On this week's Modern Family new dads Cameron and Mitchell differ on their preferred plans for soothing daughter Lily to sleep. Mitchell wants to use the Ferber Method, which says a child can be taught to put herself to sleep with self soothing techniques, but Cameron can't stand to hear the baby whimper in her crib. In fact, he cries a little himself and says, "It's torture . . . torture! It's just hard if you happen to be a person who hates to hear another person suffer." While hilarious on screen and an exaggeration of the Ferber Method (to some extent), it's a conundrum most parents battle. You read one suggestion or study. He reads another. One of you reacts with emotion, the other with a well-thought out plan. The challenges of coparenting ensue.
My husband and I talked about how we would raise our kids before we got married, and the conversation continues as different issues come up, but we still face bad cop/good cop moments. Do you and your partner fundamentally use the same methods, have completely different parenting styles, or a balanced combination?
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Roberto Cavalli
Completely different! He only sees her every two or three weeks, and when he does he lets her do whatever she wants. She and I have a lot of fun, but I have a very strict-but-reasonable set of rules. It hasn't been too hard to teach her, different houses, different rules.
1We definitely differ on a lot of things, but most of them have been because of his lack of experience. He had absolutely no child involvement - no young cousins, no babysitting, no siblings, no friends with children, nothing. So, if we differ on a situation, I explain my feelings and reasonings, as does he, and we often go and researche things to find out more information, medical, experience, etc before we decide on the big things. I had LOTS of experience with children, my entire life has been full of younger siblings and cousins, so there were just a lot of little things, like soothing them to sleep, that I had way more information on from the get go then him.
She's still little, and we are still growing, I'm sure there will be things we dont agree with at all later on.
2After rereading, i realized my post sounds kind of arrogant.. most of the things he didn't know about were silly things you learn through experience, like hygiene, how long you can leave formula out and still feed it, etc etc. I don't pretend to be a walking encyclopedia, and he's not a bumbling neanderthal.
3It's very rare that we differ.
4very different which makes for a hard marriage
5My husband and I were two different extremes originally. I was very strict and he was very laid back. But our son is now 17 and we've worked hard and met in the middle on most things over the years.
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