe it is my job to have food at home; however, it is not my job to enable my son. I know his future wife will appreciate the lessons he is learning early.

Here are some things you may want to consider the next time your teenager does not prepare:

  1. Scenario One: Your teenager calls because they forgot to bring their folder to school. Education is important and part of educating our teens is teaching responsibility. We want them to make good grades, but failing is a lesson they should learn early. If they forgot their folder and you don’t take it to school, what are the consequences? Let them deal with it. They will learn the lesson soon enough.
  2. Scenario Two: Your teenager calls because they need additional money on their bank card to eat out after a game with friends. Well, your teenager knew they didn’t have money before they made plans to go to the game – and their emergency does not constitute an emergency on your end. Think about the consequences and your child’s future behavior if you put money on the card.
  3. Scenario Three: Your teenager chooses not to wash clothes and has to wear dirty clothes to school. This is a personal issue. If the stench does not teach them a lesson, having to go to school in smelly clothing will, as someone will bring it to their attention. As teens, they do not want to stand out but fit in, so this lesson will work itself out.

Finally, remember to breathe. Everything can be a teachable moment for teens. I have to ask myself when situations occur, is it a battle for me or can I let things play out for my teen to learn the lesson on his own through natural consequences? You got this!

Image from Unsplash.com

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You Win Some, You Lose Some

I just experienced one of the most important days in the life of my youngest son. It was his football team’s Super Bowl game. This year marked their 3rd trip in a row and this season has been one of their best. They went undefeated in the regular season and claimed victory to one playoff game. Unfortunately, the did NOT win the Super Bowl. Did they play hard? You bet. They pushed until the very end, creating a 0–0 tie on the scoreboard and forcing the game to go to OT (overtime). The team they played has been their rivals for the past 3 years.

This taught my son a very difficult lesson. No matter your record, you win some and you lose some.

His 10-year-old heart was broken. I, as his mother, struggled with understanding his brokenness, because to me it really is just a game. No one asks you as an adult if you won your little league SuperBowl when you were ten. I applauded his team spirit and his effort in the game.

I also applauded his coaches. Each one is a father/husband/significant other/employee who takes time away from their family and responsibilities to pour into my son and the other boys on the team. These coaches show them the importance of teamwork, sacrifice, defeat with hope, victory with grace and true character.

My son plays little league football because he loves the game, not because I see a future for him on a professional football team. He plays because I see the values that football or any other organized sport teaches. He’s learned respect for authority, that your teammates need you to do your job. He’s learned that other adults, besides his mom and dad, really do care about him and his success.

Despite the fact that the score said his team lost, in my eyes, they won.

They won by sticking together as a team. They won by showing appropriate emotions. They won because their coaches encouraged and celebrated them in defeat. They won because they see the examples of husbands, fathers and employees giving back. I hope that one day my 10-year-old will look back and see this as a win because of the lessons he learned from these men and from this game, not from the scoreboard.

Image from Unsplash.com

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How To Make The Most of Breaks From School

Planning how you'll spend your time can make the breaks more fun.

Thanks to online shopping, my purchases were virtually complete. I asked my family what they wanted, and then I bought a few perfect presents (within my budget, of course).

But after the shopping was complete, I needed to plan how we’d spend Christmas break together.

For. Two. Whole. Weeks.

I didn’t want to waste precious time in front of a screen or do pointless things, so I decided to think ahead. After all, failing to plan is planning to fail, right?

Believe it or not, I do actually get excited about breaks.

I look forward to all the breaks from school and homework, for all of us. It’s a welcome relief from an all-too-often insane schedule, and we need the rest. But if I am honest, I’m usually a little too happy when school starts back.

But, when school’s in, we’re so busy that we don’t truly enjoy each other. And I realize it’s not fun to be around a mom (or wife) who is constantly barking orders to hurry up, get in the car, clean your room, help me with dinner, fold the laundry, etc.

So, I decided our Christmas break this year was going to be different.

Thankfully, my office was officially closed while my kids were home. So, it was up to me to make the gift of time with my family really count.

Instead of trying to guess what my family wanted, I decided to ask — the same way I asked about their Christmas list.

“What would you like to do with me during your Christmas vacation? Make a list of everything, and we’ll try to make it happen.”

It didn’t take long for me to find out what they wanted. In fact, I really already knew. It’s probably the same thing your family wants: UNDISTRACTED TIME.

Whether you officially have “time off” or not, whether it’s a holiday or not, you can still make all their wishes come true in some way. Find out how to spend the time you DO have with the ones you love — then make the most of it.

Just in case you’re wondering exactly what my kids wanted from me during our school break, here’s a sample of what we did over Christmas vacation:

My youngest child did my makeup (and hair). We read and sang together, shopped, and enjoyed cocoa and marshmallows by the fire. We created delicious food in the kitchen, played games and worked puzzles. We went ice skating and got coffee and doughnuts. And there was still be plenty of time to watch movies and sleep in.

This year, I’m going to make memories and intentionally enjoy my family. I have a feeling we could get used to these “things” that are not really “things.”

