How Can Sharing Household Chores Benefit My Relationship?

I once feared that my sports apathy would be passed on like a lateral, to my seven year old twin boys. However, one of them has independently developed a passion for sports and an ability to play them. For example, he does this weird thing when I throw him a football. He catches it. I can’t relate. I could never fully get the concept of catching a football with my hands and to this day, lunge, octupus-like, to try to snare it in my arms. I’m sure David is quite humiliated and wonders what crime he could have committed in the kindergarten of his prior life to be stuck with me.

“I don’t think that’s how you’re supposed to do it dad.” He says, carefully. “Try catching it with your hands.” I fight down the urge to scream “I KNOW I’M SUPPOSED TO CATCH IT WITH MY HANDS, YOU LITTLE DWARF! DO YOU THINK I WANT TO BE OUT HERE?! So, last week we started seeing a therapist so I can learn how to relate to him. “David, can you tell me what it feels like to notice that your father has the coordination of a hobbled burro?” “It feels bad, Dr. Goldstein, really bad.” “Have you tried talking to him about it?” The doctor inquired, leaning in sympathetically. “Yes, Dr. Goldstein. He can’t help it. He tries, he really tries. I just think that God must have given him bear paws for hands, just like mom says.”
The other day he asked me, “Why do all dads watch sports?” “Um, they don’t son.” I replied sagaciously, eager to glory in the wonderful diversity of human interests. ” For example, I never watch sports. I find it kinda boring. All that running and catching. Now, the Nature channel, that I can watch for days.” He looked at me as though I’d asked him to get me a Tampon. Apparently, I had removed myself from the already well-developed image that “Love of Sports” is a rich part of our shared male heritage. Therefore my lack of interest in the dominance ritual of playback analysis, statistic recitation, and player personality profile, made my utility as a dad quite limited.

My other son, however, wears the tradition proudly. This could not be truer than on the soccer field. Mick appears to have as much interest in developing the skills of soccer as I do volunteering to coach his team. However, he loves the sugary snacks that he gets at the end of the game so he’s willing to listen to the coach yell at him “Engage! Engage!!” just like the fighter pilot screaming at Tom Cruise in “Top Gun”. “Yep”, I proudly nudge the mother standing next to me on the football field. “See that boy in the middle of the field staring at the sky and quietly singing the new Backstreet Boys tune to himself? That’s my son.Chip off the old block, that one.’ATTA BOY TIGER!!’ I yell. “SING THAT SONG! THAT’S AN AWESOME CLOUD UP THERE, AIN’T IT??!! DON’T YOU WORRY ABOUT THAT BALL.THAT’S WHAT TEAMMATES ARE FOR!”

When Mick and I practice football, I feel right at home. It reminds me of when I was a little tyke tossing the ball with my dad. I throw, he misses. He throws, I miss. It kind of gives you a warm feeling to watch us. I believe this kind of male camaraderie is the cornerstone of healthy ego development and the foundation of building the tissue critical to being a CEO and crushing the competition.
Or at least for getting their beer during halftime.

The holidays elict strong feelings about family — hopeful, regretful or homicidal. And Thanksgiving is one of the Big Boys — a nondenominational, bipartisan, school-excused, frequent-flyer, triglyceride-grabbing holiday that can act as a gaping black hole for family feelings and memories.
For many people, the tender images touted by Madison Avenue and the television networks generate intense feelings of sadness, loneliness, shame, guilt or anger. These media-generated, picture-perfect, feel-good families can underscore the disparity between the relationships people have with their parents and the relationships they wish they had.

Around the holidays, unresolved family issues tend to get hotter than a pan of jewel yams, because they keep us from being as close as we want to be to our families. Well, we may want to be estranged from our particular family — but we want to be a member of some family where we feel loved, respected and appreciated.

Children carry the memory of hurt or anger from family relationships well into adulthood. Many people stay away from their parents or visit them reluctantly, bracing themselves to swallow, ignore or fight over issues that have haunted them for years. Some, with time, acceptance or the help of therapy, are able to make peace with what they didn’t get — and never will — from their parents. In other families, where the parents are healthy enough to address their mistakes and change their behavior, relationships can become stronger and more resilient.
Parenting is a science of approximations. What works magically for the first child may be irrelevant for the next. Some parents are great with certain types of kids and clueless with others — better with boys than girls, better with girls than boys, better with cats than either one. I was more patient with my daughter than I am with my twin sons — her nature was calm and introspective, which freed up time for playing, talking or reading. My boys are loud, rowdy and constantly in motion; a larger percentage of my parental reserves goes toward containing and corralling them so they don’t disassemble our house and build a skateboard ramp out of the spare parts.

