Episode 5 Season 1 of Love Your Family Again and Again and Again and Again – Dr. Marcie’s new podcast.

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Courtney and her husband both work full time and have two beautiful children, ages 5 and 9. While Courtney works from home, her husband does not, so more of the parenting falls on her. There are moments when her 5 year old son has a hard time with her husband, her husband gets frustrated and ultimately results to yelling. Courtney’s mama bear instinct goes into action and she finds herself interjecting, often in a way that leaves her husband feeling unsupported. She wanted to know how to navigate these moments better.

The first thing we talked about is that this is a conversation about her relationship with her husband, not about the relationship with her son. How to help her son when he is having a hard moment is a different conversation. With this clarity, I suggest that the best thing she can do is to stay out of it. If her husband asks for help, she can certainly provide it but interjecting herself is not helpful. It is important to trust her husband and know that he is doing the best he can. It is important to allow their relationship to grow and when she steps in, she is undermining her husbands authority. While this can be hard to do, it is deeply impactful. There also needs to be conversations between Courtney and her husband about how to navigate behaviors with their children. I suggested that she starts talking with her husband about how they can do it better next time, not what went wrong this time. The forward thinking can feel empowering and like problem solving, rather than full of blame and shame.