Q: How do you share with your husband what you are learning about teaching and parenting? I spend so much time learning how to be a better teacher and mom but I feel like his mindset about parenting is not growing like mine. I analyze my childhood and why I feel and do things that I don’t want my kids to feel or do. He admits that he doesn’t think about it at all.
What have you done to help your spouse look at his parenting?
A: For us it’s been a matter of making this our top priority as a couple: staying on the same page, ALWAYS.
So, whenever I learn something, especially if it involves a fundamental shift in mindset, I’m coming back to him and discussing it with him.
I don’t want to run ahead of him, or away from him, or end up living on a different life philsophical “plane” from where he lives. We’re one flesh. So in the end, everything I’m learning and digesting HAS to be digested WITH HIM.
God hasn’t made it so that I’m the leader, or so that we live two separate lives under the same roof. No, we’re one flesh, under the same roof, and he is the leader of our home.
BUT WHY DOESN’T HE THINK ABOUT IT AS OFTEN AS I DO?
If your husband doesn’t think about it all on his own, that’s fine (and normal!).
These aren’t the problems he’s necessarily applying HIS brain to, all day long, because he has a job, and his own problems to analyze.
But I want to help regularly bring him into my reality, my thinking, my analysis of the problems we’re facing and the solutions I’m considering… so that we’re perpetually walking in step with one another and I’m not off in some space on my own, taking on ideas that are contrary to what he would have me do. Sometimes I’ll walk him through a particularly frustrating moment of my day with one of the children, step by step… what I said, what they said, how they responded, what I tried, etc.
And then we talk through and analyze if we’re dealing with things well and still need to stay the course, OR if something needs to change.
This takes more work– yes.
It takes more communication- yes.
It takes continual communication.
We are constantly doing this. It’s still happening right now, with how we’re dealing with our nearly-adult children, as well as our younger children (reminding each other of the basics). Our children are ages 17, 15, 13, 11, 9, 6, 4, 3, & 1, and we’re still learning and still engaged in this process. It’s really normal, and it’s the way we stay on the same page.
And I don’t expect for him to think through everything to the degree that I do… but I do intentionally bring him into my world and seek his input on ideas I’m encountering so that I can make sure we’re seeing the world from a one-flesh-TOGETHER kind of perspective, rather than “his” and “mine.” Make sense?
IN THE COMMENTS: How do *you* stay on the same page with your husband? How have you avoided rushing ahead or doing things your own way, without discussing it with him?
This is an interesting question, Jess. My husband is exactly the same way. I think many are.
For us, we are in CONSTANT conversation. Every day, multiple times per day, discussing the issues we face – attitudes, screens, relationships, friendships, activities, chores, whatever. It’s non-stop.
On a larger level, the main danger that I see is the eternal problem of Eve: We women tend to be more curious and more emotional and more vulnerable to deception. And when it comes to parenting, there is a LOT of deception out there in how the internet is teaching new mamas to parent. The huge danger is of we women learning falsehood, and then dragging our husbands into it with us. I see this happening over and over and over again. So while we do want to bring our husbands along on the journey with us, rather than going it solo, we have to make sure that we stay in submission to their wishes so that we are not led astray by the spirit of the age and by all of the false voices that are clamoring to convince us of non-biblical parenting principles and methods. Most men tend to be able to withstand deception better than women – unless we women drag them down with us! 🙂 So it has to be a matter of “Here’s what I’m experiencing; do you have suggestions for how I should handle it?” instead of “Here’s what we are going to do now, whether you like it or not” when I am dealing with my husband.
Thanks for all the blogging lately! Love reading what you have to say!
This was really helpful to think through. I take notes of things to share or confer with him but I am still trying to chose a likely moment for being in the same page while keeping things current. I think that means saying yes to every car date and praying kids (3 and 5 weeks) fall asleep. Need to grow here!