The 15-Minute Weekly Habit That Reconnects Couples While Parenting

If you’ve ever looked at your partner and thought, “Why are you doing that?!"  or glared at them for not HELPING you in the way you want....this episde is for you.

Today in the Sustainable Parenting Podcast, Flora McCormick (licensed counselor and parenting coach) shares a simple 15-minute weekly practice that helps couples reconnect while navigating the challenges of raising kids.

This structured conversation helps parents move from reacting to problems in the moment to approaching parenting as a calm, aligned team.

You’ll learn how to use a short weekly “timeout” with your partner that includes:

• Starting with appreciation to rebuild connection
 • Solving one specific parenting challenge at a time
• Using the 4 R’s of Recovery (Recognize, Responsibility, Reconcile, Resolve) to repair mistakes and move forward
• Ending with something light or fun so the conversation doesn’t feel heavy

Flora also explains how this approach reduces the expectation gap in parenting, prevents resentment from building, and helps couples stay aligned while using positive parenting strategies and gentle discipline at home.

When parents feel connected and supported, it becomes much easier to practice calm parenting, stop power struggles with kids, and raise resilient, confident children.

If parenting has taken over your relationship, this simple weekly habit can help you reconnect, communicate better, and lead your family together.

🎧 Listen and learn how 15 minutes a week can strengthen your marriage and your parenting.

