This week, Dr. Coor is discussing clashes in parenting styles and how to deal with them. Does this sound familiar to you? As you start to embrace a new way of parenting, you encounter a lot of pushback from your partner who doesn’t understand why you’re parenting in this way, so almost all of the “connected” parenting falls to you. It’s as if your partner doesn’t have any alternatives other than yelling, shutting down emotionality, intimidation, and doling out punishments. They get so irritated with their perception of your parenting as permissive or passive that you might even buckle under the pressure and dial up the harsh or strict parenting in their presence. It can feel like there’s no way forward.

While you have a relationship with your child in which the trust and expectations are clear—sometimes it’s just not the same with your child’s other parent. Your partner may often find themselves in power struggles and endless negotiations. From your partner’s “traditional parenting” perspective, your child seems out of control and disrespectful. It’s outlandish to them that you “allow” your child to have explosive outbursts over “unimportant” things.

From your perspective, however, you realize that your kiddo is having developmentally appropriate regulation challenges that you’re fully confident they’ll outgrow without you having to control or coerce them away. Meanwhile, your partner sees your child’s expression of big feelings as unacceptable—something to be stopped or punished before you adults drown in a sea of disrespect. They may believe that shaming is an appropriate tool for changing another person’s behavior. The pressure to treat children as problems and objects to be controlled is huge as it is—and when it’s coming from someone you love, it can be hard to bear.

So what can you do in this challenging situation? Listen to Project Parenthood to hear her tips. Full episode here. Transcript here.

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