My husband and I started on different paths as parents.
I was doing everything at home for the children. He was disengaged and his efforts went into providing for the family. I wanted to be my kids’ friend and didn’t want them to fail. He wanted to be John Rosemond, a parenting expert who believes in authority and discipline, with extreme consequences – at least to me.
Guided by excellent doctors, we learned a new way of working with our children. We called it the “check” system. We laid out the family rules (be respectful, good listening-say ok, get along, clean up). Then set certain checkpoints throughout the day. If they followed the rules, they got to keep their stuff. If not, they couldn’t play with their things and had to pull two large buckets of weeds to pass the next check. They hated that.
In one session, my husband asked, well what if they won’t do it? The silence was deafening and we got the message.
My biggest problem was inconsistency. It was tough for me to be strict while wanting to coddle and love them. I felt bad giving consequences. I tried to make sure they were successful by reminding, hinting, and giving too many chances.
My husband’s problem was he wasn’t around and expected me to handle it all. When he’d come home and find the mess or misbehaving kids, I’d get blamed. All I wanted was to hand the discipline over to him. I just don’t like disciplining, it still makes me feel bad.
After some time, I realized that being inconsistent was sabotaging things. They’d be great for weeks, then I’d relax and things would go south again and we’d have to re-start. I noticed a correlation. When the weeds were outgrown, it meant my kids were misbehaving, since I wasn’t enforcing consequences.
I realized that my youngest, who was the most difficult, thrived with structure and consistency. She was the best behaved. It was like night and day.
As I got more consistent, my husband interfered less. Eventually, he realized that he was the role model and if he argued with me about parenting, it taught my son to argue. So he stopped and instead backed me up.
We also reset the pecking order. Started date night. My children realized they were no longer the center of the universe. We couldn’t believe it, when we went on our first date, we came home and they had eaten dinner, cleaned up and were ready for bed.
We haven’t used the check system for a long time, but the threat is always there. I recently asked my kids how they felt about the check, my daughter’s said “Oh god, that awful thing,” and “it sucked like crazy.” But it worked. The coaching was essential along the way. We’d bring in our problems and get strategies. We met regularly, then over time spread out the sessions.
It was a lot of work to get where we are now. Now that I look back, it took a lot longer because of my inconsistency and us not being on the same page from the beginning. But eventually, we got there, and it was totally worth it. Everyone can.