I can’t wait. And who knows? I just might be a little sad when the kids go back to school.

The countdown to Spring Break begins…

Image from Unsplash.com

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Sexting And Your Teen

These tips can help you talk to your teen about sexting.

Dr. Sheri Madigan and her research team wanted to know the prevalence of sexting behavior (sharing of sexually explicit images and videos through technological means) among teens. Between 2006 and 2016, they conducted a meta-analysis, looking at 39 different studies about sexting that included 110,380 young people from all over the world, including the United States.

Studies indicate that sexting has been on the rise among teens while teen sex has declined. Findings from the meta-analysis indicate that:

  • 1 in 7 teens sends sexts, 
  • 1 in 4 receives sext messages, and 
  • 41 percent of teens are having sex according to a 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
  • Additionally, older teens are sexting more often than younger teens.

While boys are often portrayed as the requestors of nude images, studies show that girls and boys are equally as likely to participate in sexting. Plus, most of them use their smartphones versus a computer when they sext.

Compared to boys, girls report feeling more pressure to sext and worry they will be judged harshly whether they sext or not. If they do, there is slut-shaming. If they don’t, they are considered a prude. Boys, however, may see sexting as a way to showcase their social status.  

Many teen sexters assume the images will remain private, but the research indicates that:

  • 12.5 percent of teens are forwarding intimate photos without the sender’s consent. 
  • Another 8.4 percent of teens had one of their own sexts forwarded without their consent.

According to the research team, these findings raise some concerns and challenges. Teens may feel that sexting is an expectation if everybody else is doing it. When sexting is coerced and images are used as a form of blackmail or a threat, the combination of digital insecurity and the teen brain processes could lead to compromised safety. Since teens’ brains are still developing, their capacity to critically analyze digital tools and apps may not be enough to keep them safe. So, what can parents do to help?

If you’re a parent, Madigan encourages you to talk with your teens about healthy dating relationships, peer pressure, digital security, sexuality and citizenship. Make it an ongoing conversation where you’re being proactive instead of reactive.

Also, discuss strategies for dealing with peer pressure surrounding sexting and the potential consequences of sending sexts. Once someone sends an image or video, there is no control over who sees it. 

Family Zone offers these 10 tips to help you and your teen deal with sexting:

  • Have open and honest conversations with your children.
  • Don’t abstain from educating your own children about sex and sexualized behaviors. If you don’t educate them, somebody else will.
  • Do not assume that your child will not pass on a nude photo or take one of themselves and share it.
  • Discuss the risks of sexting, including how they would feel if their photos were shared.
  • Be very clear about the law and criminal consequences with your children.
  • Discuss their digital footprint and what that means.
  • Explain their digital citizenship responsibilities.
  • Warn your children to never share photos with people they don’t physically know offline. Consider providing examples of grooming and pedophilia.
  • Attempt to explore if these behaviors are part of a bigger problem with self-esteem and confidence. Like everyone, children like attention and reassurance, but as parents we need to help our kids find healthier ways to feel good about themselves.
  • Ensure they know who they can talk to and where they can get help if needed. They may not want that to be you, so ensure they have a safe person to confide in.

If you’d like additional resources to help guide these conversations, here are some good ones: Common Sense Media’s Sexting Handbook, Common Sense Media, Connect Safely, Social LEADia: Moving Students from Digital Citizenship to Digital Leadership.

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The Reason Why Boys Are Struggling

Many boys are wandering aimlessly and looking for their purpose.

Activist, educator and author Dr. Warren Farrell is at it again. He co-authored The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, with Dr. John Gray. For many years, Farrell has been concerned for the welfare of boys. He believes that fatherlessness is at the very heart of the issue.

In an Institute for Family Studies interview, Farrell asserts that today’s boys often struggle with a sense of hopelessness and a lack of purpose linked in part to family breakdown and father deprivation. He also believes that boys’ and men’s weakness is their facade of strength. 

A United Nations study found boys lagging behind girls in all the developed nations. The women’s movement has really helped young girls recognize that girls can take many paths and be successful. However, while girls’ sense of purpose has grown, boys’ sense of purpose has not. Boys seem to hear either that it’s all about earning money or being a loser. Farrell wonders what would happen if we told boys that being a full-time caregiver is a worthy option.

Boys with little to no father involvement often look to their dads as role models. But without much time with their dads, their role models are more “straw men” or “straw dads,” says Farrell. 

“These boys don’t benefit from overnights, hang-out time, and the many hours it takes for boys to bond with their dads and trust that their feelings won’t be dismissed. Dads tend to build bonds with their sons by, for example, playing games and rough-housing, and then use the resulting bond as leverage for their sons to ‘get to bed on time’ lest there be ‘no playing tomorrow night.’” 

This boundary enforcement teaches boys postponed gratification, whereas boys with minimal or no father involvement are more frequently addicted to immediate gratification. Additionally, having minimal or no father involvement increases the chances of video game addiction, ADHD, bad grades, less empathy, less assertiveness and more aggression. It also leads to fewer social skills, more alienation and loneliness, more obesity, rudderlessness, anger, drugs, drinking, delinquency, disobedience, depression and suicide*. Fatherless boys are more likely to serve time in prison, too. 

