Keeping marriages and partnerships healthy

Rona Renner, RN Parent Educator, shares advice for parents on how to stay connected and maintain a healthy marriage after having kids
Advice For Keeping Marriages Healthy After Having Kids
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Keeping marriages and partnerships healthy

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Parents often find that it is difficult to connect after they have had kids. Kids take up so much time and energy and we live in such a face paced world. But I have to say it is a gift to your kids if you can make sure your relationship stays connected. You need time for intimacy and yet you say how can I do it. One thing is you can kiss each other good bye every morning. And when your partner or your spouse comes home, before you ask them to take the baby, give them a kiss, a real kiss, not just a little peck on the cheek. Make that connection right away. The other thing to do is actually to put a date on the calendar. If you think you are going to get together and forget and forget, suddenly your relationship is no longer a priority. And it needs to be. You need to remember why you are together. And those hard times with the kids will go easier when you feel like you and your partner are on the same page. So get a baby sitter, maybe the baby sitter can take then out and you can go to bed to either sleep, cuddle or do whatever you like. It just needs to be time together. Spend 10 minutes a day and talk about your day and plan for the next day. And remember that you love each other.

Rona Renner, RN Parent Educator, shares advice for parents on how to stay connected and maintain a healthy marriage after having kids

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Rona Renner, RN

Parent Educator

Rona Renner has been a Registered Nurse for 46 years with a wide range of experience in health care. In the last 20 years she has focused her attention on pediatrics, parent education and advocacy, ADHD and learning differences. In 1992, she was trained by Kaiser Permanente Medical Center as a temperament counselor to help parents understand their child's behavior, and she co-wrote the temperament based parenting class manual. In 2002, she founded Childhood Matters, a non-profit organization producing radio shows in English and Spanish. "Nurse Rona" hosted a weekly call-in radio show for over nine years, and has appeared on many television shows, including CNN and 20/20. Rona is the author of Is That Me Yelling, a book aimed to help parents learn how to effectively communicate with their kids by focusing on their child's unique temperament, and their own. She loves working with parents one-on-one, in groups, or in large workshops. Rona is happily married, has four adult children, and two grandsons.

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Transcription: 
Parents often find that it is difficult to connect after they have had kids. Kids take up so much time and energy and we live in such a face paced world. But I have to say it is a gift to your kids if you can make sure your relationship stays connected. You need time for intimacy and yet you say how can I do it. One thing is you can kiss each other good bye every morning. And when your partner or your spouse comes home, before you ask them to take the baby, give them a kiss, a real kiss, not just a little peck on the cheek. Make that connection right away. The other thing to do is actually to put a date on the calendar. If you think you are going to get together and forget and forget, suddenly your relationship is no longer a priority. And it needs to be. You need to remember why you are together. And those hard times with the kids will go easier when you feel like you and your partner are on the same page. So get a baby sitter, maybe the baby sitter can take then out and you can go to bed to either sleep, cuddle or do whatever you like. It just needs to be time together. Spend 10 minutes a day and talk about your day and plan for the next day. And remember that you love each other.