parenting differences

Parenting Styles Clash: Dealing with Parenting Differences Constructively

April 22, 2013

If you are in a relationship and parenting children together, you are inevitably facing parenting differences. Unless you married your clone. And that’s creepy. I have a whole section on parenting. And one on partnering. Some overlap, yes? My husband and I are about as similar as can be on most things that matter–which is probably why we chose to be together. We’re on the same page religiously, spiritually, activities in common, values in common, both lawyers, love of cultivating the earth and our children’s green personhoods, raising and caring for the whole child. He laughs at my dumb jokes, eats my failed meals, and nestles our notoriously awful sleeper, SweetPea at all times of night to help with her post-year-old night weaning. He’s ah-mazing. Even so, we do have different ideas on certain aspects of parenting. Or just different levels of awareness. It seems to me that looking at our squabblings and hearing about others, it boils down to about 4 main styles that clash: 1) Timeliness. Usually in a relationship of two people, one is more keenly aware of time than the other. Maybe you’re with Mr. Punctuality and you’re Mrs. Punctuality. More likely, one of you is tapping your watch than the other. This is more likely than having two laid back people. Because at some point in life, you really do suffer from being late to everything. Life teaches us that if we are chronically oblivious to time, we will lose something we wanted, an opportunity…

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