What’s the #1 relationship in your life?
Mine is my spouse.
Most every decision I make on the home-front runs through a filter of “what’s the impact on my marriage?”
Sometime this implies compromise on what I think is best for our children.
Compromise gets easier with age. Mainly because I keep track of how many times my past self has been wrong.
As I wrote in Goals & Roles, my wife and I share a common goal with our kids.
Bring Kindness Into The House
Kindness is the One Thing that would dramatically improve our home life.
When we said that to the kids, it was with them in mind. We are seeking a change in their behavior.
Achieving harmony is made more difficult by a set of beliefs that pop up, especially, when the kids are tired.
It’s Fun To Be Rude.
Everybody Fights.
You’re Here To Serve Me.
These appear enough of the time, to be an unnecessary distraction from what we want to achieve as a family.
Something the kids don’t see:
Energy given to them (or anything else, really) is not available for our marriage.
Energy taken from us, invisibly, listening to conflict is not available either.
Four things I know:
Time Is On Our Side - this situation will resolve itself with no input from us. The kids will grow up, change and move on. There will be other challenges, completely different from the issue-of-the-day.
Focus On Our Stars - put another way, at any given time there are many things “going wrong” around us. We can get wrapped up in those things, or we can stay focused on what’s required to move forward. My buddy, Scott, reminds us to Keep Winning.
Do What Benefits The Marriage - this has been my North Star since the kids were born. It’s served us well.
Don’t Act On Anger - mothers probably don’t fully understand the degree of “upset” experienced by the males in their lives. If you’re a Dad reading this then you may know what I mean. Whenever I act on rage, there was a better option available.
Parents have many levers to incentive changes in behavior. One of the best is, Pay Attention To What You Want To See More Of.
"These appear enough of the time, to be an unnecessary distraction from what we want to achieve as a family." As the parent of two boys (13 and almost 11), this is my favorite line as I can feel the subtext in such a real way. We have not yet had the "Bring Kindness Into The House" conversation, but I believe it is a better approach than my now-famous "dad speeches" that earn more eye rolls than adherence and positive change (I know I'm complicit here as well).