Magic Years Nursery

Posts Tagged ‘divorce’

Complete story @ www.the-parenting-magazine.com Single parents try to be both father and mother to their children. The other parent may be out of the picture due to many reasons, such as military deployment, divorce, or death.

We hit upon a winner for our marriage when our kids were young. I can’t even remember how we figured this out (sure someone shared this idea with us) but it’s Friday Night Date Night. It is imperative to have some one on one time with your spouse, especially if you have children. And we do! But just because it is imperative does not make it easy. Having the money for a date and a babysitter can be costly. But we hit upon an idea that we have used for many years now. And boy is our marriage better for it!

See we have 5 children, ages 15 to 9. And we also have good friends in the same place – 5 kids fairly close to our kids ages. This is the important piece to making this work.

How does it work?

What we do is quite simple – every Friday, one couple or the other has a date night. We alternate Fridays, and believe me, we very rarely miss. This is the way it works: On our date night, Julie will take the kids over to our friends house at 5:30. Kathlyn feeds the kids dinner – a big pot of spaghetti or something. After that, the kids will play with each other until about 9 when Kat brings them home to our house and puts them to bed, while Jeff puts their kids to bed. Then, Kathlyn will stay at our house until we get home, which is basically whenever we want to. When we get home, Kat goes home. The next week, we switch and they get their date night.

Okay. Show me the reason this is so important.

Let me tell you why this cinchy plan, has tremendous results for your marriage. Everything in life doesn’t have to be hard to be successful, right?

* Your babysitter is extremely reliable. I promise you when your date next week is on the line, the thought of canceling never even crosses your mind.

* Doesn’t cost a thing! Remember the 5 kids – a night out can cost a small king’s ransom.

* Most babysitters come in teenager sizes. And for a 13 or 14 year old to manage 5 kids is asking a whole lot. The cool thing about combining the families is that they tend to babysit themselves as they play together. And it really is not all that difficult. Plus as parents with 5 kids, we have the expertise to handle the group.

* Just when you get the sitter working well and not just veggin’ in front of the TV, they up and move on with their lives. Ain’t gonna happen here. Kids grow up and out before the babysitters do.

* Screaming kid phone calls just don’t happen. You and your spouse enjoy the evening without the nagging worry of when will the phone ring.

* You don’t have to take the babysitter home, or worse yet go get the kids at midnight, bring them home and put them to bed. Don’t I love looking forward to that when I’m having that romantic dinner with Julie!

* Because your kids weren’t at home messing up your house, you can come home and get up with no messy clean up looming in front of you.

* If this still hasn’t convinced you, there is one more thing. The non-dating mom, Julie for example, has some time to herself once she has put Kat’s kids nighty night. She can do, watch, eat!!!, whatever she wants.

My older kids can babysit my younger kids. So how does that work?

It’s getting to the point where the older ones can babysit the younger ones, but there are still the inevitable “Mom! Bobby wont let me play Wii” phone calls, so we’ve stuck with our plan. Personally, I hope it goes on forever – at least until that last little monster (I mean bundle of joy) is out of the house!

Now there is no reason stopping you from using this principle in your marriage. Find the like-minded friends and make your dinner reservations!