They get best one available and hope that there’s not much maintenance down road.

While this may occasionally be true, there are certain practices that married couples must follow in order to avoid adding to a divorce rate that hovers around 50%. These are practices that are essential not only for success of their marriage, they are essential for well-being of our children.

In Maggie Gallagher’s book, “The Abolition of Marriage,” she states that, “Half of all children will witness breakup of a parent’s marriage. Of these, close to half will also see breakup of a parent’s second marriage.”

Can we possibly continue with a system that allows half of our children to witness breakup of their parent’s marriage? Is a divorce rate near 50% enough to have us consider new ideas about how we decide about marriage and divorce?

One logical place to start is to educate people about qualities of a successful marriage.

We can’t be effective when we educate them two months before they marry. Emotional intelligence skills and relationship skills must be taught to our young people early in life.

When we do teach them about successful relationships, we should include these qualities:

1.Commitment—According to one definition, “commitment is a freely chosen inner resolve to follow through with a course even though difficulty arises. How do we show our children what to do when difficulty arises? Do we move to where grass is greener? Commitment is a daily discipline. It’s core from which we respond to difficulty. It’s what makes our lives richer and deeper.

As I sat there considering my next move, it occurred to me that I needed to do something quickly. The deafening sound of silence reminded all of us that an ugly moment had just occurred. And a voice inside me continued to insist that my kids were at fault.

"OK, you two, I'm sorry I yelled like that, what a dumb thing to do!" As I moved toward my son, it became evident that he wanted no part of me. "Get away from me!" he shouted.

I thought better of telling him not to yell at me, so I did only thing I could think of doing. "Crabby Daddy is back," I proclaimed as I transformed my hands into pincers and crawled in crab-like fashion towards them. "I love to yell at children, then eat them!"

My son continued to yell at me to go away, but now he was laughing and crying simultaneously. My mission to undo damage my yelling had caused was underway. I’d been able to recover quickly this time, but I knew that this moment would be remembered for awhile.

Most importantly, I wanted to remember what had really happened. What happened was that I wasn’t disciplined. I failed to control my emotions in a way that my children could emulate.

Were my children misbehaving? Absolutely. Is there a part of me that wants to blame them and let them know how badly they were acting? No question. But this is part of me that serves my ego. It shows my children how to avoid responsibility and blame others. It’s not my “best self.”

And it’s our best self which we must always search for when we’re with our children.