Aligning on Parenting Philosophy.

I think me and my husband are opposite poles in this.

He is the coolest dad and smart dad as he is willing to play with her and get dirty with her.If she is running late or not getting ready on time according to him it is ok,since kids will be kids.kneesmiley

So,home work and studies mostly it will be taken care by me and in my absence either by my father or FIL.For studies I am responsible and for fun activities and all other activities like going out my husband is responsible.This works for us.

So according to my daughter dad is cool and smart:roll: and mom is boring and not cool.:hide:

 

As you may know, ours is a very different background from each other. At my side, mostly the mothers are the directors of the movie. Fathers may be the producers, but when it comes to sailing, they fully depend on the caption of the ship, which is the mother.

So, the mother is the one who plans, research, implement all the initiatives regarding the kids. Be it their meal plan, disciplining, teaching, language spoken at home etc..etc... whereas the fathers will be providing endlessly to the monitory, physical or emotional requirements needed for the successful implementation.

So, the kids will get the punishment from the moms (often mild punishments as moms' can't go for brutal ones), and there is always a fear and respect for moms. But dads are often friendly figures. As they don't spend too much time at home/with kids, their presence is often cherished as vacation time - free of rules.

But at my husbands' side it is the other way round. Regardless of the father's presence at home, he controlled the family if not directly, by a remote control even.

Dad is the sole decision maker there. His look is just enough to shut the kids up. He could have made it possible by some brutal punishments (yes, slapping is brutal on a kid), so they fear their dad.
Mom has no duty other than keeping a pleasant home for the kids. Like in the movies, she too fears the dad, and get the scolding together with the kids. So, kids love their mom, but respect their dad by default.

Now, neither I am a full time mom (home maker) like my mom, nor my husband is a respect demanding dad (like his dad). So, thankfully we find it no issues with parenting.

At times my husband tries to be too strict with the kids to expect the same respect that his dad has now. But he also have seen my dad, who was more of our best friend, and we loved and respected him a lot. But then, he never ever raised his voice on us. So, my husband finds a balance.

I too sometimes get influenced by my mom to be a strict mom. But that never suits my nature. If I tried, then I will become a joker only. So, we came up with a new parenting style as per our own special nature.

Since I am with the kids all the time, I make all the decisions and implement it. But my husband is updated, and his ideas are incorporated always. He only follows my commands, and acts as my substitute at my absence.

If you ask my H about my DDs meal plan or my son's tuition time, he may go blank. But if I give him daily instructions to follow during my absence, he will perfectly do it.
But to give certain food, and send the kid to classes are both of our decision. Just that, I am also at the ground level, where as he sits on the top.

 

What i would like to say is covered by @rihana and @justanothergirl. well most of it is similar.

we are a team and we worked a lot to come to the decision of being a team. a team that takes up the strengths of both the parents and utilises it to bring in a better style.

both the styles that we were brought up had few things that were great, while we also found things that were lacking probably due to lack of awareness and exposure. what we did not know or imbibe from our parents, we learnt by trial and error methods.

From a 3rd person point our parenting looks like we are just a unit. but we both have our differences, arguments, fights related to decisions, discussions, behaviors. even last night we did have one.

from my kids view -they know that we are a unit. they can talk to any of us, and be rest assured that it would get to the other unless they request specifically to keep it as a special secret. and we respect that trust.

discipline - mom was a fire spitting dragon according to my son at age 4-10..while dad was cool. now at 17 he tells me i can really see what you both are doing..(lol) but all said i still have the power to discipline with just my eyes and a few words..(terrorrrrr......) and dad is somebody they can play around with until the issue does not get into serious note and trouble starts.. we are a bunch of strong headed and strong willed family.. clash of the titans is the name my son has coded for all of us..when we are in a argumentative mode..lol.


Food he will not interfere unless he feels it is necessary to tell me to get down and allow some junk..

dresses i will not interfere until he goes overboard in his wanting to get them good ones..and more in number owing to not having much..


Education- when they were kids it was just me.this is what he told me, you give them your 100% and i stand by whatever you decide. but that did not mean he did not know what was happening. he would try to attend all ptm's and based on those he would have the talk.. now it is about the kids' choices and we pool up all our knowledge and discuss the pros and cons. right now for the past 6 months is it about ds college, the options, the syllabus comparison and exams and whatever we can get our hands on..(most of the time it is me, but we put it on the table and discuss a lot.) the choice of career was/is the kids' own. we only help them reach those goals and hope we succeed.(we did not have freedom to choose for various reasons.)

yeah we had/have the TALK and we did listen.(Which was missing for us as kids). these days, between me and dh, we decide who wants to talk, and the other turns invisible..they are at a sensitive age at we want them to understand the choices, the repercussions of those choices and the emotional footprints that these choices, body language and talks leave. it is not that either of the parents are good at it..we are learning together..and we never hesitate to apologise to the kids both of us. sometimes when i feel dh was wrong, i tell him that he was wrong, and he would immediately call the kid and apologize.