None of us are perfect as parents, and all of us wound our children to some degree or another. Ideally, we try to pass on as many good things as we can, but, inevitably, we pass on some of our problems as well.
It takes a healthy parent to listen to an adult child’s anger or hurt about the mistakes the parent made and not feel undone by it. And it takes a mature child to feel confident enough to tell a parent what he or she doesn’t like about the relationship. Parents often feel betrayed when their kids criticize them, no matter how warranted the criticism. They frequently react by getting defensive or by accusing the child of being ungrateful. This counter-blame is a way to block out feeling unappreciated, sad or guilty. Unfortunately, it usually confirms the adult child’s worst fears and sets the clock back for getting the relationship onto a healthy track.

Some parents, whether they admit it or not, are responsible for parenting transgressions that are extremely harmful to their children. Child abuse, incest, alcoholism or drug addiction are a few of the more egregious examples. However, people are often hurt by their parents for reasons that aren’t obvious to others. Something that may look trivial from the outside can be suffocating or damaging to the person who lives inside that family. “My mother had a pretty low standard of parenting,” a friend once told me. “Tell your children that you love them and don’t beat them. My father didn’t, so he was a success in her eyes. And everybody loved my father because he was really funny and outgoing. They never saw his subtle, day-to-day humiliations of us.”
People who grow up in families like this — where the deficits in the parenting are less overt — don’t know they’re being denied the small day-to-day acts of encouragement and involvement that create a person, layer by precious layer. As adults, they don’t understand why they feel sad or inadequate, or can’t apply themselves to things they value, or choose relationships with people who are harmful to them. They don’t understand why they don’t want to see their parents or feel so lousy after they do.

It’s common in psychotherapy to hear people berate themselves for feeling hurt and angry over childhood wounds they are barely able to identify. “It’s not like I was beaten or anything,” is a frequent refrain. “So my parents were distant and never told me that they loved me. Lots of people have worse problems than me. That’s not a reason for me to be depressed.” But for many people, it is.
Even for well-intentioned parents, pitfalls abound. One of the cruelest ironies of parenting is that we can do so much harm even when we are trying to do our best.

An example of this is when parents damage the relationship with their children by trying not to make the same mistakes their parents made. One of my colleagues grew up in a commune in the ’60s. “I was given a ton of freedom because my parents were rebelling against their parents’ conservatism. They were worried that discipline and limits would destroy my innocence and creativity. I remember asking if I could smoke pot with them when I was 10, and they said, `You decide. If you think that it’s a good idea, then it’s a good idea.’ I was 10 years old! How would I know what a good idea was?
“Now that I’m a parent, I’m super strict. My kids practically need permission to blink, and they resent me for it, but it’s better than what I had.”
Maybe. But adopting a parenting style at the opposite extreme of our childhood experience can create other problems. One couple, for example, risked their lives to come to America so that their children could take advantage of opportunities they never had. They constantly harassed their children to do better, and loudly criticized their efforts and achievements. If the children performed poorly in school, they berated them. As a result, their kids were burdened with strong feelings of worthlessness and guilt when they became adults.
These parents did the best they could, given what they knew. But fearing that their children would suffer in poverty, as they had, made them blind to the harm they were causing.

So should their children, now adults, forgive and forget?
Sure, if they can. But there is so much pressure in our culture to “get over it” and “move on” and “grow up” that many people aren’t allowed to look back long enough to grieve what they didn’t get from their parents without someone calling them immature. They end up blaming themselves for inadequacies and conflicts without understanding how those problems came to be. And if they’re blaming themselves for all of their problems, they may not be ready to forgive their parents. Forgiveness can only come when we know, in our cranberry-colored blood, that we didn’t deserve to be treated badly, no matter what our parents’ intentions.

Yet sometimes, the worst possible betrayals can be healed. In my experience of working with families who are trying to reconcile, the best outcomes occur when adult children are able to talk about their experience in the family and the parents are willing to admit to the possibility that they caused harm.
Children — even grown-up children — need to feel like their parents can accept the full range of their feelings. Listening without being defensive is one of the most crucial things a parent can do. It shows that we care enough about our kids to take their feelings and experiences seriously, no matter how unflattering or painful it is for us to hear them.