In a TEdx Talk on “The Boy Crisis,” Farrell cites that since 1980 in California, 18 new prisons were built, but only one new university. There’s been a 700 percent increase in the prison population and it’s mostly a dad-deprived male population. 

As an example of the pain of fatherlessness, Farrell mentioned Anthony Sims. Sims is known as the Oakland Killer. His last Facebook post was this:  “I wish I had a father.”

Many see guns as the problem. However, Farrell contends that school shootings are mostly white boys’ method of acting out their hopelessness. He says guns are also white boys’ method of committing suicide, and serve as a reflection of our inability to help constructively track boys to manhood. He points out that girls living in those same homes with the same family values and issues are not killing people at school.

Farrell speaks of attending a party once where he learned that a men’s group formed by Farrell had impacted a man named John more than any other thing in his life. When group members asked the man, “What is the biggest hole in your heart?” he blurted out, “I was so involved in my career, I neglected my wife and my son. That’s the biggest hole and a deeper hole because I ended up divorced. I remarried and the group knew that my wife was pregnant with our son.” The group then asked, “If you could do anything you wanted, what would you like to do?” He said he would take five years off and help raise his son. Then he talked with his wife, who told him to go for it. He shared that it had been two years.

Farrell asked John if it was a good decision.“No,” he replied. “The best decision of my life. Up until I took care of my son, my whole life was about me, me, me. Suddenly it was about my son. I suddenly learned to love and be loved.” 

As they were wrapping up their conversation, someone asked for an autograph. Farrell thought it was for him, but it was for John. Farrell said, “I guess you’re famous. What’s your last name, John?” 

“Lennon,” he said. John Lennon had discovered he was not giving love by earning money as a human doing, but by being love. 

Many boys are struggling, wandering aimlessly, and looking for their purpose.

Farrell and many others believe one way to end the boy crisis is for fathers, uncles, grandfathers and other male role models to step up and stand in the gap. They also want women to encourage men in their efforts to raise men of purpose.

*If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, there are a number of websites and organizations with excellent resources for you. HelpGuide is a great place to start, along with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

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How to Balance Marriage and Children

Some couples marry and have lots of time to nurture their relationship before children come along. Other couples marry and bring children into the marriage relationship immediately. Either way, when children enter the picture, the marriage relationship often resembles two ships passing in the night, and finding your balance between your marriage and children can be hard.

There’s no question that parenting focuses a lot of energy and love toward the children. And sometimes it becomes a challenge to have anything left for your spouse.

While research indicates that marital satisfaction decreases when you have children, it doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel. Many assume that after children come along, the kids should be the main focus. But studies show that child-centered marriages are most at risk for distress. Focusing on building a strong marriage is a wonderful thing to give your children… and yourself. But, any parent can tell you that’s easier said than done!

In many instances both spouses are running 90 to nothing trying to juggle the kids, work, take care of household duties and care for their marriage. If couples don’t have their guard up, tyranny of the urgent can push date night to the bottom of the list in a flash.

“If your marriage is strong, your whole family will be strong—your life will be more peaceful, you’ll be a better parent, and you’ll, quite simply, have more fun in your life,” says Elizabeth Pantley, mother, author and parenting expert.

Being intentional about taking care of your marriage doesn’t have to be complicated. Pantley offers some helpful (and free) tips to help you balance marriage and children that don’t require extra hours in your day.

  • Look for the good and overlook the bad. When you’re tired and stressed, it’s easy to focus on the negative. Train yourself to look for the good qualities in your spouse.

  • Give two compliments every day. Life often gets so crazy that you might think something like, “She sure looks pretty in that outfit,” or “I really appreciate the ways he engages our children,” without actually saying it. Think about how you feel when you receive a compliment. They aren’t hard to give and they don’t cost a dime.

  • Pick your battles. It’s easy to fall into the trap of fighting over silly things that truly won’t matter 24 hours from now. Before you gear up for battle, ask yourself if this is really a big deal. In many instances the answer is no.

  • Be intentional about spending time with your spouse. It might be early in the morning or in the evening after you’ve put the children to bed, or even better—a date night! This is the hardest part because the tyranny of the urgent typically reigns. Some parents have formed a co-op where they take turns taking care of each other’s children in order to allow for couple time.

While loving your children is important, making time for each other should be at the top of the list. After all, the heart of the family is marriage and it’s really important to keep that focus. Even though it probably doesn’t feel like it right now, your children will become adults in the blink of an eye. Then they’ll start their own families and it’ll just be the two of you again.

 ***If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, contact the National Hotline for Domestic Abuse. At this link, you can access a private chat with someone who can help you 24/7. If you fear your computer or device is being monitored, call the hotline 24/7 at: 1−800−799−7233. For a clear understanding of what defines an abusive relationship, click here.***

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