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Transcripts
This
week’s email is a really interesting one because I think it’s a topic that
everybody at some point or other deals with. Here you go: Dear Mr. Dad:
My wife and I like most couples have our share of disagreements on how to
parent. One of the things we have been disagreeing on lately as a couple is
whether or not it’s ok to fight in front of the kids, what do you think?
Well
as you might guess I actually have a lot of thoughts on that one. The most
common things people in marriage fight about are money and the division of
labor and right after that is parenting approaches - mom says one thing and
dad says something else; mom has one way of doing it and dad has another way
of doing it. That can lead to an awful lot of head butting.
Ideally of course you have to try to avoid having a lot of fights in front
of the kids. Kids can get scared and confused if their parents are yelling
at each other. Researchers have found that the angrier parents are the more
distressed their kids are in their every day life. Of course this doesn’t
mean that every time the kids are around you’ve got to put on a happy face
and everything has to be joyful and wonderful, in fact just the opposite is
true.
The
reality is that kids whose parents have fights, regular fights, and resolve
them have a higher self esteem and are generally better off than kids whose
parents have unresolved fights or don’t fight at all. Your kids can learn
an awful lot from watching you and your wife disagree as long as you do it
civilly. That’s really the most important thing. Seeing you guys handle
your disagreements respectfully is going to encourage kids to do the same.
It may also help them in a lot of ways by teaching them some negotiation
skills and bargaining skills watching how you and wife work things out.
And
those things are going to come in very handy when they are trying to
convince people later on of their points of view. There is also some
evidence that shows little fighting between mom and dad might actually be
good for the both of you as well. Holding on to that anger, internalizing
all that stuff for a long time can cause all sorts of problems, it can lead
to ulcers, high blood pressure and depression.
If
you don’t let off a little steam every once in awhile your anger is going to
come out in some really unfortunate ways. Of course the biggest one being
big explosion but besides that there is all these little subtle things like
honey you forgot to pick up the groceries, dry cleaning when you were
supposed to on the way home from work even though you promised you would.
Or
maybe you will double book the kids or somebody calls for your wife and you
just kind of forget to give her the message, all those sorts of things, not
filling the car up with of gas and leaving her with just a tank full of
fumes or she does the same thing to you. All those are subtle expressions
of anger. So let your kids see you and your wife squabble a little bit
about things that are easily resolvable.
If
you’ve got something huge then of course take it elsewhere. Having them
watch you fight and having them watch you recover from those fights is
really very very important. Not only all the other things I talked about
but it’s also shows the kids that relationships don’t have to end after a
big fight because there is so much fear that kids have.
Every
time there is a big fight that’s it mom and dad are leaving or somebody’s
leaving. That doesn’t have to be the case obviously and kids need to see a
fight and they need to see the resolution of that fight. Even if you do
have one of those big fights in front of the kids and we’re all going to
fall off the wagon at some point and do it, the most important thing is that
the kids need to see you apologize to each other and take steps to resolve
the issue in a peaceful way.
If
you’ve got a comment or question that you would like to get the dad’s
perspective about you can drop me a line through the Baby Talk Radio website
or you can visit my website
http://www.mrdad.com. You can send me email from there and you can find
out about the various books I’ve written starting with The Expectant Father
going onto the first year and toddler years. I’ve got a podcast for dads, a
daily podcast, called The Daddy Cast and a brand new DVD called Toolbox For
New Dads. You can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter the Mr. Dad dot
com newsletter. You can do all of that at
http://www.mrdad.com.