This is not easy for most parents to do, and it’s rarely pleasant. It’s an especially tall order to accept, with love and grace, the anger of a child who has an incorrect or partial picture of a parent at the time a transgression took place. Conversely, for parents who know they were at fault, there is the added weight of managing their own guilt and sorrow on top of their child’s hurt and anger. It takes strength and courage to face that we have hurt someone so important to us. But like it or not, it’s part of the job we parents sign up for when we create a child.
Parents have a right to have their perspective heard. There are separate realities in a family, and sometimes this is most strongly reflected in the difference between a child’s view of the parents’ behavior and the parents’ view of themselves. Airing this perspective, however, shouldn’t be done as a way to prove the child wrong. It should be done after there has been considerable demonstration on the part of the parents that they have correctly heard what their child has said, and that they are open to making efforts to address that hurt.

All parents do the best they can given what they know and what they have to draw upon. However, it’s important for both the parent and the adult child to recognize that this is where the discussion should begin, not end.

As children, we don’t get to choose the family we grow up with. But as adults, we get to decide who we want to have or not have in our lives. Being a member of a family is often a challenge, even in the best of circumstances. If we are able to make peace with our family, so much the better. If not, it’s our job to surround ourselves with people who treat us the way that we want and need to be treated.
Many people are confused about whether to blame themselves or their parents, whether to forgive or not forgive, whether being mad is infantile or an appropriate labeling of responsibility. We start out believing our parents know everything and slowly begin to see what they know and what they don’t — if we’re lucky.

Hopefully, our parents are willing to admit their mistakes and hear what it was like for us to be a child or a teenager or an adult in their homes. As parents, hopefully, we have children who are willing to forgive us for the hurt we caused when we were too tired, too frustrated or too selfish to do a better job. Hopefully we can forgive ourselves if they won’t. And hopefully, we are secure in the knowledge that we deserve to have people around us — whether family or friends — who care about our worries, value our friendship and take joy in our happiness.
Having that — at any time of year — is a reason to give thanks.

1. BE ASSERTIVE 
It takes power and strength to get someone to do housework who doesn’t want to do it. Many women feel guilty and back down as soon as their partners start to grumble. However, many men feel guilty when they know they’re not pulling their weight. Let your partner know that this is important to you, and you expect him to do his share.
2. BE LOVING
 If you communicate your request with a criticism such as “You’re such a “slob,” “flake”, “loser,” “mess,” “dirtbag,” odds are that your partner is going to go passive-aggressive on you, rather than pick up a broom. You’ll also get a better response if you state your requests when you’re feeling close, not when you’re furious.
3. BE SPECIFIC 
”He should just see what needs to be done and do it without my asking.” Maybe he should, but that opinion won’t get you very far. Be concrete and detailed in your requests. “How about if we have a rule that whoever cooks, doesn’t have to clean.” “How about if we alternate weeks on doing the laundry.” If your partner hates laundry, be open to negotiating or trading, but be sure that the trade is sufficiently fair so you don’t end up feeling resentful.
4. NEGOTIATE STANDARDS 
Don’t assume that your high standards are the right ones for both of you. Lose the self-righteousness and the moral outrage. Studies show that more housework gets performed when couples negotiate and compromise.
5. HAVE REGULAR MEETINGS
 Have weekly or semiweekly meetings about who will do what around the house. This will keep things current and decrease the chance for anger to build. Meetings should be short, and to the point, 10-20 minutes, max. Keep the tone friendly and upbeat. Assume good intentions.
6. CATCH HIM OR HER
DOING SOMETHING RIGHT
 Be positive and offer praise when your partner does something that you want him or her to do. “I really appreciate that you emptied the trash without my reminding you. That meant a lot to me!” “Thanks for not arguing with me when I reminded you that it’s your turn to clean the bathroom.” Be sincere, don’t condescend.
7. APPRECIATE YOUR PARTNER
FOR WHO HE OR SHE IS We’re all more motivated to please our partners when we feel appreciated for who we are. Therefore, if you’re going to raise the topic of housework and your partner is a slob, start the discussion by telling him something that you like. For example, “I think you’re great at fixing things, and I love how handy you are. I’m wondering if we could also brainstorm ways to share cleaning the kitchen and laundry more than we have been.”
8. PLAY HARDBALL 
If your partner completely blows you off, no matter how reasonable or firm you’ve been, then you have to get tough. This means discontinuing activities that you know he’ll do if you don’t. For example, if you pay the bills and you know that he can’t tolerate late charges, tell him that you’re spending so much time on housework that you’re giving up bill paying. Another example, don’t fold his laundry or provide other household services if he’s not reciprocating in a reasonable way. Again, the tone should be affectionate, but firm. “I love you, you’re a great person, but I’m not willing to do more than my fair share in this relationship. So, from now on…”

