Lisa Dunning, California Marriage & Family Therapist
Parent / Child Relationship Specialist

Why I Wrote This Book

In my private therapeutic practice I noticed a reoccurring theme from the vast majority of my clients. Session after session, I found myself repeating the same counseling advice with different clients. I thought someone must have written a book about this topic, but when I searched for a book that would adequately address this issue, I surprisingly found nothing. The issue was how to agree when raising their children or as the subtitle expresses more creatively, "How to Parent Together When Your Parenting Styles Are Worlds Apart?" It appears to be a simple concern yet the answer is so complex. The issue is complex because people are so complex. There are the obvious differences between men and women with women generally more open to communicating their feelings than men. Assuming the child is raised by the typical nuclear family with mom and dad living in the same household, mom has a different family history than dad and will obviously have different ideas about how to raise the children than dad. Assuming grandma and grandpa are alive on both sides of the family, their involvement, or lack of involvement, is critical to the development of the children and keep in mind they are from a different generation with completely different opinions and perceptions on how you should be parenting your children. Now let us assume mom and a step dad with his two kids are raising the children and dad lives over an hour away with a girlfriend who is raising a young child. You can see how the complexity can grow. My clients were good parents, wanting to raise happy and responsible children. They merely lacked the communication skills to adequately work through their differences to speak as one voice to their children. Essentially, these were "Good Parents" with "Bad Parenting" skills.

Lisa Asks Brad For Help

When Lisa and I had our first child, a boy, we both were excited and ready to have a child. Although a little scary at first, we eventually settled into the "new parents" roles and learned to bathe, feed, burp and dress the baby. Conversations involving specific situations such as, "What would you do if our child wanted to get a tattoo?" Or "What will you say if our child wants to sleep at a friends house, but we do not approve of that friend?" became the quickest way to start an argument. In your mind these questions may seem easily answered, but when you ask your partner questions, and you will, prepare for an argument. Assuming you can agree on a given course of action, consider if that course of action would be different if your child is five, twelve, sixteen, or twenty years old? Do you react the same if you are raising a boy or a girl? When Lisa shared with me her desire to write a book to help parents work together when raising their children, I was more than intrigued. I had no idea this issue was such a pervasive problem for parents in her practice. She told me about her ideas for the book and I started adding my input and before long we realized this book would be more beneficial to parents if we wrote the book together. Together we offer both a male and a female perspective. We also offer drastically different familial backgrounds. So throughout this book I offered my perspective when and where I felt it was important. Although generally written as one voice, I want the men, and women, reading this book to understand that many discussions and occasional heated arguments occurred before the final version reached the book you are reading today. If you are a man know that you are represented throughout and this is not purely a woman's perspective about what you should be doing for your wife and kids.