105. Fighting About Parenting? Here's Your Solution

Are you tired of fighting with your partner because they are too strict, and they call you too soft?  This is the episode for you! Today we explore how to stop fighting with your spouse about parenting by focusing on the equilibrium between kindness and firmness. 

When one partner shifts toward a more balanced approach, the other naturally follows, creating healthier family dynamics and more effective parenting strategies.

We will cover: 
• Finding middle ground between overly kind and overly firm parenting styles.

• The counter-intuitive truth: changing yourself is the key to changing your partner.

• Understanding the natural parenting equilibrium that pulls couples in opposite directions.

• Implementing the "Two Lists" exercise from Positive Discipline to align on challenges and long-term character goals.

Join me next week when I'll be discussing the "Five F-words of sibling fights!"

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Chapters

• 0:03 Introducing Today's Parenting Conflict Topic
• 1:18 The Balance Between Kindness and Firmness
• 2:24 The Key to Changing Your Partner
• 5:10 The Two Lists Exercise
• 9:14 Closing and Next Week's Preview

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

You're listening to episode 105 of the Sustainable Parenting Podcast, and today we're talking about how to stop fighting with your spouse about parenting, and I have been there. Many parents that I talked to get in this place, where one is overly kind and one is overly firm, and if you've been frustrated at not knowing how to change the other person, today I'm going to tell you the number one thing that tends to change someone who parents very differently than you, and I'm going to give you a simple exercise to do together that I think will get you more into collaboration and teamwork. Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast. Let me tell you, friend, this place is different. We fill that gap between gentle parenting and harsh discipline that's really missing, to parent with kindness and firmness at the same time, and give you the exact steps to be able to parent in ways that are more realistic and effective and, for that reason, finally feel sustainable. Welcome, all right. In today's episode, I want to give you a key tool to help change the other person, which is often what we want to do, and a tool that will get you into more teamwork. So I want to share that.

Speaker 1: 1:28

I've definitely came into parenting with a lot of differences from my husband and I share often. He was raised by the warden of a state prison. I was raised by a kindergarten teacher, so, as you can imagine, we came in with those biases. I was also trained as a counselor and he is in the medical profession and a lot more. On that side of the brain that's just like facts and verbal and logic. So we definitely were on these opposite ends. I wanted to validate feelings. He wanted to convince them why they should be more respectful, and it wasn't working. We were pulling in opposite directions and every time I tried to get him to do things more my way, he would be frustrated and pull and try to get me to do things more his way. So we just kept being in opposite directions. So the top thing that really changed things was drum roll. How did I get him to finally change? I focused on changing myself.

Speaker 1: 2:31

That may be bad news, I know, I'm sorry. You're just like dang it, flora. That's not what I wanted to hear, but hear me out for just a second. There truly is like I find this equilibrium that the more one of you is pulling towards gentleness, overly gentle, or the kind side, without firmness, the more the other person's going to pull to balance that by having extreme firmness and very little kindness. It's just an equilibrium thing. So, friend, if you are in a partnership where you are often overly gentle and your partner is overly harsh, you're probably often trying to say, well, I just have to be, you know, the one that's validating feelings and listening to my child, because my partner is constantly just like laying down the law and yelling at him and telling him why he's not respectful and I see his heart hurting. So I feel like I have to do the heart work. Here's the thing, friend If you really want to change that about your partner, there is one key way to do it and that's to change yourself. I know, I know, I know I hate it, but hear me out, hear me out, don't just stop the recording, hear me out.

Speaker 1: 3:48

What I notice time and again in the hundreds of families I work with every year is that there's this balance that naturally happens, and the more one of you pulls towards kindness, the more the other pulls towards firmness. And I know you might be saying, if he would just stop being so firm, then, yes, I could come more towards middle. But what I find often works better is for you to do your work first, and it's like a magnet. It pulls the partner typically more towards middle also. So what does that look like? If you have tended to be the one that's overly kind and doing a great job at validating feelings, you might also be the person that is not so great at holding clear, consistent, firm boundaries, and so the kids are walking over you a little bit with that and in frustration. Your partner is like, okay, well, I'm going to be the heavy. So if you can add more firmness to your kindness, your partner will likely see that that's working, because that tends to be what works better for kids anyways and truly changing behavior.

