Raising Children: Agree With Your Partner

When a couple decides to become parents and start raising children together, their lives become even more intimate. How they themselves were brought up also becomes clearer.

One of the biggest challenges a couple ever faces is finding a common ground for raising children.

Raising children: Possible obstacles

When it’s time to decide how a couple wants to raise their child, they are often faced with one of two scenarios:

• The parents completely disagree about raising children. Sometimes the parents were brought up in dramatically different ways. Then they can become inflexible and want to do everything in their own way, springing from a desire to do what is best for the child. In these cases, they have a hard time seeing things from the other person’s perspective.
• They agree, but one parent is more permissive and permissive than the other. It is a constant source of conflict between parents. Often they agree on the rules, but a parent is stricter when it comes to enforcing them. It can make children insecure about the rules of the household, as they need clear and loving boundaries to be able to develop physically, intellectually and emotionally.

When children receive ambiguous signals and see their parents arguing, they feel insecure and insecure. It can make them try to use these differences for their personal gain.

Strategies for agreeing on how to raise children

1. Talk about the upbringing you had when you were a child and what kind of upbringing you want to give your child now that you are a parent. You do not need to repeat any given formula. You are part of a new family and must find an approach you all enjoy.
2. Accept the boundaries you want to set for your child. Discuss these privately first and then make the child aware of the rules, as well as the consequences of not following them, if you will have any.
3. When one parent comes into conflict with the child, the other should stay in the background. Listen and wait for an opportunity to talk in private with the parent. If there are contradictions, just accept. Try to participate in a peaceful dialogue without forgetting that the child’s well-being is your highest priority.
4. Just like for children, it is important to set clear boundaries when it comes to your partner. Both must know the boundaries that must not be crossed.

More strategies

1. Never blame any problems on your children. After all, children are the ones who suffer the most when parents quarrel. Imagine their situation and refrain from idealizing your life before parenthood. The child is not the cause of your disagreements.
2. Let your children know that their parents only want the best for them. Let them know that you are a team even though you do not always agree. Children need to feel that they can trust both parents and that you are working to bring them up as best you can.
   
3. If you disagree so that the children see it, it is not the whole world. Take advantage of the experience by sitting down and analyzing the situation. It will help you find the best way to act the next time the conflict arises. Your children can learn how to quarrel and become friends again.

Do not fall victim to selfish quarrels and conflicts over prestige. In the end, it’s not about being right or winning an argument. It is about finding solutions and coming to agreements on how you want to raise your children. And it is necessary from time to time to take a step back so that you can see if what you are doing really matches your beliefs and suits your child’s temperament and person.

You need enough vision and empathy to create new paths that benefit the whole family.