- Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C
One of the most common frustrations parents face during the childrearing years is disagreement over parenting questions.
How strictly do we enforce bedtime? How much screen time? How do we respond to rule-breaking?
It is totally normal not to agree with everything your spouse says or does. In fact, you may go through your entire parenting career and never resolve some of those disputes. And that doesn’t have to destabilize your parenting or your marriage.
Let’s talk about how to handle these situations.
1. Never undermine your partner.
It is super tempting to step in when your co-parent is (in your opinion) flubbing it. Dinner’s wrapping up, Timmy hasn’t eaten his vegetables, and yet when he asks Dad for dessert, Dad goes, “sure!” and hands him a cookie. But Timmy didn’t eat his vegetables!!!
Of course you want to grab that cookie away. Of course you want to turn to Dad and say, “what are you doing??” But this is not helpful.
First of all, Dad will not be happy being undermined and overruled like that. (Nobody likes this. I’d say overall men find it more annoying than women.) That contributes to resentment and further conflict between you down the road (or on the spot).
But also, it demonstrates to Timmy that he can divide and conquer (and all kids will try this anyway) – that he can pit you and your partner against each other for his benefit. Not a great state of affairs.
In order for both of you to remain effective parents, it’s critical not to step in and “fix” things when your partner makes a parenting decision – even if you think it’s not the right one. (Of course, if it’s a situation of actual danger – let’s say Mom lets Timmy ride off on his bike without a helmet – then yes, it makes sense to step in for Timmy’s safety.)
The other opportunity there is here for course correction is simply bringing information to your partner’s attention: “Honey, not sure if you realized but actually Timmy didn’t have his veggies yet.” It’s possible Dad didn’t realize this (or forgot the policy). But if he replies, “Yeah, but I figured what’s one Oreo?” – drop it. You may disagree, but it’s not a safety issue, and it’s not the time to work out the dessert policy on the fly.
2. Don’t address the problem in the moment.
That leads us to our second point: don’t try to address either the situation or the policy in that moment.
And here is probably the key point of this entire post: the benefit to your children of nearly any specific parenting choice is far less than the value of having parents who get along well.
Said differently: the damage you do to your children by getting into giant arguments far outweighs the damage of giving them a cookie one time when they didn’t finish their carrots.
Again, there may be a few severe examples where this is not the case. But the majority of situations you’ll find yourselves do fall into this category. This includes dessert before dinner, staying up too late, failing to brush teeth, responding too harshly, yelling at a child for ruining your favorite shirt, giving too much screen time, not doing homework, and many, many more.
I am not saying that these are not serious parenting issues to be solved. They are. I am just saying that if Tommy (Timmy’s older brother) goes to bed without brushing his teeth one night, nothing terrible will happen. You can address the overall brushing policy later. Trying to step in and overrule your partner (see point #1) and thereby cause conflict is not the way to go.
Remind yourself of this as needed. You are benefiting your children more by preserving marital harmony than you are by enforcing this one parenting decision this one time.
3. Communicate effectively about it afterwards.
Of course, you do need to talk about it. Don’t just shove the incident under the rug and wait for it to happen again. But communicating effectively about it doesn’t mean clobbering each other with your opinion and trying to explain why you are right.
What’s needed is an understanding of where each of you is coming from. Everyone has a reason why they do what they do. We are motivated by our feelings and reactions to the situation, which are influenced by our personalities, our histories, our aspirations, and much more. Understanding that background helps us connect around the issue rather than just fighting about it.
For example, Let’s imagine Tommy grabbed Timmy’s truck away. And Mom just ignores it. Dad think Tommy needs to be given consequences and starts reprimanding Tommy. Mom gets involved and tries to calm Dad down (which of course has the opposite effect). Many couples have had similar incidents.
As we noted above, they shouldn’t have stepped on each other’s decisions. But later they can come back together and explore each other’s perspective. The goal here must be to understand, not to convince.
It turns out that Dad is really worried that if we don’t set firm boundaries – especially for Tommy – that he’s going to learn to walk all over the other people in his life (just like Dad’s ex-wife did).
It turns out that Mom is nervous that Dad’s overbearing approach will negatively impact Tommy’s self-esteem (as it did when her father yelled at her when she was young).
There are surely more moving parts here. The point is not to fix them, or decide who is correct. It’s to understand where both of you are coming from, and to care about each other’s pains and worries. That’s what keeps the relationship intact even as you disagree.
(For an extensive guide on how to do this, check out my book on communication for couples, The Couples Communication Handbook: The Skills You Never Learned for the Marriage You Always Wanted.)
4. Plan for future situations ahead of time.
As we noted, you do need to work together to make parenting decisions at some point. That point is not in the thick of an ongoing situation. It is after the situation, before it happens again.
Don’t wait for tooth brushing to become a fight again. Find some time (I know, easier said than done) where you and your partner can sit down together and discuss the options. This comes after you’ve had the conversation described above where you try to understand how each other is feeling. You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand; and the problem is not that Timmy (or was it Tommy?) didn’t brush his teeth. The problem is how you both feel about that, what your worries are, what your values around it are, etc.
Once you do understand each other, coming up with a consistent approach to the issue will go a lot more smoothly.
You can’t plan for every possible situation. You can’t avoid parenting disagreements. But if you keep in mind the points discussed here, your children and your marriage will thrive nonetheless.
Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C provides couples counseling in Baltimore and is the director of the Baltimore Therapy Center. For more communication help check out his book The Couples Communication Handbook: The Skills You Never Learned for the Marriage You Always Wanted (the first two chapters are available for free)!
