Well once again I have just returned from Las Vegas - where I spend time with my family and little granddaughters. There are few intimate relationships in life more rewarding than that between a grandmother and her granddaughter. Mine are aged 20 months and 12 days old. Of course they are the smartest and the most beautiful little girls I've ever seen. And best of all, they have the finest parents God could have offered them.
My daughter-in-law is terrific. She is constantly thinking of ways to perfect her parenting skills and to keep her marriage intimate and fulfilling at the same time. And now with two little babies to care for, it can seem like a daunting task. She was blessed with the personality and the determination to do it. But many young mothers were not so blessed.
Parenting can quickly become another issue who's roots are deeply intertwined in the differences between male and female behaviors. Like it or not, men and women are different creatures and they behave toward their children in differing ways. Most mothers have a strong sense of protection with their children. This is an instinctual response that in previous eras was necessary to keep children from being being eaten by predators, falling off cliffs or eating a poisonous mushroom.
Mothers are generally the caretakers and the nurturers of the family. They fix boo-boos with kisses and they read one extra book at bedtime to make their little ones happy. Moms are often the disciplinarian during the day while dad is at work.
Dads on the other hand have a strong sense of providing for his family financially as well as providing discipline to the kids. He takes discipline seriously and can be impatient with mom's softer ways of dealing with broken rules. He is likely to take quick action, and in a matter of fact way, stop the behavior, explain why that behavior is not tolerated and provide the consequence for misbehavior all in less than a minute. Moms often see this as angry intolerance or being "mean." In fact, it never has to be either angry or mean. It is just the man's general way of dealing with life that he applies to his family.
I like to think of it in terms of grocery shopping. For many women, going to the grocery store is an exercise in finding the very best foods for the very best price. She reads labels, puts menus together in her mind and thinks about the likes and dislikes of each family member. She wants them to enjoy their meals but she also wants the food to be healthy and financially feasible.
Men on the other hand create either a mental or physical grocery list prior to going to the store. Once there they rush in the door, mechanically locate each item on their list and quickly hit the checkout counter. They get the job done in a matter of fact way without all of the peripheral emotional side trips. The job still gets done, just in a different way.
The same is true for a father's parenting technique. He can lovingly but swiftly take care of the problem at hand and get the results he desires - the child learns that daddy means what he says, that he will always enforce the rules and implement the consequences and that he does it with great love and a desire for the child to become a self-motivated rule keeper.
Neither the mother's nor the father's approach is better than the other. In fact it is, once again, another reason children need both a mom and a dad. They need the strong disciplinary hand and they also need the tenderness and comfort a mother can bring to the situation.
So the next time you see your spouse dealing with the children differently than you might have, step back and appreciate how lucky your children are to be able to experience both techniques. Be grateful that they are learning by your examples that it is OK for men and women to be different. Help them understand that there is always more than one way to accomplish a goal.
