How You Relate to Your Spouse Means More to Your Kids Than You Might Know

As parents, we can’t always be aware of our children’s emotional experiences and how our actions affect them.

As a trained mediator, family law attorney for almost 25 years, and child of bitter divorce myself, I know all too well how children can be affected – even if they outwardly appear fine.

Kids are like sponges.  They are constantly watching and absorbing what we do and how we relate to others.  It’s how we all learn how to relate to the world and people around us.

According to this eye-opening article, kids pay close attention to their parents’ emotions to sense how safe they are in the family.  And collateral damage to kids from how parents treat each other can last a lifetime.

The most harmful effects on kids results from the following types of fighting by parents:

• Name-calling
• Insults
• Threats of abandonment (such as divorce)
• Physical aggression, like hitting, pushing, and throwing things
• Avoidance like walking out, sulking, or withdrawing from an argument
• Capitulation (giving in while ignoring your own needs)
• Withdrawal and becoming emotionally unavailable.

The longer fighting like this goes on, the more likely children can become distraught, worried, anxious, and hopeless.  They can develop sleep problems, headaches, and stomachaches.  High levels of stress can interfere with their ability to pay attention, which can lead to learning and social difficulties.  They are particularly susceptible to problems forming their own healthy and balanced relationships.

In your interactions with your spouse – and with others – we can learn to become aware of and calm our emotional reactions.  This can have a powerful effect on our connections with others.

Most of were raised to believe that emotions aren’t worthy of our attention.  In the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Rising Strong, author Brené Brown encourages us to recognize emotion, and get curious about our feelings and how they connect with the way we think.  She suggests doing this by 1) engaging with our feelings, and (2) getting curious about the story behind the feelings—what emotions we’re experiencing and how they are connected to our thoughts and behaviors.

Dr. Brown notes that most of us were never taught how to hold discomfort, sit with it, or communicate it, only how to discharge or dump it, or to pretend that it’s not happening.  We also don’t have access to emotional language or a full emotional vocabulary.

According to Dr. Brown, emotions like hurt don’t go away simply because we don’t acknowledge them.  In fact, if left unchecked, it festers, grows, and leads to behaviors that are completely out of line with whom we want to be, and thinking that can sabotage our relationships and careers.

The irony, she says, “is that at the exact same time that we are creating distance between ourselves and the people around us by off-loading onto others, we are craving deeper emotional connection and richer emotional lives.”

What to do?  According to Dr. Brown, we can start by getting curious about our own emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.  We can commit to understanding and staying curious about how emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are connected in the people we love and lead, and how those factors affect relationships and perception.

We can commit to blaming others less and holding ourselves more accountable for asking for what we need and want.  We can parent by telling our kids that it’s ok to be sad or hurt- it’s normal and we just need to talk about it.

As difficult and uncomfortable as it is to talk about emotions, not talking about them ultimately causes greater disconnection and damage to relationships than feeling our way through them and committing to learning an empowering vocabulary to have tough conversations.

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