DAYTON, Ohio — Kids cause conflict in marriage. How these issues get resolved has important consequences not only for your children, but for the health of your marriage. Disagreements about child rearing are not only inevitable but healthy. Discussion and debate can result in new insights and help you think about issues in a different way. Parents shouldn’t be reluctant to respectfully challenge their partner’s perspective.
I like George Patton’s comment that “if everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking."
Parental conflicts are usually ones of strategy and typically are easy to resolve. In these situations, both parents agree on the goal but have very different paths to get there.
Disagreements about strategy are generally easy to resolve if you follow these steps: Clearly define the problem you want to change. Figure out a simple way to measure how often it is happening. Consistently follow a single approach for three weeks. Determine if the frequency of the problem is decreasing — the key word in that sentence is “consistently." If your approach isn’t showing improvement, try something different. That’s it.
