having issues with DH

768 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by snugg_bug, Apr 20, 2006

yogachick79

Discussion Starter · Apr 16, 2006

The funny thing is that it is not about our DD (who he is not biologically the father of) but OUR DS who is 7 months old. We agree pretty much on how to raise and discipline DD who is 7 yrs old. I know that Dr. Phil says that blended parents will never be able to successfully discipline children who were around before them, but that really isn't our case. Our problem is our different ideas on how to raise DS. I am "crunchy" as DH puts it. Vegan, breastfeeding, cosleeping, etc and DH was raised COMPLETLELY opposite. I mean in every possible way. His mom is a big fan of the CIO reasoning, formula bottle fed him, big meat eaters that don't understand why I am vegan. Before we got married he always said that if and when we had children he wanted me to raise them exactly like I had raise DD to that point because she is a wonderful healthy child. Well, that included being veg although I didn't bf her for long due to dufficulties. So in my mind, I am doing an improved version of how I raised DD simply because I was so young when I had her. But it causes MAJOR friction with DH because he accuses me of babying DS (he IS a baby) and says that I am spoiling him. What do you do when everything you thought would be a given isn't and you can't find a happy medium? I try to show him reasearch that backs up my ideas but he won't even look at those.

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MommyMine

· #2 · Apr 18, 2006

this seems like a normal mother father issue and not a step issue. I am sorry. You just keep talking and work it out.

Maybe it is a step issue in that you are not used to having to co parent. Co parent means that you respect the father's input as just as valid even if it isn't what you would do. My dh has suggesting things I thought were nuts but he is the father and he gets just as much a right to screw up our kids as I do. We negotiate, we try, we abandon things that don't work. But we are partners with equal say.

Most research on child development praises highly the role of fathers in balancing the over protectiveness of mothers, we do baby our kids too much, we don't give them enough breaks (we tend to over play with them) dads on the other hand are good at both these things and the play they do (rougher) is very important for children and something they do better than moms.

Give him a chance to be right.

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snugg_bug

· #3 · Apr 20, 2006

Both me and DH have some areas where we do not agree. Not everyone can have the exact same views on parenting styles. The idea is to come to a happy medium. In my case, (these are minor examples) if we do not agree on something, and it is not detromental on my son's well being, then one of us bends in favour of the better solution...ie. he thinks it's okay to give sips of pop to our 16 month old, I'm dead against it, so we don't. He feels very strongly that I don't throw the ball in the house with our son, and me, well it doesn't bother me that much because he can not really do much with it since he's still so little. Yet this subject means more to my husband than to me, so I bend in his favour. I think it's important that you have a discussion with your DH in regards to what the real major issues are and how you come to a compromise with desicions. I also feel that the relationship that my husband has with our son, is different than the relationship I have with our son. IMO - if I observed that my husband was babying our son too much, that is between them, as I know that my son takes his q's from both of us and does not view us as an extension of one-another.

Good luck!

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