I'm new to all of this and actually havn't even approached my spouse about putting these concepts to work in our marriage, but we have set down in the past and agreed to handle some things a certain way. In this particular case it's about what to do when a child is whining and begging to do something. Since I'm very strong willed and my spouse likes to avoid conflict at any cost, we have agreed in the past that he will send the whining child to me to handle the situation. However, over and over again instead of sending the child to me, he just gives in and gives them what they want, even if I had already told the child no and he knows that I told them no. As you can imagine, that doesn't create a lot of peace and harmony in our house! I end up feeling betrayed and he ends up criticizing me for not giving them what they want. Any suggestions?

Thanks

(((rwilliams)))

This is obviously going to warrant some further communication and agreement with your husband. Are these both y'alls kids, your kids, or his kids? That is important to the dynamics but the result of what's currently going on will be not good for the child, so something does need to change.

Now let me ask you something, if I was a buddy of your hubby and we were talking about the kids and you, what would your hubby say about your parenting? Would he say that you yelled a lot? Would he say that you were too hard on the kids? I guess what I'm asking is do you think he's in someway trying to protect them?

The end result of this might be y'all have a sit down where you both are open to listen to what the other has to say about your parenting styles and neither of y'all dogging the other out. Then work together to develop a parenting plan that includes appropiate actions to take when a child is acting out.

If you have some time go a little deeper into the dynamics of what's going on. Tell us a couple of actual situations with the age of the child and the circumstances surrounding the event. The more descriptive the better for understanding.