Parenting disagreements can create tension in even the strongest relationships. But before we can find a solution, we need to understand why these conflicts happen.
In this episode, I discuss:
- How cultural and personal upbringing shape parenting beliefs
- My own experience navigating parenting differences with my husband
- The role of self-parenting in becoming a better parent
- A real-life story of a high-achieving mother who struggled with parenting due to childhood conditioning
- How to create a balanced parenting style that respects both perspectives
Parenting is an evolving journey – there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. It’s about finding the right balance that works for you, your partner, and your children. Listen now and share your thoughts – have you faced parenting disagreements? How did you handle them?
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How To Address Disagreements On Parenting Styles
Different Ways Of Parenting Children
Disagreement in parenting may seem like nothing, but they separate many couples. To know what to do, first, we need to know why it happens. Our expectations to give the very best to our kids make us tense, and suddenly, we can’t tolerate any disagreements in guiding our kids. There is no right or wrong way to parent. It depends on our failures and our goals for their future.
We must also remind ourselves that you and your partner grew up in a different household with different failures and different styles. In my case, we also grew up in a different culture. I grew up in an Asian culture, a very religious Catholic community, and an entrepreneurial family. Silver, my husband, grew up in a European culture, a Christian community but not very religious, and a family that values knowledge and education.
When our son was born, there were some things we disagreed on. It caused some arguments, sometimes ugly ones, before we realized that we needed to find a middle way. Before we got married, we had expectations of how our marriage would look. We didn’t have a manual book on how to achieve those expectations and then came the baby and a new challenge called parenting.
What was helpful, and I wish that I had known it long before I gave birth to our son, was not to discuss anything that could bring high tensions when we are tired, especially as moms and career women, we have endless things to get done. Rest when tired and find a way to discuss things when rested. I wish that someone could have reminded me to be more relaxed, calm, and honest with what I feel and always ask for help. Connect heart to heart before sharing feelings and not assume that no one would understand me. Those unspoken thoughts created many misunderstandings and made our relationship colder.
There is no right or wrong way to parent. It depends on your failures and your goals for the children’s future. Share on XWe were lucky that we found a way to work on our marriage and become great lovers so we could cooperate in a loving way while parenting our kids. The disconnection is a never-ending death, and from my experiences and how I see in my client’s journey, it is called parenting because it’s about the parent. Until we know how to parent ourselves, then we can understand the best way to parent our kids.
What do we think about it? You share your thoughts and feedback, as I would love to learn from experience as well. It took us some time to find the best method to agree with each other, and now I’m happy to share that the agreement on how to parent was to find the middle way, not pointing fingers at who is right and who is wrong because there is no one-size-fits-all approach to parenting. One approach may not work on other siblings or in a different situation.
A Real-Life Story Of A High-Achieving Mother
As our kids grow up, it depends also on kids because every kid is unique, depending on their age, and in different situations, we might use a different approach. I wanted to share one story with you regarding this. It may sound cliché, but I hope this story will open your mind about how to parent your kids. There was a lady who came to my masterclass called Sacrifice to Self-Love Masterclass, and in the beginning, she had challenges in respecting her husband and also her husband’s decisions on many things, including how to parent their son.
She constantly felt unloved and empty. She was a great doctor and had an amazingly successful career, yet she often felt she was not good enough, not a good mom and not a good wife. She was offered work, felt proud that she got more patients than other doctors, yet she had no idea why she was doing that.
During the session, she discovered she was living her mom’s dream. Since she was small, her mom wanted her to be a doctor, a degree she herself couldn’t achieve. She often got punished when she didn’t get good grades at school. She often felt that to gain her mom’s love, she needed to have good grades. Since she loves what she’s doing and she loves her mom, I gave her a forgiveness practice and helped her to deepen her purpose in becoming a great doctor.
Becoming The Version You Love
When we hear her story, we cannot say whether the parenting was right or wrong. What her mom did for her at that time was what she knew was the best back then, and she had no one to discuss the best way to guide her and to guide her kids to find their own passion. From this story, I keep reminding myself and my clients to never give up on becoming the version you love. When you do not sacrifice your needs because of people you love, you will parent better as you are living your dream life.
Since my son was born in 2011, I have loved learning about parenting. I have read countless parenting books, gone to workshops and seminars, and filtered the information based on my values, beliefs, and also the advice that made me into a better person so I can parent my kids more calmly. During our discussion, Silver, my husband, and I often ask ourselves, “What’s the most important thing we want them to master throughout their lives?” For us, we want them to grow up as responsible kids, believe in themselves, feel loved, have great character, and be respectful to themselves and others.
I remember in one of the workshops I attended, there was a discussion about letting the kids develop and find their way. We could guide them but not let them live our unfulfilled dreams. Since then, we have included our kids in decision-making, starting with small things based on their age, such as what’s for dinner, how to spend our weekends, or where we should go for vacation, and so on.
The different styles come from different cultures and the different ways our parents raised us. They bring many variations and make our parenting journey more colorful. Relax, have a heart-to-heart conversation without judgment, and you’ll find the parenting style that best fits your family. Share your parenting styles or challenges with different styles, and let’s find the middle way together.
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