Dear Reader , How to discipline is a question that most parents are struggling with these days. How strict is “too strict?” Are children traumatized when we raise our voices or lose our tempers? What’s the difference between being a sympathetic parent and letting our kids rule the roost?

Part of our parental confusion has to do with the cultural shifts that have occurred within the last thirty to forty years. These changes have made our households less adult centered and more child centered. When I was growing up, maybe one or two of my not-so- inspired drawings would be affixed to our Frigidaire at any point in time. These days, whole houses (mine included) have become shrines to our children’s productions. Every time I go into the refrigerator, I risk knocking off photos and burying myself with their artistic productions of the past 3 years. When they were toddlers, our living room rivaled the showcase at Toys-R-Us. Unfortunately, I never bought their stock because I figured they had enough of my money.

We’re a lot more focused on our kids than prior generations and most of those changes have been for the better. But not all. Parents are worried, too worried, about the harm they will do if they set appropriate limits. They’re also too worried about the effect of the occasional loss of patience. Parents of young children are even more vulnerable to losing their tempers because the stresses are much more intense. In my household, the sheer volume of sound emitted by my sons constant vocalizations, whether it’s fighting or playing, is enough to decrease my ability to respond as well as I’d sometimes like. I certainly am more impatient with my twins than I was with my daughter. Part of it has to do with temperament; she was generally compliant and easy to manage. The sound of the word “no” appeared to find some receptor sites in her young and developing brain.

In our attempt to be sensitive, many of us have lost control over our own homes. Many parents are worried that being a figure of authority in the home is tantamount to the dreaded “authority figure” of other eras- an ogre who is concerned only with obedience at the expense of doing damage to the child. I often see couples who still have their 3 year old sleeping in the beds with them despite the fact that this prevents them from having a meaningful sex life, it disrupts the couple’s sleep, and gets in the way of their having quiet time together as adults at the end of the day. When I ask why they are letting their child dominate their life they say, “He doesn’t want to sleep in his own room. He cries when we move him.”

I am sympathetic. However, when we let our children dictate such critical arenas as sleep and sex, we are doing a disservice to those children. We are telling them that they are more important than we are and this can be a problem when they become teenagers and adults. It can create people who are self-centered and insensitive to other’s needs. It creates people who believe that what they want should always come first.
As parents, we sometimes let our kids have too much rein when we are feeling guilty about not spending sufficient time with them or when we have irrational ideas about the harm of limiting or redirecting a child’s behavior.

Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D. writes about the guilt that today’s parents feel concerning the lack of time they spend with their children. She notes in her book, “Spoiling Childhood”, that as a result of this, “parents try to make sure that every waking moment of the child’s life in the parent’s presence is filled with stimulation, fulfillment, and access to a parent’s undivided attention.” In two parent homes, “Four hands rather than two feed baby. Two players, rather than one, offer themselves as game mates in a Candyland game.” Parents thus are always “on” and burning out a little more with each passing day.
But setting limits is ultimately good for everybody. We have all been to homes where the parents let the child or children constantly interrupt the conversation or make so much noise that meaningful adult conversation is impossible. My boys seem the most interested in my undivided attention as soon as I have friends over. I guess they don’t want to share me. Fair enough. But, it’s important that they learn that I have needs too, and one of those is to have a period of uninterrupted conversation with my friends.

It doesn’t mean that children should be seen and not heard. But they need to learn, through our hopefully patient, loving, and firm style, that we have the right to a life that doesn’t always intersect with theirs. It’s their job to try to get as much from us as we can possibly give. It’s our job to know what is enough.
AVOIDING BURNOUT
Burnout occurs when our normal methods of coping become overwhelmed. It is a physical and psychological state that results from extreme stress and exhaustion. Parents of young children are more vulnerable to burnout because there is more to our physical and mental workload. More diapers, more nursing, more bottles, more laundry, more toys, more crying, more talking, and more fights to settle. There is also quite a bit less with our dear youngsters which can lead to burnout. Less sleep, less money, less downtime, less quiet, less order and less predictability.
Psychological Symptoms: Burnout is characterized by feeling chronically overwhelmed and exhausted. It can also cause depression, anxiety, irritability and anger. It addition, it can lead to feelings of shame and isolation.

