Our parenting is affected by so much more than how we approach our child during their big feelings. It also requires some introspection on how we approach our big feelings in disagreements with our partners or loved ones. On this episode, I welcome Lesley Adams who is a licensed marriage and family therapist, to talk about why healthy conflict resolutions are important and healthy for children to see. Tune in as we discuss:

• Communication styles in partnerships
• How to express your needs with your partner
• How to repair IF discussions get escalated

00;00;01;01 – 00;00;23;15

Lesley Adams

Your kids can feel tension. They can feel when there’s something happening, it’s uncomfortable. We all know that example. Like you walk into a room and you realize something has happened before. Like with some people in there. Even if you’re not, like, emotionally invested, you can totally feel that, right? Like, you can like, feel. And they always talk about the tension with a knife or the elephant in the room.

 

00;00;23;22 – 00;00;47;21

Lesley Adams

Like, your kids can absolutely feel that too. Like, even from the ages. Super young, all the way up. Especially the teenagers and the teenagers, they’ll tell you like there’s something awkward going on here. Like something feels off. And if you’re harboring resentment or anger, your kids can tell. And you’re also teaching them inadvertently. It’s not safe to talk about your emotions, especially when you’re in opposition with one another.

 

00;00;47;27 – 00;00;56;27

Lesley Adams

It leads to, like, emotional suppression at school, with friends and future relationships. And we don’t want that for our kids, right? We want our kids to be better.

 

00;00;57;00 – 00;01;19;03

Dr. Mona

Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I continue to get to talk to the most amazing guests on this podcast to have conversations about parenthood, child health development, how we approach parenting, and so much more. So thank you for tuning in and being here and for all of the reviews you leave for the podcast. It means so much and it’s how the podcast can grow.

 

00;01;19;05 – 00;01;32;00

Dr. Mona

Today’s guest is Leslie Adams, who is a licensed marriage and family therapist, and we are talking about why it’s important for our children to see healthy conflict discussion. Thank you so much for joining us today.

 

00;01;32;03 – 00;01;40;01

Lesley Adams

Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited. I’m a huge fan of the podcast, so I’m just it’s like a dream come true. Bucket list moment.

 

00;01;40;01 – 00;01;58;00

Dr. Mona

Oh, I’m so grateful. And I love, as you know, as someone who listen to the podcast, I love talking about parenthood, child health development, like I said. But it’s so important that we talk about these kind of things, right? This is part of parenting, right? How do we communicate with the adults in our life, the partner in our life, the grandparent who comes in and does something that we may not like.

 

00;01;58;00 – 00;02;07;12

Dr. Mona

So this topic on how we can have healthy conflict discussion in front of our children, or how we can teach them that is so important to me. And I’m just so grateful that we could connect today.

 

00;02;07;15 – 00;02;30;27

Lesley Adams

Yeah, absolutely. And I think for the most part, everybody understands we don’t try to avoid conflict discussions in front of our children. But I think then it goes too well, then what are we supposed to do in these moments, and how do we handle repairing and following up with our kids afterwards? So I, I’m so excited to like, talk about this today and kind of give everybody some tools and ideas of how to handle that in their own home.

 

00;02;31;00 – 00;02;35;25

Dr. Mona

Well, tell us more about yourself. You know, obviously what you do in your therapy work and all of that.

 

00;02;35;27 – 00;02;59;24

Lesley Adams

Yeah, absolutely. So right now I am in a non direct clinical role. But I come with, you know, 15 years of clinical experience both in the therapy role but also in I teach at a community college. So I have gotten that role under my belt. I’ve been in so many different settings. I’ve been in hospitals, I’ve been in outpatient clinics, I’ve done in-home therapy, trauma therapy.

 

00;02;59;24 – 00;03;20;03

Lesley Adams

I’ve kind of done it all at this point. And on top of that, I used to do couples therapy a whole lot with parents who were kind of adjusting to the new normal of having a child and having conflict discussions and how to work through that. So I just come with a wealth of experience, and in my personal life, my husband and I have been together for 11 years.

 

00;03;20;09 – 00;03;43;17

Lesley Adams

Five of those married. Right. So yeah, our son just turned two in August, so we’ve had to work through some of this ourselves. And I’m going to be completely honest. Like, we struggled and we obviously had to do this during Covid with little to no support. So yeah, so all those parents out there who were dealing with this and kind of going over this hump of parenting, please know you’re not alone.

