By Tessa Kirby 
While I am a stay-at-home mom by trade (hehe), I do consider myself to be a stay-at-home working mom as well. Running my blog and my business has become not only a way for me to make a little side-income but it has required my husband and I to learn to work together to figure out how we were going to make this new role work within the confines of our family. My husband being a Realtor/broker, often works from home as well and because of this, our day at home looks much different than the “average” American household. We are constantly working together to figure out how to do life together and juggle our parenting roles and while we understand this is not the case for everyone, we quite enjoy working closely together each and every day.
When we sat down together to create this list, we made sure that we were very honest about the intentionality of our parenting and the things that we have found to work for us day-in and day-out. Now just because our working circumstances are significantly different than a lot of yours, we still believe these tips to be useful for parenting across all family situations. It’s important that as parents we remain a united front and continue to work together to ensure to our children that we stand by each other no matter what.
9 Ways To Share Parenting Roles With Your Spouse
1. Be compatible about how/why you discipline your kids, and back one another up
This is definitely something that we had to learn to do as we grew together in our marriage but something we knew we had to grow strong in in order to parent well and parent intentionally. We don’t always agree with how a situation should be dealt with but over time we have learned that regardless of the parenting strategy put in place we need to be encouraging to each other and stand by one another.
2. Be consistent
One thing we have learned with our first born is that consistency was the key to not only disciplining her but loving her as well. She is only three years old and we get comments all the time on how well behaved she is. This is something that we worked and WORKED together on to make sure that we were ALWAYS on the same page. And at times it seemed annoying and pointless but our efforts absolutely paid off! Consistency is incredibly important to a child’s well-being.
3. Love first, discipline second
Whatever your stand is on how you discipline your child, something we can all agree on I’m sure is that loving your child first is the number one priority. We have always enforced this “rule” when reprimanding our children; whenever we have to discipline our kids we ALWAYS make sure to end each conversation with a hug and an “I love you.” It’s not easy to yell at your children, spank them or put them in time out but if they know they are 100% loved along the way, they will respect you and your “rules” even more. I promise
4. Work Together Constantly (putting kids to sleep, cleaning, cooking, doing yard work, baths, etc)
We always make sure that we work together around the house. Even though I’m the SAHM my husband still helps me with chores around the house, putting the kids to bed, giving them a bath, cooking (sometimes). Likewise, I help him with yard-work, addressing envelopes for his mailings, showing up to his open-houses, etc. We believe it’s important to share in these different tasks instead of laying them all on one person. I can’t always be the best version of myself when I feel like I am running the house by myself and my husband knows that. Working together on the daily has allowed us to see into each others lives and respect one another all the more because of it.
5. Having/sharing routines
My husband and are BIG people of routine…each in our own way but nonetheless, we love a good schedule and we’ve found our kids do too! Every time we pull them off that schedule life turns to chaos and no one is the greater person for it. We understand that life cannot always be regimented and scheduled and we are ok with that but for us that is how our family best thrives.
6. Respect/Trust Each Other
When it comes to bickering…go in another room, away from your children. You’re children don’t need to hear you talking back to one another, demeaning each other, or saying things that you don’t mean. This is something that we have NOT mastered but are working towards everyday. Respect each other enough to know that your children are listening to your EVERY word.
7. Create Boundaries & Stick To Them
Whether these be boundaries for your children or for your relationship with your spouse STICK TO THEM. Creating boundaries is healthy in any relationship but especially in your relationship with your children. This ties into #2, it’s important for your children to know how to treat one another and even more so, how to treat YOU. Consistency in enforcing these boundaries is key. When I hear my oldest talking back to my husband I immediately step in and remind her how inappropriate her tone is and that in no way is it ok for her to talk to her dad like that. Now…she’s three and she probably doesn’t understand what a lot of that means but at least she is being reminded that that kind of speech and tone is not acceptable.
8. Set Standards
Setting standards for how we parent constantly challenges us to make sure that we are being the best possible parent that we can be. It’s more for us to stay accountable to our parenting roles and commit to sharing in those set standards.
9. Encourage One Another
I’ve saved the BEST for last because truly this is the most important! Encouraging your spouse in his/her parenting is the best way you can grow together in your lives as a mom and dad. You are in this together for the long haul might as well have a constant cheerleader along the way right!?
No way are my husband and I “perfect” parents, we fail CONSTANTLY…I mean constantly, but we are always striving to be the best we can be and that’s all we can do. I hope this little glimpse into our lives was a least somewhat insightful…I’d love to hear some ways you have learned to parent together in the comments below! Thanks for reading!
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