So brainstorm date ideas ahead of time. Maybe spend 20 minutes of your next dinner date writing down ideas and popping these in a jar to draw on ahead of your next one. They don’t have to be crazy skydiving dates; it can be as simple as noting down a new restaurant you want to try. Next, actually schedule time together in your diary, perhaps popping in days for the following quarter ahead of time. It may sound over planned but with kids, unless these times are scheduled in, something else will always fill up that time.
3. Find some win / win childcare options
By this, I mean find babysitter options your kids will look forward to too. I know this can be tricky when you have little ones that don’t seem happy with anyone but yourself, and it might take some trial and error, but once you’ve found an option that works, it’s a real win / win solution. It’ll provide your children with the opportunity to spend time with other loved ones, expanding their network of caretakers they feel safe with. Once you’ve got a system you’re all comfortable with, it’ll also help reduce any guilt you may be holding onto for spending time with just your partner, allowing you to be more present while doing so.
Don’t have a lot of family support? Maybe you can create a rotating date night system with some trusted friends where you look after their kids once a fortnight and they return the favour the following week.
4. Schedule less
If you can cut some activities out of both your weeks and your kids’ weeks, you’ll find you not only have more time to be with your partner but you’ll also have more time together as a family. It sounds simple and it is.
Your kids don’t need to be enrolled in every extracurricular activity under the sun. In fact, everyone will probably be more relaxed if you limit commitments to one or two activities a week for each child. Parenting is most stressful when something needs to happen: when you need to get somewhere by a certain time or tick off some kind of preparation task.
Filling your week up with less preplanned activities means you can be more flexible and responsive to what you actually all feel like doing in the moment, often where the best experiences come from in my opinion! Because importantly, we don’t need to necessarily be away from our children in order to spend meaningful time together with our partner. Finding joy as a family is also filling up your relationship cup.
Nicole is a relationship coach based in Perth who also offers remote sessions. You can read more about how she works with couples here, including her Coaching for Life’s Seasons series focusing on supporting couples to navigate parenthood as a team while not losing themselves as a partnership in the process.
