Your parenting questions answered, by JOHN SHARRY
We have four children aged between nine and 16 and my question is how to deal with how they play one parent against the other. For example, my husband doesn’t like the children watching much TV. The other day, because they had done their homework, I allowed them to watch TV. When my husband came home he jumped in and criticised the eldest for watching TV again. He didn’t see that the situation had changed and felt his authority was undermined. I defended what happened and he got annoyed and we ended up in a row. He brought up his own childhood and how in “our day” we didn’t get to watch TV, but I don’t think this is the right approach for now. I am at home all day, so I don’t think he should have the final say. It causes big conflicts between us with the children watching.
A
While mothers and fathers may agree on many aspects of parenting there are always points of difference. Each parent brings their own ideas on how to bring up children, as well as different values and different life experiences. No matter how similar you are or how close you are to your partner, there are always areas where you will disagree (sometimes strongly) with each other. What matters in these situations is how you deal with these differences, rather than the fact that you are different.
Your question displays the differing perspective of the parent who stays at home to mind the children (often the mother) and the parent who is working outside the home (often the father). For a stay-at-home mother, it can feel undermining if your partner comes home and presents a different way of doing things and does not take into account that you have been holding the fort for the whole day. For a working father, it is easy to feel disconnected when you return home and that you are always playing second fiddle to your partner, leaving you frustrated that you have little opportunity to implement what is important to you in parenting.
In order to move forward it is important to try to appreciate your different perspectives and different viewpoints. It is interesting that your husband raises how he was brought up himself as a child, as often deep-set differences between couples have their origins in how their original families were different. Learning to understand your differences in a more sympathetic light can really help.
The key is to not see the other’s approach as simply annoying or misinformed, and instead to try to understand the positive intentions and values that underpin their actions. This is different than arguing about who is right and who is wrong or getting into a pattern of criticising your partner’s position and defending your own. Instead, this is about trying to listen to each other in an effort to understand and accommodate what is important to the other person. Such conversations are best held away from the original row when you are less pressured and have more time to talk. Then once you feel you understand each other, you can begin to look for compromises or, ideally, “win-win” solutions that take into account the strong views held by both of you.
At some point, it can be helpful to involve the children in some of the discussions about family rules. Taking the example of TV watching, it can be really healthy to have a family discussion about the pros and cons of TV watching. To do it well, you might listen to the children’s views and then share your own different views as parents, before reaching a conclusion and a shared family decision if possible. Such open conversations can be very beneficial to your children in modelling to them how to resolve conflict and make family decisions.
It is also important to learn as a couple to de-escalate your rows, especially those in front of the children. It will make a real difference to your relationship, if either of you can “press a pause button” before a row turns nuclear. What works is very individual to each couple and sometimes simple tactics such as postponing (we’ll talk about this later) or distracting (let’s talk about something else for a minute) or a tangible gesture (such as making a cup of tea) or even using humour can make a difference and interrupt the row.
The key is to learn to support one another and to show each other respect in front of the children, even if you have different views on the issue in hand. A particular flashpoint for families is on greeting and departure. As happens in your case, it is common for a row to take place when parents and children arrive home in the evening when there are lots of pressures and often many demands on them. It can help if you can maintain rituals of connection, whereby you take time to say hello and talk to one another, before dealing with challenging issues, or making demands on one another.
Finally, it’s important to ensure you attend to your own relationship as a couple. When raising a busy family it is easy to neglect your own relationship with your partner, yet it is this relationship that is central to the family functioning well. The more connected you feel to one another and the better you are getting on, the easier it is to tolerate your differences and not let them bother both of you. Taking time to do simple things you enjoy together can make all the difference, such as having a ritual of sharing news together, or having a cup of tea when the children are gone to bed can make all the difference.
If problems persist consider going to marriage counselling. Two good agencies that provide this are the MRCS, mrcs.ie, or Accord, accord.ie.
Dr John Sharry is a social worker and psychotherapist and director of Parents Plus charity. His website is solutiontalk.ie.
Readers’ queries are welcome and will be answered through the column, but John regrets that he cannot enter into individual correspondence. Questions should be e-mailed to healthsupplement@irishtimes.com