Three Ways to Encourage My Children's Relationship With Their Father

It goes without saying that as a wife and a mother I have a lot of responsibilities and influence within my family. When it comes to raising my children, the responsibilities sometimes feel countless and never-ending, and though those responsibilities are often exhausting, those responsibilities really are a great blessing. One of those great blessings includes the opportunity for me as their mother to uplift their father.  Am I building up their relationship with their father, or tearing it down?

1. Show my husband respect. The world, particularly through media such as TV and movies, often show fathers to be incapable, ignorant, irrelevant, and irrational, and then act as though men can't help being those things. I need to remind my children that their father is none of those things! Do I encourage them to respect their father by my own actions? Do I nag at him and drag him down? Do I make it easy for him to lead our family? My relationship with my husband as a wife shows my children what I really think about him, as well as my attitude towards following God's Word since I'm called to a standard when it comes to my relationship with my husband (Ephesians 5:22-33). 
2. Discipline my children. As mama I must be involved in discipling our children. If I leave all the discipling up to my husband, what kind of view of daddy will that give our children? Additionally, if I don't discipline them, that can also bring on other problems besides skewing their view of their father, particularly in regards to how they behave when only I'm around. This also goes back to the idea that I wrote about before that mama and daddy are a team. 
3. Allow him to manage, play, and interact with our children as he sees fit.  I suppose this could have been classified under the idea of showing my husband respect, but I'm separating it out. Have you ever noticed how boys and girls naturally play differently? (I have that on perfect display in my house right now!) I shouldn't expect my husband to interact with the kids the same way that I do. When I try to put how our children play and interact with their daddy into a box of "dos and don'ts" based on how I would act, I may be hindering their relationship. One of my children's absolute favorite things to do is to play "wrestle" with daddy. Is that how I would play with them? No, but does that mean it is a "wrong" thing to do? Not at all! In fact, it is special time of bonding for them. Similarly, do I complain about how he dresses or feeds the kids? He's plenty capable and responsible to take care of our children. Just because things aren't done exactly the way I might do it, doesn't mean it is wrong or inadequate. 

I'm more thankful every day for my husband and how he lives his life as a husband and father. Our family is blessed daily through his leadership and love.