Spats. Squabbles. Fights. The first year of parenting comes with its fair share of arguments. Here are some of the more common — and how to resolve them.
What to Do When One Parent is Always the Bad Cop
Being the bad cop is wearing and breeds resentment. Here's how to help balance the scales and become a unified front with your partner.
Two Ways to Stop Reliving the Same Fight Again and Again
1. Fight the Instinct to Label
We’re quick to compartmentalize and label. Very often in an argument, people tend to point fingers and cite the other person as being the source of the marriage’s problems. It’s hard to break down exactly what it is that our partner is doing wrong.
An exercise to try: Try talking about yourself and revealing more about why this particular recurring argument makes you so angry. For instance, try saying ‘I get scared when you spend money, because I grew up in a family where we didn’t do that.” Speaking plainly about yourself offers a deeper understanding of where you’re coming from and allows your partner to share, too.
2. Recognize you are really arguing about what’s underneath.
Recurring arguments are rarely about what they appear to be on a surface level. They have Inception-level layers. A fight about never doing the dishes is more likely about respect and how partners see one another in a relationship. A fight about money is likely also about power, intimacy, and trust. The fact of the matter is that despite what has pulled the ignition and restarted the same fight you had two weeks ago, it won’t be resolved unless you pinpoint the underlying issues — and where they first began. It’s crucial to confront and admit those issues and not allow them to inform your actions in the present.
Here is some more advice on putting recurring arguments to bed for good.
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Three Tips for How to Recognize a “Teachable Moment”
1. Disconnect from Parental Emotions: Parents often feel that lessons need to be taught in the heat of the moment, but those are often the least helpful times to start teaching.
“As adults we often view something as a teachable moment because we’re frustrated, we’re stressed. We want to do something at that moment because it’s about our anxiety,” says Phyllis Fagell, licensed clinical professional counselor and author of Middle School Matters. But that anxiety can translate as anger and judgement, leading to shame. “If a kid feels like there’s no path back to being a good kid then there’s no point to them in having that conversation.”
2. Consider the Context: Fagell notes that parents should remember behaviors are like icebergs. Beneath every observable choice a child makes (good or bad) there are emotional and psychological antecedents that remain hidden.
Katcher focus on those antecedents in his show, and says that parents might be surprised by the context of certain behaviors. “It’s never what you expected it to be,” he says. “The context can only come from the kid and it takes time to understand that context. So, for me, most of the teachable moment is listening”
3. Get Comfortable Asking Questions: Fagell understands the parental urge to be flummoxed by children’s choices. But when it comes to questions, she urges parents to steer clear of asking accusing questions like, “What were you thinking?” Instead, she suggests that parents ask open ended questions that are grounded in empathy and curiosity.
Neil Katcher, father to an 8-year-old son and creator of the popular Mortified podcast, uses a similar technique to coax stories from the kids that share their stories on his podcast. “We actually map out the entire story with them. And we don’t ask for conclusions until we know the whole story until we go through it all,” he says. “By doing that they have a broader perspective as to what happened to them and why they did what they did.”
Here's some more expert insight into finding teachable moments.
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