NewEnglandLady
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2007
- Messages
- 6,299
I think everybody would agree that making sure you are on the same page in terms of parenting styles before TTC is important. But I''m interested to know how much you discussed parenting "scenarios" before TTC.
Tgal''s thread on raising a "spirited child" started a "spirited" discussion between myself and DH. I''ve always known that I would be the disciplinarian in our relationship. D and I have talked about parenting extensively, since long before we were married, and always agreed that we would be a good team. I am admittedly more rigid than D, who is very laid back, but we thought the balance was good. We''ve butted heads even while rasing our dogs, but I still think we made a good team.
So over the weekend we started talking about the "what would you do if your child was throwing a temper tantrum in public" scenario. This led to the "What would you do if your child threw a temper tantrum in Disneyworld" scenario. Then it led to some other scenarios. Then it led to me realizing that DH and I were fundamentally not agreeing on how to handle most of these situations. At one point D even said "Just give the child a cookie". Everything went blank after that as I started yelling "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? A COOKIE FOR SCREAMING??!" I am pretty sure he was joking...I hope. In any case, we ended up agreeing that talking about specific scenarios was stressful and that we trusted each other to do what we felt was best and agreed that we needed to be a team and work with our strengths (me: unshakeable boundary establisher, him: super patient, logical dad). Since we do plan to start TTC at the end of this year, I am admittedly starting to wonder if we might need to invest in some time in a bit of pre-parenting counseling, haha. I even TiVoed Supernanny last night.
So I''m just interested to find out how much you discussed parenting before having kids. Did you go over many different scenarios and talk about exactly what you''d do. Did you implicity trust each other and not really worry about specific scenarios? Did you read several books? If you did any of these things, did it end up not even mattering because things were different once you actually had the child?
Tgal''s thread on raising a "spirited child" started a "spirited" discussion between myself and DH. I''ve always known that I would be the disciplinarian in our relationship. D and I have talked about parenting extensively, since long before we were married, and always agreed that we would be a good team. I am admittedly more rigid than D, who is very laid back, but we thought the balance was good. We''ve butted heads even while rasing our dogs, but I still think we made a good team.
So over the weekend we started talking about the "what would you do if your child was throwing a temper tantrum in public" scenario. This led to the "What would you do if your child threw a temper tantrum in Disneyworld" scenario. Then it led to some other scenarios. Then it led to me realizing that DH and I were fundamentally not agreeing on how to handle most of these situations. At one point D even said "Just give the child a cookie". Everything went blank after that as I started yelling "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? A COOKIE FOR SCREAMING??!" I am pretty sure he was joking...I hope. In any case, we ended up agreeing that talking about specific scenarios was stressful and that we trusted each other to do what we felt was best and agreed that we needed to be a team and work with our strengths (me: unshakeable boundary establisher, him: super patient, logical dad). Since we do plan to start TTC at the end of this year, I am admittedly starting to wonder if we might need to invest in some time in a bit of pre-parenting counseling, haha. I even TiVoed Supernanny last night.
So I''m just interested to find out how much you discussed parenting before having kids. Did you go over many different scenarios and talk about exactly what you''d do. Did you implicity trust each other and not really worry about specific scenarios? Did you read several books? If you did any of these things, did it end up not even mattering because things were different once you actually had the child?