Speaker 1: 4:56

When you have a kind and firm balance, when you're doing it kindly and firmly at the same time, then your partner is going to say, okay, I could probably get on board for that. I'm not going to get on the train, that's just all about feelings and watching them walk all over you. But I could get on the train where I see kindness and firmness. That's working. So when you do your work, friend, if it's that you need to work on being a little more firm, then I bet your partner is going to come more towards being a little more kind also. I bet your partner is going to come more towards being a little more kind also, and one of my favorite phrases that really sums this up, is you, as the more feelings parent focusing on, I love you? And the answer is no.

Speaker 1: 5:40

Every time your child's sucking you into, like all of their feelings, I want you to be able to know how to do some validating and how to move forward in into the boundaries. This is what I teach in my CEO signature process, which is how to help parents that have been tired of just validating and talking about feelings and behavior over and over and having it not really change and having long battles, to a three-step process that includes validation and connection but doesn't stay there where you lose your marbles. It goes on to the next step of how we encourage cooperation and onto the next step of how we have true ownership that changes behavior. So, friend, if you're wanting to learn more about that, certainly reach out to me. I would love to get you into my signature program where I'm teaching this to parents every month and quickly. They're seeing their family life looks so different, dramatically more calm and easy and comfortable, not without battles, but knowing exactly what to do in the battles and having them quickly resolve and move on to their fun life.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Okay, so part two. What I want you to think about doing with your partner a little exercise to get more on the same page for teamwork is an exercise that I got from Positive Discipline called the two lists, and what it asks is for you to sit down with your partner and make two lists. The first is what are all the challenges that are frustrating us right now? Bedtimes, transitions are hard meltdowns when they're not getting their way. Hard to get out the door without repeating ourselves 17 times what are the behaviors?

Speaker 1: 7:21

And then, on the right side in the column, make a list of what are all of the character qualities we want to see in our child when they're 25. Do we want them to be respectful, responsible, generous, helpful, loving, confident? What are the words we want to see in this child when they're 25? And then we connect the dots. We say let's make sure we're parenting in a way that when we're addressing all the things on the left, we are leading towards the results on the right, because, friend, usually we have the same long-term goals with our partner, but we are not always connecting the dots, that how we address the morning chaos, how we address bedtime, how we address meals, connects to how they are building those character traits.

Speaker 1: 8:18

And so if we're just going to say he needs to just respect me and do what I say because I say so, we might look at the list and say, but honey, is that going to really lead to a child that is self-driven and a natural leader? I don't think so. Or we also might say you know, but I want to make sure that he just feels like heard and seen and um, you know, so sometimes want to take the time to just like let him out of swim class If he is just too upset about it. It's like, but wait, does that connect to the long-term goal we have of him wanting to have, like grit and the ability to overcome challenges and the ability to, like regulate his emotions? We have to make sure our strategies of how we're addressing all of these challenges are really aligned with building towards the values we want long term.

Speaker 1: 9:14

As Princess Kate said once in an interview which I so adored, we are looking for the big win, not the quick win. All right, friend, I hope that exercise helps you. And if you are not sure what that looks like and how to have aligned principles always reach out. That's what I love to help people with. Sometimes it's just a short three session bundle, sometimes it's a couple months of working together, but one way or another I know we can get you into more joy and ease. I truly see it every week and it's so fun to see families that go from I've tried everything and nothing can really make this better to oh, I hadn't tried that. Oh, it is suddenly better. It's just so fun. I love seeing it time and again. So, fred, I bet you haven't tried everything and I would love to give you a few more tweaks and tools from an expert perspective. Make sure to join me next week as I'm going to talk about the five F-words of sibling fights, five key f-words. See you then.