Playing from Behind

Over the past several weeks I have been playing racquetball with my buddy, Kyle. We seem to be pretty evenly matched, so he wins some and I win some. Today during our last game he got ahead early and stayed that way pretty much the entire time until he won. He won the first game as well after going up about 8-2 to start things off. Now, I'm sure there are certain circumstances and certain people who thrive when they are down. Apparently, I am not one of those people. It's not that I get discouraged when I'm down or that I just throw in the towel. I think that I just spend a lot of energy catching up so that once I get even, it's tough to get over the hump to finish off the victory.

As I was thinking about playing from behind, I started wondering about this in when it comes to our relationships with our spouse and children. As a society, are we constantly playing from behind or are we being proactive and staying ahead in the most important relationships in our life? It seems to me that if we intentionally parent our children early then maybe are children will lean toward making the right choices. Obviously, kids are going to make some bad choices, but aren't their chances of making a good choice better if we've intentionally invested time into teaching them what the correct choice is as well as (and maybe more importantly) how to make the right choice? I think the same goes for our marriages. If we work on our marriage we will be much better equipped to handle disagreements and situations that are stressful. We work hard to stay ahead at our jobs and other things we do in life. Shouldn't we work even harder to stay ahead in these two very important areas of our lives?

What are some of the things we can do to keep from playing from behind in our marriages and with our children?