Love my wife but we parent different. She's more lenient, I'm stricter. Kids are playing us against each other now and we both know it. How do yall and your spouses find common ground on this stuff without one of yall feeling like you compromised your values?
Strict vs lenient is often about fear. I was strict because I was scared they'd turn out bad. My wife was lenient because she didn't want them to resent us. Talking about the actual fears underneath helped more than debating tactics.
This is the hardest part of parenting imo. My wife and I finally sat down and actually wrote out what we believe about discipline, consequences, rewards, etc. Seeing it on paper helped us realize we weren't as different as we thought.
Have you guys done any parenting classes or read the same book about discipline? We did 'Love and Logic' and it gave us a shared language so we weren't arguing about philosophy anymore, just execution.
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Kids will 100% exploit the difference. We had to agree on a few core rules that were non-negotiable and then each parent had some flexibility in their approach on smaller stuff. Game changer.
Real talk: one of you is probably right more often than the other on specific stuff, but being united matters more than being right. Your kids need consistency more than they need the perfect approach.