Dangers of Parental Disagreement

In a previous post, I told the story of how our lamp shade got broken ( read You Break It, You Pay For It). After giving us $4 from his coin bank, Nate had decided that he wanted to try to sell some of his toys to pay the remaining amount of his half for the new shade.

The other day, we were doing a run to Goodwill to drop off some items we had cleaned out of the garage. I told the kids that I would pay them a dollar for every toy they wanted to give away mentioning that this could be money used toward buying Christmas presents for friends or, in Nate’s case, to pay off the remaining $3 balance on the lamp shade.

Nate raced up the stairs and came down with his large Tonka Dump Truck and proceeded to take it outside where his dad was loading up the car. I could overhear the following conversation:

Dad: What are you doing with that?
Nate: I’m giving this away.
Dad: No. You don’t need to give that away. That’s your good truck.
Nate: But Mom’s going to give me a dollar for it.

Seconds later my husband came inside. “Why are you letting him give this away?” my husband asked.

I explained to him what I told the kids.

My husband did not think this was a good idea. “He plays with this truck. We could go upstairs and clean out a ton of toys that they actually don’t play with and give those away. It doesn’t make any sense to give away toys that they play with.”

I totally saw his point. On the other hand, I argued that the toy must not be that important to him if he was so willing to give it away for a dollar. Besides, they had so many toys that I actually didn’t care which ones they got rid of.

My husband and I went back and forth on this until finally I agreed that we’d hold off on the toys until we could spend more time really helping the kids think about which toys they wanted to give away.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was asking Nate to do something for me that he was reluctant to do. Before the power struggle I knew was coming began, I reminded Nate that he needed to listen to Mommy.

It was almost as if he was waiting for the cue. He looked up at me and said, “I don’t always have to listen to you.”

“Oh yes you do, Nate,” I responded.

“But sometimes I only have to listen to Dad and not to you,” he retorted.

“What are you talking about? Mom and Dad are a team and you need to listen to both of us. What Dad says and what I say are the same.”

And then Nate brought up the incident with the truck reminding me that what I had said didn’t mean anything and that Dad was the one who got to decide what to do with the truck in the end.

I work with dozens of couples helping them parent more effectively as a team. One of the major things I always emphasize with them is that you never disagree with each other in front of the kids. If there is disagreement, you always go into another location away from the kids to work it out so that you can come back out as a united front.

Even when it’s a small disagreement like taking a truck to Goodwill.

The fact that my husband disagreed on what should be done with the toys was not the problem. It’s OK that we disagreed. And our discussion was not the problem. We argued back and forth on the issue and came to a mutual agreement that worked for both of us. The problem was that we did all of that in front of the kids leaving the impression that Dad “won” and therefore must have more authority than Mom even though that is not the case. If we had had our same discussion in private and then I came out telling Nate that Mommy and Daddy have changed our minds and we’ve decided to wait until we can go through your toys together, it would have changed the perception of who was really in charge for Nate. He would have seen us more as a united team than two opposing sides battling for a win.

Thank you Nate for reminding me of this.

How good are you and your spouse at keeping your parenting disagreements private? Do your kids see you as a united front or opposing sides? What can the two of you do better?