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When Parenting Styles Differ
Can It Affect Your Friendships? By Shel Franco
For some people, having a plan is the way they cope rather than the way they escape.
In fact, having a plan is what keeps Kathryn Lay of Arlington, Texas on sociable terms with her friend. After increasing rudeness, aggression and destructive behavior by her friend's children, Lay decided to take action.
For her, this meant keeping quiet. "We value their friendship enough to know that if we were ever to be honest about all this, they'd take it badly," she says.
So Lay and her husband came up with a plan: They get together at the friends' house, rather than have the aggressive children destroy their own home. While they are there, the Lays keep a close eye on their daughter. "And pray a lot," she adds.
They also use a tactic that might be helpful to other parents in discipline struggles with friends: They try to go out as couples, rather than as a group with the children.
Most differences in parenting do not have to spell doom for the relationship. It really boils down to what the friendship means to you. In the words of Dr. Paul, "Caring friendships call for embracing the differences rather than needing to be right and to control what one's friend does."
*Name has been changed.
