I’ll never forget the following story that one mother told me many
years ago. 1-2-3 Magic brings families closer together—kids get
along better with their siblings, and parents can even get along better
with each other.
Michelle and her husband, Jack, had very different parenting
styles. He was a spanker and she was a talker. They disagreed on what
behaviors to discipline and on how to discipline them. Michelle
tended to be too soft; Jack tended to be too hard. Each tried to
overcompensate to make up for the other. It was a mess.
Michelle told me that she and Jack often argued about other things
instead of the real issue. If her husband was too hard on their eight-
year-old son, Kyle, while he was doing his homework, for instance,
Michelle would nag about the laundry. If her husband thought she was
too soft about homework, he would get snippy over the dishes. The
two never said what the real problem was, and on the rare occasions
that they did, it turned into a huge fight.
One time at the grocery store, Michelle temporarily got separated
from Kyle and Dad. When she found them again, Kyle’s eyes were
red and he was rubbing his bottom.
“What happened?” Michelle asked as she glared at her husband.
“Daddy spanked me!” Kyle piped up.
“Why did Daddy spank you?” Mom asked.
Jack jumped in, “He wandered away from me and I couldn’t find
him.”
Michelle gave her husband her best “I-am-so-mad-at-you” look.
They then walked around the store fighting with each other in front of
their son. Their conversation sounded like this:
“If you would just let me discipline him, he wouldn’t run away
like that.”
“If you were watching him better, he wouldn’t have run away.”
“If you wouldn’t be so soft on him, then he would listen the first
time.”
marcin
(Marcin)
#1