Parenting secret: competitions
Sometimes, without even realizing it, us parents get in ruts of doing things. We get jealous when someone takes our position from us. It becomes a competition. Example: I read to my son. All the time. Well, lately I haven’t been reading his bedtime story, so before I got home from work my wife read to him because he would be in bed before I got home. My initial reaction?
shock - I’ve been outdated;
shame - I was too busy to read to my own son;
anger - how dare you!;
sorrow - that’s my job...
Thankfully, because I experienced all these at the same time, I wasn’t able to reply. But had I been able to talk, I would have probably said some bad things. Why? Because reading to my son was not just an issue of personal pride (this is something that I do), but it was also more for my own happiness than the happiness and well-being of my son. I did something very loving for very selfish motives. If it was for my son, then I would have just been happy that he got to have a story before he went to bed. Go back and read the 4 things I mentioned. Where is my son in all that? Nowhere. Where was "I”? all over. If it was for him rather than me, I would have always made time for it rather than only doing it “when I had time”.
Parenting isn’t a competition. I’m not a better parent for reading to my kids. My wife isn’t stealing something from me, she is helping me build something into my son. Many times, as parents, we aren’t united in our goals because we haven’t actually asked ourselves the questions: “What are we trying to accomplish? How do we know when we have succeeded? What should we start doing or stop doing?” We have no direction as parents, we just do things. If we’re honest, many parenting conflicts are not based on our spouse doing something wrong, they just aren’t doing it how we would (critical) or how we want (controlling).
Have you been viewing your spouse as a competitor or as a co-laborer?
