Marriage and Family Experience: What Can You Expect?

Often your marriage and family experience will shape the kind of family you create in your own marriage. There maybe some favorite traditions that you experienced growing up that you choose to bring with you into your new family and you may find yourself finally understanding why your parents brought you up the way they did. If you view your upbringing as positive then you will no doubt be happy to allow those experiences to manifest with your children. However, if your childhood wasn't a happy experience or if you vowed to do things differently when you became a parent then you will probably have to work hard at overcoming your inbuilt views and reactions.

Perhaps you vowed that you would never strike your child. But then they did something - ran in front of a car, spat at you, were nasty to their sibling - and you felt something inside you snap and before you knew it you had spanked your child and they were a mess of tears before you. Once you calmed down you were probably feeling embarrassed and guilty for losing control. While it is important to take responsibility for your own actions, if you were punished with physical violence when you were a child then your family experience came into play and rode rough shod over your prior decision made when you were logical normal self not to hit.

The good news is that you don't have to be a victim to your marriage and family experience but in order to shake out all the learned behaviors lying dormant in the back catalogue of your mind, you will need to work at it. You need both awareness of what is happening, what your likely trigger points are and options you can implement to avoid falling back on the old faithful tools.

With respect to physical violence for example, sometimes it can be as simple as taking a deep breath before you do anything else. Or you may need to go away and be really angry on your own before you can deal with the situation before you. Another tactic is to have a clear policy on what happens when your child steps across the line into bad behavior. In our house its a warning and then if that doesn't work, it is time out in the laundry (the most boring place in the house!) for a minute for every year of their age. Or it could be the removal of a treat.

The important thing is to be aware of it happening and have alternative tactics you can implement when the going gets stressful.