 

00;03;43;17 – 00;03;45;07

Lesley Adams

And I got you.

 

00;03;45;10 – 00;04;11;07

Dr. Mona

Well, I love when I have guests on my podcast who are therapists or, you know, people who love talking about parenting like myself, who can be completely honest and transparent. It is so important for everyone to understand that although we can be quote unquote experts in the field and be trained in certain things that we all struggle as humans to have these sort of, you know, this growth and sort of, interactions with each other and trying to find the best way to navigate parenting and pandemic life and, you know, communication.

 

00;04;11;07 – 00;04;17;05

Dr. Mona

So I appreciate that transparency that’s so important for my listeners to know. And I love having guests who share that with us.

 

00;04;17;11 – 00;04;36;09

Lesley Adams

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, when we’re having these talks and you’re having some self-reflection when we’re talking through some of the stuff, guys know that there’s no guilt, there’s no judgment. We’re just reflecting on our own communication styles. It’s just good to be aware of your communication styles, but also your partners. And we’re going to talk a lot about that today.

 

00;04;36;11 – 00;04;55;00

Dr. Mona

Yeah. So kind of starting off, you know, there is a misconception that sometimes parents feel like they have to keep the peace around their kids. And I know to some degree that’s important. But parents are not always going to agree on everything. So how can we show children this sort of healthy conflict discussion? And I like that you use the word discussion versus resolution, right?

 

00;04;55;02 – 00;05;22;10

Lesley Adams

Right. Yeah. So when we’re in conflict sessions, it’s not arguments. It’s not fighting. This is discussions. It’s easy to default like negative habits when we’re feeling unheard or angry or kind of at our wit’s end. And you’re already emotionally charged going into those conversations and the discussions. So to take out the negative connotation of it’s supposed to be a conversation and discussion, it’s not one sided or feeling like you’re on your own island dealing with this.

 

00;05;22;10 – 00;05;45;08

Lesley Adams

You’re supposed to be in a partnership, so taking out even the word argument is going to change your own self-perception and your narrative just a little bit. And, you know, John Gottman, he’s this really famous, marriage and family therapist. He worked with thousands of couples, did this, all this study of conflict discussions. And he came up with the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse.

 

00;05;45;08 – 00;06;07;27

Lesley Adams

And it sounds so, like overwhelming, right? Like you’re like, oh, wow. But really, it’s just for communication habits and styles that we default to when we are in a conflict discussion. Right. So everybody has done all of these. Again, disclaimer like there’s no guilt or judgment. We’ve done all of these. And I’m going to tell you guys which one I am and which one my partner is.

 

00;06;08;00 – 00;06;31;25

Lesley Adams

But the first one is criticism. And when you are in a conflict discussion and you use criticism, it’s kind of an attack on your partner at the core of their character. You feel like you’re dismantling them and their whole being when you criticize. So that’s one. The second one is content. This is kind of the, kind of the uglier version of communication.

 

00;06;31;25 – 00;06;52;07

Lesley Adams

So you kind of like, you’re mean, you mock, you ridicule you, you know, a little disrespectful. You’ll call names, stuff like that. It’s not. It’s something that you would almost see with children to too lot. Yes. They don’t really have the consciousness of the mean side of things and the emotional damage you can do. The third one is defensiveness.

 

00;06;52;07 – 00;07;14;27

Lesley Adams

And again, this is where I’m at. Like, full disclosure, I am a defensive communication habit person. So, you know, we’ll fish for excuses. We’ll kind of play the innocent victim so that our partner backs off. And then the last one is stonewalling. So stonewalling kind of is when that person withdraws from the conversation, they shut down. They just don’t respond.

 

00;07;14;27 – 00;07;21;28

Lesley Adams

And rather than confronting the issues, they’d rather just completely maneuver out of it. My husband is this one.

 

00;07;22;01 – 00;07;23;05

Dr. Mona

What’s mine? That’s so interesting.

 

00;07;23;05 – 00;07;32;13

Lesley Adams

Yeah, yeah. So in that edit, like again, if you look back and you’re identifying your communication style, what’s your default doctor moment when you hear some of these.

