Today’s activity for my three-month-old was more for parents than for baby, but will benefit the whole family. It turned out to be a great bonding moment, and an important one, too.

Adhering to a list of prompts and questions, the goal is to decide what type of family you will be with your baby. I looked through some questions and reflexively figured I already knew all my answers… before stopping to remember that parenting is a team sport.

So I set up a chart, and my husband and I sat down to see if we lined up on all the questions.

Ask yourself things like the following:

Do you want a set bedtime every night, or will you be flexible?

Will you leave the baby with a sitter, or take him or her along to events at a friend’s house?

Should the baby sleep in their own room, or in your room?

Will you always want a calm story before bed, or is excited playtime okay if one parent hasn’t spent much time with the child that day?

Feel free to add to this list an tweak as necessary, to fit your household!

It turned out we were more in sync than I thought on these big, prevailing parenting questions. Although I’m more of a stickler for the same bedtime each night, I was glad to learn my husband agreed, with the caveat that we could shoot for six exceptions annually, on important dates.

We both like bringing the baby along to events at friends’ houses, and decided the splurge of a sitter was better reserved for true dates!

Take the moment to talk about what else matters to you For me, for example, it’s extremely important that the baby has a consistent number of naps every day; I care less about duration and timing of the naps, as long as Veronika naps four times now, three times once she transitions to three naps, twice when she transitions to two naps, and so on. It helped my husband to hear this!

In sum, make the time for this activity. Your partner will no doubt appreciate it, and you’ll be a stronger parenting team for it.