How to balance prioritizing your husband while raising your toddler
My husband and I were living almost like roommates when I had our baby, we barely spent enough time together and discuss as we use to before our baby came. I didn’t know how to balance prioritizing my husband while still raising our toddler as I felt overwhelmed with the whole motherhood and parenting phase. I never knew there was something called The Toddler Tunnel.
This is a period in almost every marriage usually when the kids starts coming. All you find yourself doing is Repeating laundry cycles, negotiation over naps, cooking, unending house chores and the constant energy draining demands of the tiny humans. You collapse into the bed at the end of the day exhausted, only to realize you have not really talked to or looked at your husband let alone connecting with him the whole day. Your marriage feels like it’s running on fumes and you worry that your husband has been relegated to the position of “wonderful roommate” or “co-parenting partner”. you are not alone, you are not failing and you are very much normal. It is just a phase that will pass.
If you often ask yourself how you can balance raising your toddler while still prioritizing your husband, then you have to stay glued and read till the end of this post as I will be giving out wonderful tips and guilt-free steps on how to protect and nourish your marriage during this demanding phase without neglecting your precious toddler. These tips will also ensure your marriage doesn’t just survive this phase, but actually thrives.
Shifting Your Mindset: The Foundation of Prioritization
first things first, you need to have a foundational shift in your mindset about how you view your relationship during this phase of life. This reframing is the key to manage the guilt that often comes with prioritizing your spouse.
Reframe “Prioritizing”: It’s Not Ignoring the Kids
Whenever we talk about prioritizing your spouse, many moms instantly feel a pang of guilt, they feel it means they must pull attention away from their children. This is wrong.
Prioritizing your marriage is ultimately prioritizing your family’s stability. A healthy, loving, and connected marital relationship portrays safety, security and communication for your children. They thrive in an environment where they see their parents i.e two adults who respect and adore each other. You are not just nurturing your marriage, you are securing your children’s long-term emotional well-being and stability. This is a familiar but vital concept, like in an airplane, you are instructed to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.
The “Mask” here is Your marriage while
The “Others” are Your children.
If your marriage runs out of air, the consequences for the entire family is devastating. By securing your marriage first, you have to ensure that you and your husband are operating from a place of love, allowing you both to be better, more patient, and more present parents.
Quality Time Over Quantity
When trying to figure out how to balance prioritizing your husband while raising toddlers, the biggest mistake we make is believing we need vast, uninterrupted stretches of time. In the toddler years, that is almost impossible. You just have to focus on maximizing the quality and impact of the limited time you have.
Practice Deep, Focused Listening
You might only have few minutes after the kids have gone to bed, but those minutes are precious. Deep listening is the antidote to the transactional conversations that plague parenting life.
When your husband is talking, practice blocking out thoughts about tomorrow’s schedule, the sticky floors, the food to prepare, your tight schedule . Give him 100% of your mental attention, even if it’s only for three minutes.By truly hearing him, you validate his experience, making him feel like a central figure in your life, not just another item on the to-do list. This depth of connection easily outweighs an hour of distracted side-by-side work.
Implement The “Five-Minute Connection”rule
As a fundamental practice for how to balance prioritizing my husband while raising toddlers, establish a non-negotiable, short daily connection point that is free of logistics and children.Your goal is not perfection but consistency. A 5-minute conversation every night is exponentially better than a 5-hour date night that happens once every six months and leaves you exhausted. Embrace the small moments, they are the building blocks of a resilient marriage during this high-demand phase. you can also try doing chores together like cooking etc.
The rule and action
No talk of budgets, toddlers, or chores. Just two people reconnecting.This could be sharing a single glass of water on the porch after the day’s activities or simply sitting in silence for five minutes with your foots touching. This small routine forces you to prioritize each other, even when exhaustion makes connection feel impossible.
Create and protect couple time:
Creating and protecting couple time in this phase requires militant planning and setting firm boundaries. This is the tactical side of how to balance prioritizing your husband while raising toddlers. you have to build walls around your marital reserve.