 

00;07;32;16 – 00;07;53;13

Dr. Mona

Yeah. So I will say is when you were saying that stonewalling is definitely my husband and criticism is definitely me. And it’s interesting that you bring that up, because what I was going to ask you is I find that there’s no other person in this world that I do this with except my partner, meaning I disagree with you or disagree with someone at work.

 

00;07;53;13 – 00;08;00;14

Dr. Mona

I’m not going to go into a criticism mode, but do you find that we tend to do these things more with the people that are closest to us, like a partner?

 

00;08;00;16 – 00;08;23;27

Lesley Adams

Yeah, absolutely. So any time that you’re in an emotional relationship where there’s a lot of stake, there’s a lot of vulnerability, yeah, you’re definitely going to hit them where it hurts. When we call my husband and I call it fighting. Unfair. So we have very open conversations about conflict discussions and hey, we got a fight fair. This isn’t fighting fair.

 

00;08;23;27 – 00;08;41;14

Lesley Adams

And how do we do that together? And again, like, we this is something that we’ve worked on both. We did pre-marital therapy. We go to therapy now every once in a while just to do consistent check ins. Like, as a therapist, I know that’s going to help us continue to keep on track and continue to have honest check ins with one another.

 

00;08;41;19 – 00;09;00;12

Lesley Adams

And we’re going to like, talk about like when you need those type of moments and you need that type of intervention. But when you’re thinking about the communication styles, it’s really important to know your default. But it’s also important as you work as a team, to know where your partner is coming from and working with them to address the communication habits.

 

00;09;00;12 – 00;09;20;09

Lesley Adams

During conflict discussions. You know, knowing that your partner may be coming from a stonewalling place. If you’re like me and I want to be defensive, I’ll continue to pursue, to make excuses and try to get to play victim in those moments. And I know he’s stonewalling me now, and it almost makes me want to push it further. Right?

 

00;09;20;10 – 00;09;35;05

Dr. Mona

Yes. Of course. Why are you listening to me? Come on. Like yeah, I’m right. Come on. That’s so true. And do you find that you see that it can be multiple types of these communication styles? Or do you think that someone kind of leans on one of these strategies more than others? Or it could be a mix?

 

00;09;35;12 – 00;09;56;06

Lesley Adams

I think that for the most part, that everybody has done all of them at one point, but normally you’ll see somebody have more of a default. The other interesting thing is, as you’re going through conflict discussions, as you become more emotionally charged and you become more frustrated or you’re not feeling heard, you may go through all of these.

 

00;09;56;06 – 00;10;14;02

Lesley Adams

Yeah, right. You’ll kind of see yourself go through, hey, I’m just trying to make a point. And then you get critical, right? And then you may get defensive and then you go to contempt and then you stonewall that person, and that happens all the time. None of this is completely normal. Doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make you a bad partner.

 

00;10;14;05 – 00;10;39;22

Lesley Adams

It makes you human. Yeah. And how you work through those things as a partnership, and especially in front of your children, is the super important part. And Gottman even goes into like how they call him the anecdotes to these for apocalypse. And there’s different key things that you can do to show your children healthy conflict discussions and you start off by having gentle start ups.

 

00;10;39;22 – 00;10;51;29

Lesley Adams

Right? This sounds so cliche. So I’m going to just say talking about your feelings and Ice statements is super important when you’re going through conflict discussions.

 

00;10;52;01 – 00;10;55;07

Dr. Mona

When it’s so easy not to like kids. But I get it. Why it’s so important?

 

00;10;55;07 – 00;11;16;12

Lesley Adams

Yeah, yeah. And the other side of it, like it’s hard to do. It’s not natural. Right. We’re always thinking me, me, me, me and my feelings. So how do you communicate that in a way that your partner can be come from a more understanding place and you can feel heard? This is I feel frustrated because you did this, this and this.

 

00;11;16;14 – 00;11;42;21

Lesley Adams

We tend to do that with Ice statements, right? I do this in therapy. Couples do this all the time. And as a third party kind of watching the outside in, a therapist can really help you like kind of change your verbiage and be that kind of third party moderator. So I’m feeling frustrated because I feel unheard. I’m feeling burnt out, I’m feeling decision fatigue and I need some help.

