“Can I stay awake for five more minutes?”
-Sure
– What do you mean “clear”? Bedtime is bedtime.
Your partner may like horror movies and you don’t. He may prefer to go to the country and you to the beach. It may be more sweet and you are salty. Differences between the two members of the couple are common, but what happens when the discrepancies are around parenting patterns? Can it harm our son?
It is common that we do not share all our tastes with our partner, that we have different personalities, styles of doing things and even philosophy of life. These differences may have gone unnoticed or that they do not represent a great conflict in the relationship, but when we talk about discrepancies in terms of upbringing and education of children, things get complicated. Reaching agreements when we start from different, or even opposite, perspectives is one of the greatest challenges that the couple is subjected to when the children arrive .
There are several aspects that make us strongly position ourselves in our way of understanding parenting:
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In the “how to educate” converge our values , beliefs, personality, education received … that is, there is a lot in it about ourselves and our way of seeing the world, hence we strongly defend our point of view.
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It involves a third person, our little one, and we always want the best for him .
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The perceived responsibility of the consequences that the decisions we make in this regard will have on our child is very high, so that these carry a huge emotional burden for the parents.
On the other hand, although there were already aspects in the couple in which there was no agreement, this is one from which we cannot escape: we can not see that movie together if we do not like both, but we cannot stop educating our son because we disagree. That is, the impossibility of avoiding or ignoring this issue makes it more powerful in terms of its influence on the couple’s relationship.
What to do when we have different parenting styles?
The key, the main and most important thing, is that despite the discrepancies there is a team feeling and we make a common front. How?
Before children:
- Do not argue, fight, in front of the children (it is another thing to maintain a dialogue about our opinions and show them that an agreement can be reached)
- Do not discredit your partner in front of the child, with that we are transmitting the idea that they may not abide by our decisions.
- Support the other : it is important to show unity and coherence with the children. And if it’s really something you don’t agree with, talk about it later, alone.
To the parents:
- Set priorities , choose which topics are really important and which are not, or less. We cannot be in everything or pretend to do everything the way we want, so it is interesting to ask ourselves which aspects in which we do not agree are really significant for us.
- Review your ideas and beliefs regarding parenting , question them: sometimes we get carried away by the inertia of what we have learned, what we have seen, but we have not stopped to meditate on its usefulness or benefits. Discrepancies in the couple are the perfect excuse for reflection.
- Establish your limits , it is clear that you have them, but express them delicately, not as an attack or a disparagement of your partner’s opinion.
- Remember that your partner is a different person from you, with his personality, his values, his beliefs … Respect is absolutely fundamental.
- In private, and negotiating, establish a series of basic rules , about essential aspects for daily operation, and then, little by little, go to other issues.
The key is respect and negotiation. How to reach an agreement?
- Before making decisions, calmly raise your positions
- State, with respect , your points of view
- Seek (creatively, with a positive attitude) solutions to the conflict, options with which both of you feel comfortable.
- Take from that list of solutions the one that you like the most or that has the most advantages, and put it into practice, both of you, as a team .
- Do not boycott the decision: even if it is not the option we liked the most, it does not make sense for us to boycott it, it will create a climate of mutual mistrust.
- Evaluate the results : how is it working, are we happy with it? The ideal is to talk about the subject again and do a pooling to assess the maintenance of this pattern and / or to adjust future decisions.
- Reinforce each other for having reached an agreement. It is not always easy, so remembering that you have achieved it is positive.
Avoid “war mode”
- It is not a competition , you both want the best for your child
- You yourself have changed and you change (more often than you think) your opinion. If parenthood teaches us anything, it is that we are not always right, that we make mistakes, but that we learn from them.
- Try to empathize with your partner: is what he proposes really so crazy?
- There are no absolute truths.
- Avoid the system “no” to what your partner proposes. Dialogue.
- We cannot control everything , so we have to accept that there are small decisions that our partner will make when we are not present (different is if they are aspects of great impact or important decisions, in which case it is convenient to negotiate).
Disagreement is not negative, but conflict is
It is important that we make the distinction between the two situations: one thing is to have opposing opinions and another is to “fight”, disrespect, yell …
There are many studies that show that conflict between parents creates difficulties in children . For example, in a study carried out by the University of Jaén and the University of Granada, they establish the relationship between conflict in the couple with aggressiveness and behavior problems in children (especially in adolescents, but also in younger children).
More specifically, a study published by the Journal of Family Psychology concludes that exposure to confrontations between parents produces emotional insecurity in children, and that it could lead to anxiety and even depression.
Discrepancies can be positive
Differences in parenting styles and diversity of opinions among parents, as long as we manage them in a positive way , can be beneficial for our children. Show them that despite the differences we are capable of reaching agreements, that although we have different opinions we are a team and a unit with respect to them, it can favor that:
- Learn that we do not all have the same opinion and that we must respect each other in spite of it.
- It can help them learn to negotiate (parents act as role models for our children).
- It shows them that differences can be complementary and therefore enriching, and not necessarily negative: different does not mean worse.
- They can learn that there is no one way to solve things, which favors their creativity and cognitive flexibility .
There is no “perfect” couple in which there are no discrepancies, but you are a team and the well-being of your child is the common goal. Being different is not negative, but let’s do it right.
Photos: Pexles.com
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