Agree To Disagree

Seeing parents argue is stressful enough for children,
particularly if it becomes loud. It’s not unusual for
parents to disagree about how to raise their children, but
agree to disagree in the bedroom, or, at least, out of
earshot of your children. There are several reasons for this
suggestion. For one, young children, in particular, need the
stability parents provide. Hearing and seeing parent’s
battle away before them conjures up all kinds of fears, one
of the worst being divorce. What's more, heated arguments
set a bad example for your children.

Second, the kids may side with one parent in the argument. So
what was a disagreement between two people, now becomes
an altercation among three or more people. Third, the kids may
take sides after the disagreement, effectively splitting the
family apart. The stricter parent becomes the bad guy, the
one with the black hat. So, the kids start going to the good
guy parent when they want permission for something-a bad
situation.

This situation is one of the worst examples of parenting
because the mother and father have chosen to side with the
kids against each other, rather than work out the problem. In
other words, such a situation is not parenting at all. The
family unit is destroyed and replaced by child rulers that
rule through parent intimidation. If this occurs in your
family, agree to disagree, then seek counseling immediately.
If each parent is willing to be a little flexible concerning
his or her child rearing practices, such a problem can be
solved fairly easily.

However, it's much more challenging to agree to disagree when
one or both parents are determined to sacrifice their
parental responsibility in order to win their child's love.
This results in major harm to the child, because, in effect,
the child has no real parent. This type of parent is
thinking that if he does not let the child have her way that
the child will not love him. He competes for his child's
love with the other parent. This person is placing his need
for love above his responsibility to parent his child.

The person that places the need for his child's love above
his parenting responsibility is no parent. Moreover, this is
not normal parent-child love because the parent is willing to
sacrifice his child's emotional growth towards maturity in
order to satisfy his own selfish needs for love. In cases
like this, the child often grows up to be emotional immature
and forever dependent on the parent who abused her so, but,
at the same time, often resenting that parent.

Early family counsel is critical in such cases and the
sooner, the better. For futher help with agree to disagree,
click to the Parenting With Love And Logical Consequences page.