 

00;11;42;24 – 00;12;13;08

Dr. Mona

This is so important. And I feel what ends up happening a lot of the times, and I can say from personal experience, is that rather than using those Ice statements, you fall into the trap of you’re not like the criticism or like what you said using going into the different communication styles that you’ve already mentioned. So I guess how for people who have difficulty trying to reprogram, because I think it is hard sometimes to remember to use Ice statements, kind of how would you say like to kind of in that moment, reframe and just say the Ice statement versus trying to do the criticism, content defensiveness or stonewalling?

 

00;12;13;15 – 00;12;29;16

Lesley Adams

Yeah, absolutely. Practice? Yeah. Practice, practice, practice. This is not. And like I just said, it’s not a natural thing for us to say. I’m feeling so hurt because I feel like I just made this nice dinner and I needed help to clean up. And you just laughed, right?

 

00;12;29;18 – 00;12;30;01

Dr. Mona

Yeah.

 

00;12;30;01 – 00;12;58;18

Lesley Adams

When you practice the ice treatment outside of conflict discussions, it becomes more natural in conflict discussions. This is also really important when you’re thinking about your family as a whole. I’m going to kind of like our favorite therapy and marriage and family therapy is to look at things as a system right by some is greater than the whole of its parts is something we say all the time, because parents are just part of the family system and they’re a major part, but they’re just part of it.

 

00;12;58;21 – 00;13;20;02

Lesley Adams

So when you zoom out and you want to think, okay, what do I want my family communication style to be, you practice those things in front of your children. Also, you’re teaching your children those eye statements as well. And this is really important when it comes to like the toddler age. I’m telling you, my son right now is really struggling with expressing his needs.

 

00;13;20;04 – 00;13;36;15

Lesley Adams

And he says, I need this, I want this. I’m like, okay, I hear that you want this. Yeah, but how can I get you to tell me how you’re feeling? And we do a lot of age appropriate things in our house, but part of it is okay. Do you need help? I need help, please not scream or not demands.

 

00;13;36;20 – 00;13;51;02

Lesley Adams

I need help, please. You know, so practicing outside of conflict discussions is going to be helpful for not only you as a person, you as a parent, but you as a partner as well. And it’s going to teach your kids to use those statements as well.

 

00;13;51;05 – 00;14;12;03

Dr. Mona

Isn’t it so valid, though, that all the things that we talk about for adult communication is so useful for how we communicate with children as well? We’re all human beings. I just want to be heard and felt and you know, it’s so true that like whenever I have, you know, guests that talk about more interpersonal relationships and stuff between caregivers or, you know, it’s also like the same concept is how we want to approach children as well, to some degree.

 

00;14;12;03 – 00;14;14;12

Dr. Mona

So I appreciate that we’re right.

 

00;14;14;12 – 00;14;44;28

Lesley Adams

And the other thing is like, they’re little humans. Yes. The reason and kind of like backing up a little bit too, like the reason it’s so important to not avoid conflict discussions with your partner in front of kids is your kids can feel tension. They can feel when there’s something happening. It’s uncomfortable. We all know that example of like, you walk into a room and you realize something has happened right before, like with some people, or even if you’re not like emotionally invested, you can totally feel that, right?

 

00;14;45;01 – 00;15;03;17

Lesley Adams

Like you can like feel it. They always talk about the tension with a knife or the elephant in the room. Like your kids can absolutely feel that too. Like even from the as ages, super young all the way up, especially the teenagers. And the teenagers will tell you like there’s something awkward going on here, like something feels off.

 

00;15;03;19 – 00;15;22;04

Lesley Adams

And if you’re harboring resentment or anger, your kids can tell and you’re also teaching them inadvertently. It’s not safe to talk about your emotions, especially when you’re in opposition with one another. It leads to like, emotional suppression at school, with friends and future relationships. And we don’t want that for our kids, right? We want our kids to be better.

 

00;15;22;04 – 00;15;35;01

Lesley Adams

Like our family motto is leave it better than you found it. And that comes with parenting, as my husband and I like. That’s part of our our parenting kind of like mantra is if we’re going to leave him better than we have it.

 

00;15;35;03 – 00;15;49;24

Dr. Mona

Yes. Yeah, that’s oh, that’s exactly what we had said too, I love that. Yeah. My husband and I recorded an episode together about reprinting ourselves as we parent our kid, and he said things like, I want to be better than what our parents did for us. And, you know, continue to evolve that way. And yeah, what you said is right on.

