Peace at Home Blog

Ways for Parents to Get on the Same Page

January 2025 | Ruth Freeman

This Valentine’s Day, let your celebration of love extend beyond a romantic dinner. Take this moment to deepen your connection as partners and strengthen your shared vision as parents. By getting on the same page, you’re not only nurturing your relationship but also laying the foundation for a loving and stable family. It doesn’t have to look like a Hallmark movie, but take some steps to lean into a healthy, united partnership. Even if your co-parent isn’t your romantic partner, you can give your children the powerful legacy of a respectful, calm and caring relationship between the most important people in their lives.

You can start by recognizing that every parenting partnership is a cross-cultural experience. Even if you grew up in the same neighborhood and in the same culture, you come from different families. Each family has its own values, beliefs, expectations, behaviors, and relationship styles. Navigating these differences can strongly affect the harmony in your family. This is especially important during the perfect storm of parental burnout and the pediatric mental health crisis that we are experiencing in the US right now. 

The pediatric mental health crisis was declared by the American Academy of Pediatrics and others based on the soaring rates of depression, anxiety and suicidality among children and teens. This crisis is occurring in combination with parental burnout among 66% of working parents and significant parent stress identified by the US Surgeon General’s Advisory 

There is hope, and there are ways to strengthen your skills to make you a better co-parenting partner and better parents for your kids. Consider the following: 

1. Be aware of how your childhood influences your strengths and challenges as an adult. When parents minimize or are unaware of any harm done to them in childhood, your are more likely to repeat those harmful behaviors with their own children.

2. Tune in and manage your emotions to increase your emotional intelligence (EQ), that is being aware of your own emotions, managing your emotions and recognizing and responding effectively to the emotions of others. Children often trigger strong emotions in their parents, especially frustration and anger. When parents don’t recognize and take responsibility for their emotions, they can be harsh and even harmful to their children. Kids also learn to regulate their emotions through daily interactions with parents who can regulate their own and help kids develop that capacity. Without that emotional intelligence, we can’t help our kids develop it for themselves and EQ is essential to success in relationships in the family, school and work-life in the future.

3. Be curious about the research – Raising children has become increasingly complicated. Recent research about brain development and children’s behavior has impacted what are considered best parenting practices. Children benefit when parents understand how powerful their daily behaviors impact children’s neurological, emotional and social development.

4. Be flexible – We often have a picture of how our families will be and how our kids will develop. Reality often doesn’t look like our dreams. Plus, kids change as they grow through various developmental stages. The easy-going, cooperative 7-year-old can look very different at 17. Children and teens thrive when their parents can be flexible and responsive to the child in front of them. Rigid guidelines will cause conflict and dampen your child’s development. This doesn’t mean being a push-over. It’s about understanding your child at each stage, teaching them how to problem solve and be resilient.

5. Prioritize clear communication and negotiation skills – In order to co-parent effectively we must be willing to keep each other informed about what we observe, what we want and how we see family life. Without talking concretely about needs and wants and about how we perceive various situations, parents are likely to feel frustrated or unseen which can lead to conflict or even sometimes neglect. Keep in mind that getting on the same page can mean celebrating differences. Your strengths can be complementary.  Expressing appreciation of each other’s abilities can go a long way in creating peace in your family.

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