Firemen are on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They are always ready to answer any call. Whether it is a minor call for assistance of someone who has locked themselves out of their home - to a major calamity where people no longer have a home to go to anymore. These heroes are always on standby - awaiting the call to serve. As both a husband and Christian Life Coach, I am convinced that husbands and wives need to be on stand by for each other, ever ready to serve each other with raising children and their careers.

Children are a blessing from God, but it takes a lot of work to raise them. It requires teamwork on the part of both the dad and the mom. Husband and wife need to sit down and lay out the ground rules for discipline. Chances are that you both are not going to agree on how you are going to carry out discipline with your children, because each one of you is unique. That uniqueness need not derail the potential teamwork that you two can use to raise up your child(ren). You need only to determine what is best for the child and then do what is best. You may not get to do what you want at several points along the way, through prayer each of you will know what to do. Once you have your ground rules, each of you need to support one another.

Kids, even at a very young age, will try to play mom against dad to get what they want. I know my kids have asked their mom for something and did not get it, so they come to me. One of the first questions I ask is if they have asked their mother and they know I am going to check with her. They will tell me she said no and then I will tell them that my answer is no. Now it might have been something that was not a big deal to me and I would have said yes. But it is important to be on "stand by" for my wife and support her. So after I tell the kids no, I find her and tell her what happened. It is important that husband and wife be one when raising their kids.

If one of my kids talks back to my wife and I hear it, I stop what I am doing to go to her side. My wife does the same thing for me. She tells them that they will not disrespect her husband. When I come to her side, I similarly tell them that they will not disrespect my wife. This is very effective in teaching our children respect for their parents and each other. We are also modeling positive parenting to them and what the Lord means when he says the two shall be as one. As you can see, unity in child rearing is a must.

Couples need to be on stand by when it comes to their spouse