 

00;15;49;24 – 00;16;09;05

Dr. Mona

The vibe is totally right on in terms of, you know, I will admit that my husband and I have had discussions. I’m going to use the word argument only because, the only reason I’m using the word argument is that voices were raised in our child. Right? And that is just being completely transparent. And my son is like a little over two and a half at the time of this recording, but he.

 

00;16;09;05 – 00;16;21;22

Dr. Mona

Absolutely. And we recognize it. Right? And we’re like, we need to really, really be mindful of this more and more. And I, I tend to be the higher voice there than my husband, my husband, because he’s more of a stonewall. Or he tends to also get very quiet.

 

00;16;21;24 – 00;16;22;13

Lesley Adams

Yeah. Shut down.

 

00;16;22;13 – 00;16;39;20

Dr. Mona

Questions. Yes. But I’m the one who’s trying to like, get it out of him. Right. And because of that, I have been kind of programed to raise my voice more. Right. And it’s important because, like you said, like the last time it happened was maybe even just a couple weeks ago, prior to this recording. And Ryan was like, mommy, mommy sad.

 

00;16;39;20 – 00;16;59;28

Dr. Mona

Like he recognizes that mommy’s upset. Like he uses sad for upset. And I was like, Yes. Like he’s recognizing it and we’ll get into like repair and stuff like that. But it was an eye opening thing because obviously I know that it happens. But when you’re so upset with whatever it is and when you look back it’s like, was that really something I needed to be upset about?

 

00;16;59;28 – 00;17;20;21

Dr. Mona

Probably not. But at that moment it felt really big to me. And that’s okay. But I look at it and I’m like, wow. Like, I know these kids are always watching and I don’t want Ryan to see his mother get angry or raise her voice at his father just because we do not agree. Right. That’s the whole point of this conversation that we’re having is that, no, like, this is not what I want him to see.

 

00;17;20;21 – 00;17;28;27

Dr. Mona

And so that instance is like, honestly, the first time that we’ve raised our voice in front of our son, which I think is pretty good for being two and a half. Yeah. I was about to say.

 

00;17;28;27 – 00;17;30;22

Lesley Adams

Hey, like, that’s really good.

 

00;17;30;22 – 00;17;46;11

Dr. Mona

For like it’s pretty good. I’m actually I’m actually pretty calm. But that being said, like it was a very uncomfortable feeling because I looked straight in his eyes and he like my son’s eyes and I’m like, oh, wow. Like he really could feel the tension. Like you said, he knew that Mommy and Daddy were not happy about something.

 

00;17;46;11 – 00;17;49;22

Dr. Mona

And sadly, I can’t even tell you what we were arguing about. I’m sure you get the sense.

 

00;17;49;22 – 00;17;54;04

Lesley Adams

That he’s right, because it’s like, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter.

 

00;17;54;09 – 00;18;05;03

Dr. Mona

Yes, and it’s so true. But I guess my my question would be then like to let’s started with, do you think it’s important that children have to see that their parents don’t agree from time to time? Correct.

 

00;18;05;03 – 00;18;05;27

Lesley Adams

1,000%?

 

00;18;05;27 – 00;18;18;19

Dr. Mona

Yes. And so one of the things I will say is that I grew up in a home where my parents never disagreed in front of me, and as I grew up, I was like, oh yeah, my parents never argue like they never argue. They never disagreed.

 

00;18;18;21 – 00;18;21;27

Lesley Adams

They were just perfect, right? Like they just never did anything wrong.

 

00;18;21;28 – 00;18;34;03

Dr. Mona

Right? And so as I got older, what I started to create a reality of when I started dating and meeting partners, right? That whenever we had disagreements, I thought that that means the relationship is over.

 

00;18;34;05 – 00;18;34;21

Lesley Adams

Doomed.

 

00;18;34;26 – 00;18;55;08

Dr. Mona

It’s doomed because you healthy relationships don’t have disagreements. That’s literally what I grew up feeling. And so yeah, that perception. Yeah. Like I’m happy that we’re having this conversation because I also do agree that children need to see that human beings do not disagree all the time. But you don’t have to yell. You don’t have to do anything like, you know, tit for tat yelling and stonewalling and criticism.