i still remember 3 years back.. dd was writing her 12th. the maths paper was too long, too tough and most kids came out of the centre crying. i just grabbed her and took her home and told her it is ok and she started crying and crying and i was worried (she was recuperating after dengue) and then when i called my dh and he tried consoling her. she still had 2 more exams to go and i was worried if she would fall sick. guess what dh was ringing the calling bell the next morning.. he went straight to her and gave her a hug and talk. it worked like magic that her dad would fly out spending so much just to give her a hug..he went back in 2 days..

positive, unconditional,going with the flow (which is now called attachment parenting) is what worked and works for us. sometimes it has been parallel parenting when we did not meet each other..like in case of food and dresses, and sports, pocket money it was parallel...but again we were aware of whatever the other did.

And even though he works away from us, there is not a single day when he has not talked to both of them. and he know what has happened in each of their life. i believe that as parents we not only should talk/discuss these. but share those sweet and not so sweet moments with the other parent so as to feel inclusive in the whole parenting business.

either of us never felt left out in the last 20 years. and believe me it was not a smooth sailing.. a hair splitting, hair raising, laughing and crying your heart and more..but very few regrets..when we talk about if we could change those decisions or moments, we feel maybe things would not be the same...

 

@yellowmango the demand for group hug is more sweeter according to me.a hug always has the power to heal where words don't..

and tell me about the marks..it was one of those things that i hated..what happened to the 2%, it was only the report card. nothing more.they never knew how to help,but were so stuck up on that 2 marks that go missing..there was no pressure yet there was. so one of the things that is taboo in our house is marks. no questions asked on the marks. we ask about giving your best and that's it. but my dd says that is again a flaw. because we do not have that expectation it indirectly adds pressure on her to perform..

kind of reminds us .kare tho patchtaye na kare thobi patchtaaye.. you do you are damned you don't you are still damned..

and i love your daughters..

and on the sorry.. it just happened. my dd is too stubborn and even as a kid never wanted to say sorry. so we sort of practiced it and fell into the habit. and the one thing if you ask my kids about what they think about saying sorry .. they will parrot "you do not lose anything by saying sorry, but gain a lot by saying it.."

 

:hide:it is a glaring example of how much their mom has put that thought into them regarding sorry that even when they are woken up from sleep the would tell it..

and they tend to say it has been registered into their manual by their mom:biglaugh..

and kid gyan don't go there @yellowmango mine have a load of that to tell anybody who wants to listen..

 

@Yellowmango,

What a great topic this is!

How did you, as a couple align your thinking on this important topic?

We pretty much divided the responsibilities as Academic, Behavior, Character, Communication, Discipline, Friendship, Morality, Reading, Relationship, Socializing, Service, Special Skills, Worship, Writing, etc. When I mention responsibilities, it is more to do with identifying skills as well as problems that are divided between my wife and myself. We didn't have allocation of responsibilities on stricter sense. Anyone can work on any of those areas but one parent is responsible for diagnosing and fixing the problems.

What were your little victories you had as parents.

Getting my son to finish his homework before going out to play, identifying and developing special skills he had as a child, constant character development, identifying the teaching opportunities, developing character and righteousness through set of questions helping him to arrive at the answer himself, listening skills and socializing skills.

What were the mistakes you made?

We erred more on the discipline that resulted in him feeling that he was not at par with other friends of his. We implemented stricter discipline with regard to the time to bed, time to return to home after play, time to eat food, etc. Initially, he felt he lost ground at certain ages but reconciled later understanding the reasons behind our discipline process.

What would you like to change with the second child?

We have only one child.

What worked for you and what did not work?

I struggled a lot due to my preoccupation at work at my son's formative years resulting in my wife taking most of the responsibilities. I carry that regret to-date but she did a fabulous job in each one of the areas. My son melts with love every time he converse with his mother even today. He is 26 years old pursuing his Ph.D. in Computational Fluid Dynamics.

How long did it take you to get it right?

Honestly, I am not even sure whether we got it right even today. The truth is we got humbled many times for wrong assessment of my son and he proved to be much more capable than what we estimated him to be. The children can surprise us all the time. I believe the parents are only facilitators and the children have the potential to develop themselves very well. For example, we thought it is important to teach him the necessity of serving the children, poor and elders. He far exceeded our expectations in this area and became a role model for us. We thought he had a great interest in music and hence decided to teach him how to play Piano. He didn't do well at all resulting in the teacher telling us she can't teach him anything unless he is willing to touch the keyboard. Eventually, one day he requested us to get him a Guitar and he learned how to play Guitar very quickly.

Viswa