Physical Signs: Burnout may cause decreased immune function, increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, insomnia, and appetite disturbance. Burned Out Before The Kids Arrive? A pregnancy with twins makes mothers more vulnerable to gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, pre-term labor, caesarian sections, increased nausea and exhaustion in first tri-mester, increased chance of bed rest from twentieth week on, hospitalization and pre-maturity. Thus, mothers of twins may begin their child rearing years burned out from the stresses of carrying a twin pregnancy.

Many parents of twins have suffered through years of infertility before they have children. While the birth of children is a relief from the sadness and trauma of infertility, it can also leave parents feeling guilty if they feel burdened and exhausted. “We spent so much money and time trying to have children and now I’m too burned out to even enjoy them. I feel ridiculous complaining or saying I need more help because I know we’re lucky to even have kids.”

Parents of today are more vulnerable to burnout because they’re much more anxious about being parents. In part, this is because they are better educated than any other generation on how their behavior advances or inhibits their children’s physical or emotional growth. In the past thirty years, there has been a cultural shift from an adult centered household to a child-centered household. On the one hand, this has led to many positive changes in our society. There is increased awareness that we can do a lot to increase the self-esteem and long-term well being of our children. There is a ready source of information on the causes of alcoholism, drug addiction, learning and attentional problems, and delinquency. The cultural shift towards recognizing the rights and needs of children have resulted in important social changes, such as the laws against child abuse which were first enacted in 1964.

At the same time, the world has become a more dangerous place. The increase of drugs and guns make raising children seem more fraught than it once was. As a result of the increased awareness about childrens’ needs and the increased dangers, parents of today are much more anxious about being parents. In my work, I constantly hear parents’ fears that their children will feel neglected or that a small mistake or misjudgment will have lasting consequences. There is enormous anxiety that their children will miss out on an opportunity that will place them at a social or educational disadvantage. These are conscientious, dedicated parents. However, the desire to protect their kids from harm coupled with a desire to make them happy, increases parental vulnerability to burnout. This guilt and worry leads to burnout because it means parents aren’t taking the kind of time for themselves or their marriages that would protect them from stress. They believe they should give to their children no matter how exhausted or needy they feel. And often we do have to give no matter what. But we also have to know when it’s okay not to give to our children and when to give to ourselves.

Recommendations for Avoiding Burnout: 
Manage your guilt: Strive to understand your beliefs about how you should be as a parent. Do you have problems leaving the children with babysitters, taking naps when they’re napping, or finding time to nurture yourself and your relationship? Do you worry constantly that some ill will befall your children? If the answer is yes to any of these, you may be burdened with irrational guilt or irrational worry about your kids which could make you more vulnerable to burnout. 
Take down time (anyway): Beg, borrow or barter with your partner or friends, but make sure you get time to replenish yourself. Children are benefitted by parents who take care of themselves. Even if your kids object, through tears or complaints when you leave the house, they will nonetheless benefit from your taking time to recharge your batteries. Don’t be so tuned in to their needs that you ignore your own. 
Make sure your down time isn’t spent with errands or busy work. Try to make your down time special. In the “Artist’s Way”, by Julia Cameron, she suggests people take “Artist’s Dates.” This is where you do something that replenishes you creatively and spiritually. 
Manage Your Stress: There is now a solid body of research that shows the benefits of exercise, yoga, and meditation on combatting stress. Most cities have community centers where you can learn how to meditate or do yoga. Even twenty minutes a day of exercise, meditation or yoga can make an important change in your mental outlook and well-being. 
Take Time With Your Partner: Your relationship can either be an ally against stress or a major contributor to it. Try to have one night or afternoon a week with just you and your partner to nurture your marriage. Don’t lose sight of the things you used to do before kids. Don’t be such a dedicated parent that you become a neglectful wife or husband. 
Ask For What You Need: Whether it’s with friends, family or partner, burnout happens the fastest when we don’t ask for what we need from those who can help us. 
Get help and support: Isolation can lead to depression, shame, and anxiety. Stay in touch with the people you like and care about. Tell them what you’re going through. Many parents (mothers in particular) feel embarrassed or ashamed if they feel overwhelmed by their children or resentful of them. This makes it harder to reach out for fear of being criticized or condemned. Try not to compare yourself to other parents who seem to be able to parent effortlessly and do a million other things. You should strive to have as much help as you can to feel good. Parenting twins is hard enough. It’s hardest when you don’t get the help and support you completely deserve.

