Mom always saying she feels like TSG is not allowing her to be a parent

Hi Nicholeen,

As you know, we have three children and I am trying to incorporate TSG into our family system and Mom is more permissive and angainst TSG and things like the rule of three and 24 hour consequence periods etc. Also because technology abuse and inappropriate use has been such an issue, I have Incorporated loss of media apps and technology for extended periods with our oldest child especially. During these moments when he gets extremely oppositional, demanding, tries to manipulate and divide, mom tends to voice her disagreement of the TSG methods more to me and claims that I am removing her parental authority altogether, and not letting her be a parent. Unfortunately, I feel that she is not able to handle the anxiety and stress, whereas I’ve been able to get to a different place internally during these stressful times due to my own focus on self governing myself and being a calm parent.

She often says she feels like we’re going down the same rabbit hole, because our oldest child child who has displayed ODD tendencies, and has issues with impulse control, really digs in when he loses technology. During one of his recent episodes, he forcefully entered our room despite being locked and wouldn’t leave. One of the things he said was that technology was the only thing that calmed him.

I’ve tried to reiterate to my wife that I am not at all trying to prevent her from parenting, but rather trying to actually plea with her to take a more active role in the parenting and do some of the disciplining and teaching, enxouragi her to use her softer tone and better connection with our children, since she tries to be their friend.

I’ve also tried to point to a lot of the progress I feel we’ve made, not only myself personally but with the children because of the TSG principles and teaching. More than anything, I feel like she’s just dead set and decided against it, and feels like a victim, rather than focusing on trying to understand it, even if she’s not planning on actively practicing the teaching and principles.

What else would you recommend to try to get her to be more open to the TSG principles, and not see it as the problem or the source of the challenges we’ve experienced, but rather part of the solution? I know you’ve shared that having parents divided and children adapting to two different styles of parenting is a big challenge, but would you recommend anything different?

Thanks and blessings