Aug/Sep 2020 Aspire Magazine FULL Issue Aug/Sep 2020 Aspire Magazine FULL Issue | Page 58
It gives you the chance to teach your kids
how to navigate conflict and not be a jerk.
That starts in your house, with the conflicts
in your home.
You don’t want your kids to be incapable of
dealing with adversity. Adversity will happen.
It’s going to find them. If we put them in a
bubble and never give them any tools, they
won’t be able to navigate the real world.
Lean into it instead. Show your kids how
to find peace and stay calm and grounded
during conflict, so that they can develop
those skills and carry them into their lives.
A United Front
the person to change.” Not only is that not
going to work, but it’s going to make them
very unlikeable.
If you prefer to call a band-aid a boo-boo
bandage because you think band-aid is too
scary, you’re not going to go to the teacher
and say, “if you could just call it a boo-boo
bandage with my kid that would be great.”
They’d look at you like you were crazy.
You can’t demand that people change, and
it doesn’t work to teach your kids to solve
conflict that way either.
Teach Navigation,
Not Control
Our job is to teach our kids how to navigate
real life, and in real life, people are jerks
sometimes. That’s okay. It’s just real life, and
your kids need to learn that.
When you try to correct your partner in the
moment, you’re showing your kids that the
way to deal with adversity is to demand to
win on your terms.
Your job with your partner is to present a
united front in front of your children—not to
undermine them or change them.
Sometimes your partner is going to lose it
and say something in front of the kids that
they shouldn’t have said. That is not the time
to jump on them and tell them what a crap
job they’re doing.
It all comes back to reacting to a situation
instead of having mastery of yourself so that
you’re in a position to influence a different
outcome in the moment.
When you step in and scold or nag, and
you destroy that united front you have with
your partner, you do more damage than your
partner did to begin with.
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