There are many steps to healing a parent and as many to heal the relationship with a grown child. You must first start by acknowledging whatever mistakes you made as a parent. While this is a crucial step, many parents protest for the some of the reasons I list below. I also list my reasons why I think you should do it anyway.
“I did the best that I could.”
Yes, you probably did. But, you have to acknowledge that it might not have been enough. Your child may have needed something different from you that you were unable to perceive, or to carry out at the time. Saying that you did the best that you could is something you should remind yourself of, not your child.

“Just because I apologize doesn’t mean that I deserve to be rejected or mistreated by my child!” That’s absolutely correct. Making amends for past mistakes isn’t the same thing as saying you were a terrible person or parent. It’s a willingness to see your behavior from your child’s perspective and to acknowledge that are separate realities in every family.

“I shouldn’t have to make amends. I deserve respect. My parents never apologized to me.” You do deserve respect, but respect is more likely to be received when it’s given. And the rules have changed: today’s children of all ages are on a far more equal playing field than parents of almost any other generation. And you don’t have to — it’s just that it increases the likelihood of a better outcome.
“Why should I try to make amends? It won’t change anything.”

It may not. There may be nothing you can do to save your relationship with your grown child. But making amends is something that you do as much for your own integrity as for him or her. It helps you to feel as though you have made a sincere and heartfelt attempt to address the relationship. It can help you to feel better about who, you are regardless of who your child says you are.

But blaming mothers is a relatively recent event in our history. Prior to the industrial revolution, fathers, not mothers were the presumed shepherds of children’s character and morality. They were also the ones most likely to get custody in the case of divorce. Back then, gossips would have looked at Lindsay’s father who was a drug addict, a convict, and an absentee dad and concluded that dad, not mom, was the one who led her into depravity.

Both analyses have it only partially right. We now know that while parents are important in determining child outcomes, they’re hardly the only drivers. Genetics, socioeconomics, peer group, and other adults also matter quite a bit in shaping a child’s long-term behavior. As a culture, we need to move past blaming mothers and fathers for all of their grown children’s problems. The reality is that good parenting doesn’t always breed good behavior in children of any age, especially adult children. This is not only true for the rich and glamorous but for the poor and downtrodden. Does Jamie Lee and others who bash mothers in the media assume that every inner city kid who joins a gang has a neglectful Mom at home? Studies show that from a relatively young age, the peer group slowly but steadily supplants parental influence with the lure of friendship, popularity, and later-sex, drugs, and power. In addition, today’s children are more able than ever to develop separate worlds, free from parental supervision and influence.

While wealthy parents can at least try to get their kids on the right track with wilderness programs, expensive rehabs, highly trained psychiatrists, learning specialists, tutors, and therapists, parents in poor neighborhoods often have to watch in horror as their children get pulled into drugs, crime, and gangs. The peer group is so important that moving a poor kid into a rich neighborhood with motivated peers greatly increases that child’s desire and ability to do better, and moving a rich kid into a poor neighborhood puts that child at greater risk for failure. Here, the parents are important not so much for their parenting, but for their ability or inability to surround their children with motivated playmates.

Jamie Lee wrote, “I hope their mothers are worried sick and wondering, ‘What could I have done differently?’” JL assumes that if she’s loving and sets limits with her own kids, all will be well with them. I hope she’s right. But life doesn’t always work out that way for parents. Many parents are dedicated, loving, and disciplined and their children still grow up and have problems with alcohol, drugs, money, and relationships. Some of these children then blame the parent, cut them off, and cut them off from their grandchildren.

It’s a risky business to toss stones at other parents’ glass houses, as reassured as it makes us feel about our own behavior as parents. Parents matter and they matter quite a bit in how their kids turn out. However, just like everything else in life–there’s a lot of luck involved as well.

