When Your Partner Has Different Parenting Practices

I thought I would share a few things that I am learning, living, and growing through while parenting with a partner that does not fully align with your parenting philosophy. 

Around August, we decided – well, I decided and pressured him – to unschool for the 2020/2021 school year, which starts with a period of deschooling.  The words unschooling and deschooling are SCARY for most people, so let me give you a couple of definitions from Akilah S. Richards, author of Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work.  People typically think unschooling is letting your kids do what they want and not parenting appropriately.  Akilah, ‘cause she’s my friend in my head, defines it as a “child-trusting, anti-oppression, liberatory, love-centered approach to parenting and caregiving.”  It’s based on the idea that children own themselves and our job as parents and other caregivers is to help them learn how to make their own decisions, not just follow directions. 

What it looks like in our family is a child that doesn’t go to formal school anymore while we, her parents, figure out how to support self-directed education and allowing her more freedom in her daily choices.  This is really new, hard, uncomfortable, and requires a whole bunch of self-work.  

That’s why this lifestyle begins with a period of deschooling which Akilah defines as “the process of shedding the programming and habits that result in other people’s agency over your time, body, thoughts, and actions.”  Basically, taking some time to decolonize your mind and question the “shoulds, supposed to’s, the way it is, that’s the way it goes, and the have to’s” that influence, and quite often, limit the ways that we move in the world.  It’s really hard work and I can tell from his actions, and his words, that my husband ain’t quite down with this wave of new-fangled parenting.  And while I’m committed to the concept, how it plays out, in reality, differs from day-to-day.  This is all fully understandable and normal, but it can also be incredibly frustrating for both of us.    

I’ve really been working through my own feelings about this unschooling lifestyle and how to partner in a household when you differ in how you parent your children.  Here are some initial thoughts.

Embrace the reality that parents don’t have to speak with one voice.

For a long time, I felt like my partner and I needed to be on the same page for most things. Since we were married in the Christian tradition, “becoming one” was something that was expected and supported, and it’s what I aspired to.  As I moved through this recent period of growth and knowledge of self, leaned more into Black feminism, and quite honestly, re-recognized myself as the dope-ass woman that I am, I began to question why his voice was the speaking voice for us. What would happen if we both just kept and honored our own voices?  The reality is, your children already know that you speak different languages. That’s why they go to Mommy for some things and Daddy for others. When I embraced the reality of how we were actually living, I felt more confident in us having differing opinions and practices.

Recognize that the relationship your child has with each parent will be different and you are only responsible for yours.

My daughter and my husband… they be beefin’. When they have conflicts, my daughter will often come to me for emotional support and soothing.  It gets heavy sometimes.  I would feel like it was my responsibility to go to my partner and interpret her challenges.  I acted as a liaison, translating her thoughts and telling him what I thought he should work on so their interactions could go differently.  It was emotionally draining and often caused conflict between him and me. He felt like he wasn’t allowed to parent the way he wanted and needed me to let him make his own mistakes.  He was right.  

They would never be able to learn how to develop their own ways of communicating with each other as long as I kept interjecting into their relationship. Additionally, I was lightweight controlling their relationship by giving him unsolicited advice on the way I thought he should parent.  I had to learn how to just let them be.  I still give my daughter emotional support when she needs it but I also redirect her to go and work it out with her father. It’s not my battle or my issue.  It’s so hard when they are in the midst of it, but I keep my mouth shut and reflect on myself.  It’s so easy to be critical of someone else, but I realize that I have more than enough to focus on fixing instead of worrying about what he’s doing. 

Cultivate a practice of gratitude so that you can honor the spaces where you and your partner differ.

When I need to get through the times where I’m not happy about my partner’s parenting choices, I have to be intentional about identifying the good things.  Cultivating a practice of gratitude reminds me to identify and honor all the spaces where I really appreciate his parenting and his never-wavering support of me as a mother. He brings things to our parenthood that without him she wouldn’t have. They have their own special times and things that they like to do with each other.    He is the use all the Band-Aids you want, extra night time tuck-ins, raid the pantry for snacks, break time for goofy shenanigans, listen to all your corny jokes, make room in the bed type-of-father.

He stands in the gap and without him, I wouldn’t be as affectionate, attentive, or intentional as a mother.  He’s committed to his own personal growth and it’s a blessing to see how he’s changing.  And unlike me, he is never critical of my parenting, even when I’m being extra hard on myself.  When I find myself ticking off negative things about his parenting, I reflect back during that same time period and look for the positives.  Sometimes it hard, but that’s why it’s called a “practice”…you have to practice it.

These are a few things that I’ve learned as we’ve begun this unschooling journey.  We are walking in the same direction. Our pace may be different, our cadence might not be on the same beat, we may even diverge from the path for a bit.  But I’m grateful that he is my partner in our growing parenthood and and I’m looking forward to seeing how this deschooling and unschooling practice with that will have on our family.