Parenting is an incredibly rewarding and joyful experience, but it also presents us with many challenges, challenges that are only made harder when our parenting style is completely at odds with that of our spouses’.

The key to finding a way to parent as a team and raise your children in a mutually supportive and consistent way is by learning to speak a common language with your partner, so that you can present a united front to your children. And the way we do this is by learning to listen to one another, empathising and trying to see things from our spouse’s point of view.

So, next time you find yourself unable to disagree on a parenting issue, try to keep the following points in mind:

• Your partner loves your children just as much as you do and is just trying to raise them in the best way that he or she knows how, so try and identify the strengths and weaknesses of your different parenting styles.
• You can manage your different approaches to parenting without resorting to blame, ‘guilt trips’ or other forms of negative judgment by learning to listen to one another and seeing things from the other person’s point of view.
• Children benefit most when their parents have a balanced and consistent approach to parenting, which is both kind and firm (ie. neither too strict nor too lenient). Make sure you are ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ so that your children don’t get confused by mixed messages.

To learn more about the ways in which you can align your parenting style with that of your partners’, you can read our book ‘Kids Don’t Come With a Manual – The Essential Guide to a Happy Family Life‘.

Inspirational Quotes:

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” ― C.G. Jung

“One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say”. – Bryant H. McGill