Keeping the spark alive - don't let the inferno of life take over!

With the many demands on parents it is easy to loose sight of how important it is to nurture your relationship with your spouse.  Divorce rates in general are high but then you add additional factors like parenting 1 or more children with special needs or raising a large family the risk of divorce increases.  Children require a great deal of attention and as parents it is easy to focus so much on the child's needs that we loose sight of ourselves and our relationships.

My husband and I, like most parents, are extremely busy with the regular day to day activities of working, keeping up with household chores, making meals, schooling the kids, after school activities, etc then on top of that you add everything that goes with raising children with special needs.  With all these demands it is not uncommon for parents to give up on time for themselves and their spouses.

Knowing that you need to work on your relationship and take care of yourself is the easy part making it work can be very difficult.  Currently we have a child care person come in once a week so my husband and I can get out for "date night" and many nights when date night rolled around after the placement of our youngest 3 children all we wanted to do was sleep.  On more than one occasion my husband or I would verbalize "do you think we should just go out to the travel trailer and have a nap".  As tired as we were we made a commitment to one another to make time for us.

In an earlier phase of our life we were parenting children with severe emotional issues that limited our ability to hire a child care professional, we could not find anyone willing to care for the children.  During this time we had to squeeze in time for us when we could.  This meant when the children were at school we would meet up at lunch break for a quick date assuming the school hadn't phoned suspending anyone.  Or we would sacrifice sleep and make an extremely late dinner.  We would have the kids involved in activities and on a really good day they would participate in them and we might be able to squeeze in some time.

Whatever you are going through in your parenting path right now find ways to connect with your spouse.  Get up early for a cup of tea or coffee before the kids get up, phone or text to say how much you love and appreciate them, schedule regular dates, do little things to make your spouses life easier, make time for one another. Remember when the kids are grown you still want to know that person who is sitting across the table from you, so keep the spark alive.

shared at http://www.faithfulmomof9.com/
http://www.lovethatmax.com/
http://www.motherwifeme.com/allaboutyou-link-pin-party-week-13/
http://theadoptionsocial.com/category/weekly-adoption-shout-out/
http://schummexplosion.blogspot.ca/2014/04/the-climb-networking-blog-hop.html
http://hdydi.com/2014/04/07/parenting-link-19/
http://richfaithrising.blogspot.ca/