Team Parenting
One of the most critical and dangerous aspects of parenting is the strategic alliance between the two parents. This is true regardless of whether you are happily married, unhappily married, divorced, living together or apart. If you are single parent, I tip my hat to you for performing the hardest job in the world, but in this one aspect you may have the advantage. You benefit by having one sovereign voice of authority.
If two parents are not perfectly aligned in mission, strategy and tactics, those sweet little bundles of (seemingly vulnerable) love and joy will eventually pillage the household like Attila the Hun. They can smell weakness. At the slightest hint of a parental fault-line, they will plunge a wedge in it and hammer until you shatter into a million tiny shards of defeat not big enough to scoop coals from the fire or draw water for a drink. (Please refer to the book of Jeremiah - I'm referring to Old Testament-style vengeance here.)
It is for this very reason that I try especially hard to always have my husband’s back – especially in front of the children. I disagree with most everything he does (tactically) but I exert Herculean effort to restrain my disappointment that he has not executed my superior parenting methods. Sometimes, though…well, this wouldn’t be interesting if I always got it right, now would it?
I was in the bathroom this morning getting ready for work. I can hear my husband and my son engaged in the morning ritual dance of asking, ignoring, pleading, rejecting, cajoling, and yelling involved in getting the boy fully dressed and fed before school. My husband was exhibiting saintly patience (i.e. a maddening passivity and failure to acknowledge the boy’s insolent behavior) while my blood pressure continued to increase with the rising volume and sass of said boy. I try not to jump in and take over these situations.
Really.
I try really, really, really hard.
But this morning my restraint buckled.I marched out of the bathroom with curlers still in my hair and affixed my laser vision on the boy. And with the thundering voice of Zeus I declare: I will not tolerate this noise anymore! You will not speak to your father that way; I will not have it! Let me remind you how this works. He (I point to my husband) is an adult; you (I point at my son) are the child. He is the parent; you are the child. He is the boss; you ARE NOT THE BOSS.
I swing around on my husband and inquire: Who’s the boss? (I’m picturing this in my head kind of like a half-time locker room pep talk, but I’m not sure my husband received it as such.)
My husband responds: Um, m-me?
That’s right! I say and swing around once more casting a squinty, zzzt! look in my son’s direction. Do you understand me?
His sweet little head nods furiously.
I stand, fists on hips, head cocked in classic superhero reflective pose and declare: My work here is done.
