When You and Your Partner Parent Your Teen Differently

Hi, friends. Back when our kids were at the peak of their sibling-fight, scream-fest years, my husband and I definitely had our share of arguments about different parenting styles. Recently, under a photo of a couch completely buried in clothes on Instagram, a reader sent me this question:

"Hi Lisa, do you and your husband ever clash over this kind of thing, and other teen behavior? I'd really like to know, because we butt heads over it pretty much every day. I'm more on the laid-back side… I'd love an answer, or maybe you could put the question out to the community. Thank you so much and all the best."

Different Parenting Styles: How Do You Handle It?

I thought about it for a minute and realized: nope. Except for screen time, where their dad would like to see a lot less of it for the kids (and says so), we're pretty much on the same page right now. If anything, we're surprised at how little we need to get involved in our kids' lives anymore.

We both got a lot of freedom in our own teen years, so maybe that's where it comes from. And we both tend to think: is this really worth a fight when nobody's life is in danger? If your kid is comfortable in the chaos (and then cleans up when important company is coming), isn't everything just fine? They know how to do it.

So I asked the reader for more details. She wrote: "My oldest just lives in chaos, wears what everybody his age is wearing right now, and has an alpaca mop of hair. It doesn't bother me at all, other than that I want him to bring his leftover food downstairs, and I tell him he should at least clean up once in a while. But when it comes to the hair or the clothes, I always think, he's the one who has to walk around like that, not me.

My husband, on the other hand, says he looks ridiculous, and the two of them are constantly at each other's throats. The conflict between them weighs on my mom heart enormously, and it's not exactly good for their relationship. My husband says I need to back him up. But I can't stand behind an opinion I don't have."

Tough, right?! And I'm sure it's a situation we all know. Just because there are fewer arguments in our house right now doesn't mean there never were any. There were stretches when we honestly thought some of our kids simply didn't understand the value of things, and then we really did hash out what the right way to handle it might be. Staying connected and understanding, letting them feel the consequences.

In the end, though, I have to admit that as the one who was self-employed and spent more time at home, I often thought: well, I'm the one who has to live with it, I'm the one who spends the most time with them. I'm not going to enforce rules I can't stand behind.  

And of course that can feel like being stabbed in the back to the other parent, say, when a kid wipes chocolatey fingers on the beloved white couch again or tips an apple juice spritzer all over it. And oh, yes, that's still something we don't see eye to eye on to this day: the couch 😉 Everyone in the family knows by now (maybe you have good tips for cleaning upholstery? THAT would be a nice surprise for him).

What I'm trying to say: if parents are basically on the same page overall, it's obviously easier than when you hit differences you just can't bridge. And those are hard to predict before you have kids. What's probably smart, though, is to talk about how things went in your own childhoods.

For example, we both had parents who trusted us with a lot and let us do a lot. As a foundation for a childhood, that's pretty great. And it's something you'd like to pass on together. So where do you and your partner agree, and where do you not agree at all? And how do you work through those conflicts?