Cultivating a strong and healthy marriage requires plenty of hard work and sacrifice. When you throw in the challenges of bringing up a foster, kin, or adopted child, even the strongest and healthiest marriages and life partnerships can experience immense trials.
Below are three tips for nurturing your marriage or partnership while parenting foster, kin, or adoptive children so that you may all thrive together.
Spend Some Alone Time Together
It is essential to set some time aside to do activities that you enjoy as a couple. Carving out time just for you and your spouse is challenging due to the daily stresses of life and parenting. However, it would help if you found some quiet moments so that you and your spouse can enjoy each other’s company. Perhaps you could find a fun activity to do together or go on a new adventure to create new memories.
Nurture Your Communication Skills
Communication is a vital aspect of any healthy relationship. As you raise foster, kin, or adopted children, it is common for you and your spouse to have disagreements since both of you have different parenting styles and expectations about foster kids.
Thus, always be open to having honest discussions about improving communication within your marriage/partnership. If you and your spouse find this challenging, you can consult professional services, read books, or listen to relevant podcasts together.
Prioritize Your Connection
Maintaining a healthy connection while parenting children can be tough, especially raising kids who have undergone trauma. By the end of the day, parents are usually exhausted from dealing with sleepless nights and big emotions throughout the day. As such, you will often find them crawling into bed, watching a mindless TV show, and going to bed at the expense of deep conversation and intimacy with your spouse.
Therefore, make a point to spare some time to think of why you married your partner. Talk about the moments that stood out for both of you as a couple and focus on creative ways to improve or rekindle your intimate and sexual relationship.
To learn more tips on how to strengthen your healthy marriage while parenting, kin, foster, or adopted kids, feel free to contact us today.