How do you stay neutral when spouse gets locked in power struggle with tween?

[Anonymous]

DP from way back when - not directed at any one person, but I’ve found Lisa Damour’s books very helpful reading for my own knowledge and also in sharing the Cliffs Notes version with DH. She’s not a pushover or permissive at *all* - probably stricter than what people think of as “modern” parenting - but her work is so helpful for understanding what adolescents are going through. If anything, it helps me prevent some of these situations. Not a panacea, but something I’ve found useful as my oldest enters adolescence.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me feel much less alone!

NP and same. We are having one hell of a time with our teen. If anything I am the stricter more authoritarian discipline type. It’s good for me to read these responses because it’s a constant struggle in our house with the kids and our marriage. DH constantly tells me to back off and do whatever we can to de escalate. In my eyes, he’s letting the kids do whatever they want and they are falling into self destructive behaviors and depression. We are all in therapy over this. I’m trying very hard to back off. The teen years are HARD. Thank you all for sharing your stories.

Thanks for posting. Would like to understand more - is therapy helping? I believe my DH would benefit from a skills class or maybe even a really good book. I’m not sure therapy would help.

No. It’s not. I feel it’s made things worse. We are all trying but likely interpreting the things said at therapy wrong or too black and white. It’s causes more tension and divide in the house.

Since I’m the more authoritative style even through I’m a mom, let me ask all of you what you would have done. Last night was another issue with staying online too late. I could have let that go but it was noisy with music and various other things to where my younger kids and me are being woken up past 11pm. After the 100th warning, I said to quiet down or it was gone tomorrow. DH stepped in to reprimand me that I was making it worse and escalating. He believes we should give our teen space and I think it’s gotten out of control.

10:29 here. I actually think there's a lot to unpack here and I'm doing some projecting so if you think I'm off base, ignore me.

It doesn't sound like there are 'boundaries' in your home that are explicit and understood - house rules. Even if you do allow your teens to be on their devices at night, no one can infringe on another person's quiet enjoyment of the home. This is communal living 101. Your DS should have been given one warning. If he continued to infringe on your quiet enjoyment, whatever was causing the disturbance should have been shut down/removed.

This leads to the next point, there doesn't appear to be consistent/appropriate discipline. You shouldn't have had to provide 100 warnings. By doing so, you are reinforcing that your requests can be ignored - not a behavior that you want to reinforce. After the 100th warning, you, understandably, lost your shLt. This is a pattern my DH and I have. I can calmly tell/ask him something 10M times but it's not until I lose my shLt that he will pay attention. By that time, it's no longer about whatever it is I was trying to tell/ask him but about the disregard he was demonstrating by ignoring me. Why is it that my voice is only heard when I lose my shLt? (Yeah, I'm doing a lot of projecting here). Your reponse was probably more emotional that rational and your DS probably had some of his own attittude going on. Does he 'mirror' your emotions when you guys engage?

Your DH was wrong in how he handled this. He may have been responding to your emotion rather than the situation, especially if he's an ignorer like your DS and my DH. Was he aware that you'd asked 100X? If he was, why didn't he back you up the 2nd time you asked? If he didn't hear you the first 99X, it would likely seem to him your response was disproportionate and escalating things. Yet, instead of reprimanding you, he should have asked why your response was so disproportionate.

I think where you need to start is establishing the boundaries of communal living and consequences for when those boundaries are broken. The consequences need to be related to the boundary violation. You should also work on communication and listening challenges. Establish some rules on how best to communicate with each other - this could include don't bombard me with complaints the moment I walk in the door from work. It could be signals you give when you feel you're having an emotional response or getting an emotional response. Dissect some real examples, like the one in your post, on why it went wrong and what should have been done. A good counselor should be able to help you work through this. If the counselor isn't helping, get a new one. Hugs and good luck!

Thank you. I agree with everything you say. I had all of those things in place - taking devices, quiet hours etc. Our teen was acting out and this is where I am more of the disciplinarian in the house. DH is more of a free range parent. Anyway, that’s why I said therapy is making things worse. I am told to back off and now quoted with that constantly when we have these battles, creating more chaos in the home. Yes, I had too many rules. Now we are another type of hell with no rules and our teen is acting out still.

It’s helpful to hear input from others and I’m sorry I couldn’t say therapy has been helpful. It’s so difficult when you aren’t on the same page as your spouse.

10:29 again. It sounds like you may not have a good counselor - who would help you identify a few key things that are important and focus on them until the next time you have an appointment and then add a few more things to the list. You can't focus/fix everything all at once. It has to be done incrementally. So, in this case, to balance the 'free range' approach with the 'disciplinarian', not put restrictions on how late your teen stays up but that he can't disturb your quiet enjoyment - an then identify consequences if you were to judge/bring up how late he stays up or if he is disturbing quiet time.

Did you ever take any positive discipline classes when your kids were little? I took it when my oldest was probably 3 or so. It was lifechanging. Completely changed the way I approached discipline - which was an excellent thing when 2 of my kids were diagnosed with ADHD/anxiety. It's research/data driven and once you understand it, it's not terribly hard to adapt it for your situation. One of the things that stuck with me was about giving choices. Yes, it helps get a little kid to make an appropriate choice in a timely manner. For my teens and some of their challenging behaviors, I turned it into..."if you choose to do X, you are also choosing Y" with Y usually being them losing something they valued. So, I never 'took' their devices, they 'lost' them or 'chose' not to have them. They absolutely had control over their choices and knew the consequences of their (not my) choices.

The woman who I took the Positive Discipline class from is not longer doing it but here's a link to a national organization if you're interested: https://positivediscipline.org/parenting-classes