1) Move From A “ME-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE” to a “WE-CENTERED PERSPSECTIVE: “Children take sacrifice and that means that what’s good for the family may not always feel good to the individuals in the short-run. Some people are too self-centered while others are too self-sacrificing. Identify which one you are and commit to change.
2) Prioritize the Marriage: Too many couples become so child-centered when they become parents that they let their marriages wither on the vine. Make sure you have at least one date night a week.
3) Gender Differences: The biggest predictor of male satisfacion in marriage is a decent sex life-for women, it’s emotional connection. When couples become parents, women, often due to exhaustion or resentment about doing more than their fair share, shut down sexually. Unfortunately, since that’s item numero uno for male satisfaction this often means that the guy withdraws and becomes even more unavailable. Men need to make sure that they’re stepping up to the plate with sharing the burdens and women need to make sure that they’re not neglecting their husbands for their children.
4) Learn how to  Communicate: If you or your partner don’t know how to complain or ask for what you need your marriage is in trouble. Get thee to a couple’s counselor or a workshop. Your marriage and your family’s well-being depend on it.
5) Appreciate, Appreciate, Appreciate: When couples become parents, there’s much less to go around. Tell your partner every day what you like about him or her. You attract far more bees with honey in marriage than criticism.

Get up and intervene? Or get up and turn on the stereo. If I don’t intervene, they will likely inflict lasting bodily harm on each other and my medical insurance will go up. On the other hand, I may be able to finally see what it’s like to raise a singleton.
So, what’s a parent to do when things are getting aggressive?

BREAK IT UP: 
Step one, we gotta stop it. Even though they’re small, a young child can inflict serious harm on a sibling through bites, kicks, or shoves. So, we have to intervene right away to protect them from each other.

AGGRESSION IS NOT A SOLUTION: 
We also want to make it clear that the use of aggressive behaviors isn’t the way to solve problems. While this is obvious to most parents, it’s less obvious to children who are just learning how to deal with the wild horses of their emotions.

KEEP COOL: 
One of the most important, and sometimes difficult steps is to maintain your control when intervening. I’m the most likely to lose my temper when I feel stressed out, sleep deprived or I’m trying to relax. In other words, 99.9% of the time. It’s inevitable, during this time, that one of my twin boys will yell because his brother is experimenting with a new choke hold or determining if an appendage is double jointed. I used to start out with an educational approach such as, “No son,the arm doesn’t bend in that direction.” Now, however, I just hope my wife, Ellie, will intervene so I can finish my cereal.

“Honey, the kids are murdering each other again. Would you mind?” 
”I did it last time, dear.” She’ll say, taking out some low fat yogurt. 
”That was two days ago, I broke it up yesterday.” 
”I got it last night before they went to bed, remember?” 
Dang! Right she is. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get all the way through three paragraphs of the newspaper.

MODEL APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR: 
It’s important to maintain control of our OWN reactions, even if we have to fake it. The tried and true “count to 10″ before intervening works well. Or, as one of my kids told me, “YOU’RE the one who needs to take a time out!” It’s a natural protective response to want to aggressively intervene if someone hurts our kid-even when that someone is also our kid. However, if we hit the one who’s doing the hitting, we’re not showing how to respond to feeling upset. In addition, if kids fight (and most kids WILL fight), it’s in reaction to powerful feelings over which they have little to no control. If we hit them, we just add to the pot of painful feelings and increase the probability that an aggressive event will happen sooner.

ESTABLISH CLEAR LIMITS, DESCRIBE, and SEPARATE: 
I often use the three steps recommended by Siblings Without Rivalry authors, Faber and Mazlish for handling aggression with siblings. Let’s look at these using an example from my home, since I have no shortage to draw upon.
Last week, my son Daniel was furious with his twin brother, Max because he was playing with his prized rock. Now, to my feeble middle-aged eyes, it looks remarkably like the hundreds of other non-descript brown rocks we have scattered across our driveway, but, what do I know, I’m a psychologist. As a result, he grabbed Max by the shirt and spun him hard to the ground, yelling at him all the way. Using Faber and Mazlish’s structure, I intervened as follows: 
ESTABLISH CLEAR LIMITS: “Daniel, we don’t use our hands when we’re upset” 
DESCRIPTION: “I know you’re really mad that Max took your rock without asking.” 
SEPARATE: You need to get off Max now and I want you both to go to different rooms and cool off. I’ll tell you when it’s time to come out.” 
In this case my words were enough. However, sometimes it’s necessary to physically pick one off of the other or hold them each at arm’s length while you direct them away from each other.

