Although keeping attitudes and interactions positive and loving around kids is important, you don't want to shield them from the reality that people fight, as it's just part of life and especially a part of relationships. As Elizabeth Dorrance Hall, PhD, puts it: "Conflict provides an opportunity for making change — if both partners are up for it. Conflict gives you a chance to work on the problems in your relationship."
By having disagreements in front of them that then get resolved, you are showing them that a happy couple doesn't have to be perfect and that they aren't always going to agree.
If your kids are really little and you're concerned that they'll become upset by seeing you and your partner fight, take a page out of Diana Divecha's, PhD, book. "When [our daughters] were preschoolers and interrupted our disagreements with concern, my husband and I would smile and reassure them with our special code: I held my fingers an inch apart and reminded them that the fight was this big, but that the love was this big — and I held my arms wide open," she wrote.