Schedule Connection into Your everyday life
You have to bring up small, consistent actions that require minimal time or energy, but collectively build massive emotional dividends in your marriage. Spontaneity dies dead during the toddler years, routine is your friend. To effectively balance prioritizing your husband while raising toddlers, you must treat couple time like a doctor’s appointment: it is non-negotiable.
Weekly Date Night
Choose a specific night (e.g., friday) for your at-home date. Plan it in advance even if the plan is just “ordering pizza and watching the adult movie you can’t watch when they are awake.” The consistency is key. You can also try Monthly “No-Kids” Outing, even if it’s just a 90-minute walk through a park without strollers, arrange for consistent babysitting once a month.This physical separation from the house and the toys is crucial for resetting your perspective and focusing solely on prioritizing your husband.
Build Boundaries Against Screens and Chores
The bigprioritiiigest threat to couple time once the toddlers are asleep is the immediate pull of phones and household tasks.
The Post-Bedtime Boundary:
When the kids are asleep, establish a “No Chore/No Phone” rule for the first 30 minutes. Use this time exclusively for your spouse. By intentionally delaying chores and scrolling, you send a clear, powerful message: “You are the most important part of my day, and I am saving my best, most focused energy for you”. and This rule ensures you connect with your spouse as husband and wife, not just as co-parents.
Communicate Openly With Your Partner
Resentment builds in silence. Open communication is essential for knowing how to balance prioritizing my husband while raising toddlers effectively, as your needs and energy levels are constantly changing.
Use “I Feel” Statements to Express Needs and Exhaustion
When you are stressed and tired, it is easy to default to blaming statements “You never help with the bath“. This instantly puts your partner on the defensive. Instead of criticizing, express your internal state: “I feel completely overwhelmed when I have to do the bedtime routine alone,” or “I feel lonely because we haven’t talked about anything but the kids all week.”How This Helps Balance Prioritizing your Husband While Raising Toddlers is Vulnerability opens the door for partnership and empathy. It allows your husband to step in and solve the problem with you, making him feel valued as a protector and partner.
The Weekly “State of the Union” Check-in
To manage the logistics and emotional temperature of the relationship, schedule a weekly check-in. Dedicate the first half to logistics (who is handling which tasks for the week) and the second half to emotional check-in (how are we feeling about our connection, our sex life, and our energy levels). Why This is Crucial for Prioritizing your Husband is that this ensures that no issue festers. By having a dedicated time to talk about the hard stuff, you protect your day-to-day interactions from being derailed by unresolved tension.
Involve Your Partner in Parenting Decisions
Often, mothers absorb the mental load and become the “gatekeeper” of parenting decisions, inadvertently pushing their husband into a secondary role. Actively involving him is a vital way to balance prioritizing your husband while raising toddlers.
Delegate the Mental Load and Give Full Ownership
Stop “helping” with tasks and start delegating full ownership. Instead of asking him to “help clean,” assign him the full ownership of a domain, such as laundry or dinner planning. He handles the scheduling, the supplies, and the execution.
How This Balances Priorities:
Sharing the mental and physical burden frees up your own mental bandwidth, giving you more energy to dedicate to prioritizing your husband emotionally. Furthermore, it validates his role and competence as a father and partner.
Encourage His Unique Parenting Style
When trying to balance prioritizing your husband while raising toddlers, respect his unique approach to parenting, even if it’s different from yours. e.g if he is handling bedtime, let him handle it his way. Resist the urge to interrupt or correct.This creates confidence in him and reduces the pressure on you. It solidifies your partnership and shows him that you trust his judgment, which is a massive form of prioritization and respect.
Conclusion
Finding the balance between the very demanding job of raising toddlers and the lifetime commitment of prioritizing your husband is not a single action. It is a commitment to consistent, small, intentional choices. By prioritizing Quality Time Over Quantity, setting firm boundaries to Create and Protect Couple Time, maintaining Open Communication, and actively Involving Your Partner in Parenting Decisions, you move from feeling overwhelmed to feeling empowered. Your marriage is the bedrock of your family, give it the consistent attention it deserves, and it will give you the strength and resilience you need to thrive in the beautiful chaos of your toddler’s years.
which of these tips would you try out in your relationship?
Drop your challenge in this phase in the comment.