By Jan Hittelman
In every family, we struggle from time to time with the immense challenges of effectively parenting our children. In addition, we are also challenged in maintaining a healthy relationship with our partner. If there are significant conflicts in the couple’s relationship, their ability to effectively co-parent is significantly compromised. Consequently as parents, we must prioritize maintaining our own healthy relationship, in order to be able to provide a loving and stable home environment in which our children can thrive. Because life is so challenging, it’s easy to over invest our energy in our children, our jobs, our personal issues, and unwittingly neglecting to nurture our relationship with our partner. We also know from research that marital conflict correlates with ineffective parenting and child maladjustment. Thus working on enhancing our relationship with our partner can not only strengthen the relationship, but also positively impact our parenting, which in turn helps to increase our children’s overall adjustment.