PRAISE WHEN THEY’RE NOT FIGHTING: 
Children are more motivated to control their behavior when they know we are pleased by it.Thus, we should offer praise when our kids resolve conflicts without aggression, or when they play well together. Some examples are, “I really like how the two of you worked that out using your words! You’re getting really good at talking it out, huh? That’s great.” Or when they’re not fighting or arguing, “The two of you really play nicely, together. That’s great to see!”

AVOID SHAMING, GUILT TRIPPING, BLAMING, OR FAULT FINDING: 
We all do it, but we should strive to do it less. It’s easy to lose one’s temper with a child, especially if he or she consistently provokes a sibling to tears. The use of shame, guilt, or fault-finding may stop a child’s behavior in the short term, but can increase it in the long run by giving children negative ideas about who they are. If one child hits the other, focus your attention on the one who’s hurt, rather than punish or blame the aggressor. As Faber and Mazlish write, “We intervene, not for the purpose of settling their arguments or making a judgment, but to open the blocked channels of communication so they can go back to dealing with each other.”

WHY CAN’T THEY JUST GET ALONG? Kids fight for a lot of reasons. Let’s examine some of the most common: 
To express hurt, disappointment, fear or anger : It’s human nature to want someone or something on which to vent our frustrations. Like adults, children have to endure disappointments and hurts that are sometimes hard to contain. Part of maturation is the ability to channel those feelings into non-destructive behaviors. Most kids discover that it isn’t a brilliant move to take out aggressive feelings on their parents, and take it out on their sibling, instead. If they are aggressive with us, we should be as firm in the protection of ourselves as we are the other child. In addition, a lot of aggression gets directed at the sib because they often share toys, friends, bedrooms, and that most precious of resources, parental attention. 
Parental attention: All kids learn that if they can’t get parental attention for good behavior, they can always get it for bad behavior. 
Boredom: Many fights begin as play, then escalate to aggression when someone gets hurt or doesn’t want to continue. 
Other problems: While aggressive behavior is common in young children, you should consult your pediatrician if you’re concerned that it’s age inappropriate or if the aggression seems tied to other behavioral or psychological concerns of yours. For example, aggression in children can sometimes be a function of attention deficit disorder (with or without hyperactivity), childhood depression or oppositional defiant disorder. The frustration caused by a learning disorder may also increase aggression in children, as does feeling less valued than the other twin or other children in the home. 
In my Nov./Dec. 2000 TWINS article, Communicating with Your Twins, I advised against intervening for normal bickering. In those situations, we want our kids to learn to negotiate and solve problems without our involvement. However, if there’s aggression or name calling, we should always intervene quickly and clearly, for their sake, and to maintain the peace and quiet of the household. Did I say peace and quiet? Oh, I forgot. That’s what you get when they go to college.

University of Pennsylvania sociologist Frank F. Furstenberg and colleagues observe that the definition of adulthood, “traditionally defined as finishing school, landing a job with benefits, marrying and parenting,” has been extended by a decade. Using this standard, 65 percent of men reached adulthood by the age of 30 in 1960, while only 31 percent had by 2000. For women, 77 percent met the standard of adulthood by age 30 in 1960, but only 46 percent by the year 2000.

This shift has had a huge effect on parent/teen relations, as I discuss in my recent book, When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along (HarperCollins). For example, if children are remaining younger longer, then they may need to extend the kind of rebellious, shaming and devaluing behavior–long associated with the 13-year-old to 17-year-old set–into their mid-to-late twenties (if not later). Why? Because your adult child is still working on separating from you. It’s love, not hate, that causes her to mistreat you. Now, don’t you feel better?

The consolidation of identity, long the hallmark of successful adolescence also appears to be taking longer to achieve than in prior generations. In addition to economics, the current culture of parenting may prevent children from experiencing just enough hard knocks to train them in weathering the stormy transition from living at home to living independently. Contemporary perspectives of children as fragile may cause parents to be unable to do the type of “tough love” limit setting sometimes required to force a child out of the warm, though stifling comfort of the nest into the cold, but fresh air of an independent life. Teens who can’t leave home, or adult children, who return can create shaming dynamics for both themselves and for their parents.
Our current view of children as precious and fragile may cause us to advocate for them so aggressively and diligently that they view themselves as being, and therefore becoming, overly vulnerable to the inevitable slings and arrows of life. This is part of what psychoanalyst Carl Jung meant when he wrote ,”Neuroses are the avoidance of legitimate suffering.” Parents must learn how to empathize with the more difficult circumstances that face their young adult today, while at the same time, avoid protecting them too much from those circumstances.