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Transcript

When Parenting Turns Into Tension

SPEAKER_01 0:01

It can happen so easy that we get in a space where we're glaring at our partner across the dinner table because of how they're pressuring a kid to eat, or we are annoyed that we have to do everything in bedtime because our child only prefers us and our partner just throws their hands up, or it could be that we just are like ships passing in the night, never even connecting in ways to be making a plan for how life could be going differently. If any of this is you, friend, you're in the right place. Today I want to give you a 15-minute strategy to really improve things for your entire week. Hey friend, welcome back to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast, where we bridge the gap between overly gentle parenting and overly harsh discipline so that you finally have the joy and ease you've been missing. When you are parenting with kindness and firmness at the same time, you have dependable calm and resilience built in your child. I'm your host, Flora McCormick, licensed therapist, parenting coach, and I'm so glad you're here. Here's the thing: when we're parents, we can end up becoming just these like coworkers, coordinating schedules. You take this one to that practice, I'll be making dinner, you be the one that drives them to school. We're just doing tasks. And then when difficulties come up, if we don't have a plan, you know the saying, if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. If we're just going about life, making what I say is one of those crucial errors of only planning for the best and expecting the best, we often get disappointed. We get this thing we call the expectation gap. The distance between what we expect things should, how they should be and how they really are can be equal to the size of our stress. Like I just want things to go well. Can't you just get in the car when I need you to? Can't you just remember what you need for soccer practice? Can't you just eat the dinner we made you? And then when those things aren't happy, because P.S. Our kids are human, and if they don't know what's expected, they're also more likely to get upset about it. Then, you know, we've failed to plan. And that really does often play out as planning to fail. Meaning we can't be surprised when then things don't go well with our kids, they end up rebellious or resistant. So, what can we do instead? So we don't just go through life and have the unexpected bumps in the road derail us. Let's make a plan for those bumps. And what do we need in order to have a plan? We need to set aside time. So, first and foremost, I want you to consider where in your life you could carve out 15 minutes in the week with your partner for a time out, a space out of the flow of life to really sit and talk and reflect on what's going well in our family flow, in our parenting, what's meeting the long-term goals that we have together and what's not. And what do we want to do about that? And we can all do that, right? I know that I easily spend an hour before I even realize it sitting scrolling on my phone. And so I encourage you, if you think I don't have time, really reflect where's your time been getting sucked away? And can you snag a little bit of that, redirect it towards this task? And be realistic about yourself. If you're like, yeah, we'll do it on Sunday evening. That may be where you are most sure there's not a conflict, but is that where you have mental energy? It's not for me. I know that if you try to talk to me after 8 p.m. any day, you are not gonna get my best problem solving. I do better in the morning when I am fresh and starting things out. I would much rather have a tough conversation even on a Monday morning than any evening. So know yourself. Be realistic about where I'm gonna actually be able to absorb some maybe, you know, challenging feedback and be able to be in a problem-solving place. So, what do we do in this 15 minutes? I want to give you a very simple structure of three parts and they align with family meetings. You can learn more about those in other episodes. If you are in Spotify especially, you can go to the top and search by topic within this podcast to look for other ones where we talk about family meetings. Isn't that a fun little trick? Here's three parts that I want you to do with your partner and they model what you can do in a family meeting as well. The first is a compliment moment, a moment to catch what has been going good. And this can be really hard. We may be frustrated with 10 things our spouse did that week, but if we don't also look to highlight the one or two things that they did that we super appreciate, we're not gonna get very far in growing the challenging areas. You know, just like with kids, all of us adults respond similarly that what gets noticed gets repeated. It feels good to have our efforts acknowledged and noticed when they turn out positively. So first start with some compliments that might be I appreciate or enjoyed that you dot dot dot from the week. I appreciate or I enjoyed dot dot dot whatever from that week. Part two would be to solve one problem. And there be maybe multiple problems. There often are, like homeworks become a battle, we can't get them to practice their piano, and the chores are still not happening regularly the way they're supposed to be in the morning and on Saturdays. Okay, rather than trying to tackle all of those and be in an hour-long conversation that drains both of you and makes you never want to come back to this space again, I recommend just one. If you're doing this every week, then let's just tackle one, we'll leave the rest for next week. Okay. If we're solving one challenge, there's a few parts to think about here. One is first of all, naming it as an unsolved problem. Instead of using any thinking errors that we could fall into, like name calling, like I think you're being lazy. It seems like you don't care. Well, that's not gonna get us very far. Or always never is like you never help with bath time, or you're always nagging me when I have a plan of how I'm doing packing the backpack with them. Those types of things don't land as well as if we name something as an unsolved problem. And a quick little cheat here, which also side note works with kids, is lead it with I notice, and then being as specific as possible to the behavior or action that's happening. I notice dinner times are involving a lot of nagging and frustration. Okay, I notice and I'm naming it. And then, secondly, let's think of if there is any space where we need to acknowledge something that was a mistake. This is a template from Positive Discipline that I absolutely love. It's true to use with our kids and also fantastic to use with our partners. And that's the four key Rs of recovery from a mistake. Recognize, take responsibility and reconcile and resolve. If there's something to own, the parts that are key are one, recognize your mistake. Are you able to take in and go, you're right. I, if the person really names it as like, I've done bedtime the last five nights, instead of saying you never do bedtime, then that opposite person may have the ability to really recognize, you know, you're right, that is happening. Part two, take responsibility without blame. Like that means you can take ownership without shaming yourself. You don't have to feel bad about yourself as a human to also take ownership that that thing affected someone else. So recognize your mistake, take responsibility in a way that sounds like, you know what? Yeah, I can understand why that would be frustrating to you. And I'm sorry. Then we moved move to a solution. That's how we resolve. So offering suggestions, let's brainstorm all the things we can think of, things that we could be doing, things that we could involve the kids in more, all the possibilities of solving it, and then end with what's our experiment for this week. Doesn't have to be the thing we know for sure is gonna last forever. We don't even have to confidently believe it's gonna work, but it can just be what's our best agreed upon option to try out this week. So those four R's again of recovery from a mistake are recognize the mistake, take responsibility, and reconcile through an apology, and then focus on what are our possible solutions to this problem. Because that's what we always want to do. Like, there's no benefit in telling someone that you think they're lazy, and then they're supposed to just be like, okay, well, I'll try not to be lazy. That doesn't really get us anywhere. But when we're concrete, you've done it, I've done it five nights out of the last week, and let's talk about what we could do to share that more. We can come to resolution usually much better. And then part three of timeout meeting with your spouse would be to end with something fun. Hopefully, you've enjoyably like been you're at a coffee shop and you're out getting a breakfast treat, or you can, you know, go on a walk together, or something that's just not business oriented, but something enjoyable together. So I invite you to that three-part exercise, 15 minutes a week. And the last part I want to say to make this really more possible to happen, number one, put it in your calendar like any other appointment. Don't just assume you're gonna remember. Put it in your shared calendar. If you have a skylight like our family does, put it in the family skylight calendar so that the children get to see that that's a commitment you have made. And then secondly, set a timer for 15 minutes. Sometimes there may be between the partnership one person more resistant. Sometimes I often find that's because in the past it's gone on too long when these types of conversations have happened. And also utilize, you know, structure so that you're really trying to keep yourself aligned to the principles we just talked through today today's episode. If it becomes a space where one person just feels attacked with names or always never statements, they're not gonna want to show up. So put it on your calendar as an appointment, set a timer and set guardrails for yourself. So you really stay within the outline I just gave you, staying away from thinking errors of name-calling are always nevers, and be solution focused. And oh, this has just led so many families I know, including my own, into more joy and ease. My husband and I do this regularly for ourselves on a Thursday or Friday morning when he has those days off sometimes. And in that space, following these three pieces, it really is something neither one of us loathe. And we usually come away with something that leads us into that next week in with more intention and giving us the baby steps to keep moving forward towards our long-term goals as a family. And speaking of long-term goals, if you haven't listened to episode 143, I really recommend you check that out today because it talks about what we can be doing to make sure we are leading with intention towards raising kind kids in an unkind world. By the way, if you've been finding these episodes helpful, which many people lately have been reaching out to me via text or in person or emails to tell me that, which I so appreciate, please share this episode with a friend. That really is something I would love and also appreciate. And if you'd like to leave a review, you can do so by scrolling down to the bottom of episodes, clicking on the fifth start, and leaving a comment. For now, friends, I hope these tools can help you be more unified as a couple. And if not, and you're needing some more guidance and a third-party person that, as many parents have said, it's like can't be underestimated how nice it is to have a third person being an authority to help me and my partner not battle with each other. Reach out. That's what I love to do in parent coaching and would love to connect with you in that way. You can find my information in the bottom of the show notes. Take care and see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Listeners, if you need parenting advice, talk to my mom. Sustainable parenting with Flora McCormick.