iVillage

What Your Kids Learn from Your Relationship

How to fight, how to make up, how to disagree -- here's what your kids learn from their parents' relationship. (19 Photos)

Jenna McCarthy on Sep 19, 2012 at 10:01PM

chime in now

Single View
View All

2 of 19

What Your Kids Learn from Your Relationship

mother image/Digital Vision/Getty Images

How to Treat Someone With Respect

It's not just the way you speak to your spouse that your kids notice; they're also paying painfully close attention to how you talk about their other parent. When DH pisses you off and they hear you dad-bashing, the loud-and-clear message isn't just that Dad is a doofus, but also that mom is not to be trusted. (Does she talk that way about me when I'm not around, too?) Double lose.