 

00;18;55;10 – 00;19;01;23

Dr. Mona

But I’m happy that you agree with that. And what else can a child learn from seeing this healthy conflict discussion.

 

00;19;02;00 – 00;19;24;15

Lesley Adams

Yeah, so there is so many good things that come out of conflict discussions, especially in front of your kids. One is that your number one, your parent, like you mentioned, your parents aren’t perfect. Oh my gosh, shocker. Boom. Like it’s out there. Your parents are not perfect. And as parents you should know that you’re not perfect in that it’s not natural for that to happen.

 

00;19;24;20 – 00;19;50;00

Lesley Adams

And I come I come from an opposite viewpoint. My parents used to fight in front of us all the time. They ended up getting divorced when I was younger, which in the end was really good for the family, right? Because to be in a constant like state of conflict, a panic, a fighting, yelling, watching that, it warped my view the other way, like, oh, this is what marriage relationships are in the beginning, right?

 

00;19;50;00 – 00;20;08;06

Lesley Adams

And you have this opposite view of it. What I never saw them do was resolve it. I never got to see them have a conflict discussion. They were fighting. They were full blown out fighting. There was no pretty side of it. I never got to see them come back and repair with one another or in front of us.

 

00;20;08;06 – 00;20;34;23

Lesley Adams

It was, I’m going to have this conflict discussion in front of my kids, and then I’m going to pretend like it never happened. So it leads to like avoidant behavior. And that’s something that I don’t like having conflict discussions. It makes me feel uncomfortable now. It makes me feel vulnerable. It makes me feel super awkward. Yeah. And I it it makes it hard to do emotional expression in my relationship or ask for what I, my wants and needs.

 

00;20;34;23 – 00;20;51;09

Lesley Adams

So that’s something I have to like continuously, like tap in and work on. In the opposite side of this, when you’re showing kids, hey, Mommy and Daddy are not agreeing on this and this is how you can say it. Mom and dad have like are having a conflict discussion about this topic. Again, you can make this age appropriate or not.

 

00;20;51;09 – 00;21;08;02

Lesley Adams

Like just as long as you’re communicating out loud what’s happening and you talk to them in an age appropriate manner. I think we’re having a conflict discussion, and Mommy and Daddy are kind of feeling super emotional about it, and Mommy and Daddy are upset right now. We’re going to take a minute. We’re going to take a break from this.

 

00;21;08;02 – 00;21;30;02

Lesley Adams

But know we love you. We love each other. We’re going to work through this, and you can even bring them back into the conflict resolution at the end. I always say one of the antidotes of like the communication habits is physiological self-soothing, which is taking a break. Spend time doing something soothing, something distracting. But you always need to schedule a follow up conversation.

 

00;21;30;04 – 00;21;53;16

Lesley Adams

It doesn’t have to sound like, oh, we’re going to get together tonight at 7:00 to discuss this again. It’s hey, it sounds like we both are emotionally charged right now. Let’s table this and we’re going to take it back up in a couple of hours or tomorrow. But having your kids be part of that part of it, but also the follow up conversation is going to be key to show them, hey, look, we figured it out.

 

00;21;53;18 – 00;21;58;27

Lesley Adams

We might have been an opposing end, but we figured it out because we’re a team and that’s how we do things around here.

 

00;21;58;29 – 00;22;23;24

Dr. Mona

I love that that is so amazing and it is something that is easy to do if you think about it. But so many times it’s like, you know, you just get so in that moment. But it really helps. And from the parenting child perspective, I mean, that is huge for them to see that modeled. Right? I mean, so much of this is even it’s verbal, but also the nonverbal stuff that we do, the, you know, all of it, but they just see that, wow, how do they respond after this disagreement?

 

00;22;23;24 – 00;22;36;20

Dr. Mona

And I think it is like we talked about, very healthy for the child to see that happen in the adult relationships that they admire so much. Right? I mean, of course they admire their parents and anything their parents do, they’re going to start to kind of model as well. So absolutely, I love that.

 

00;22;36;22 – 00;22;52;11

Lesley Adams

And the other part of it too, is you want to build a culture of appreciation in your family, but specifically about your partner, especially when you’re in the midst of these conflict discussions. We call it a tornado in our house where we feel like we’re just not agreeing on anything. So we’re like, oh, we sound like we’re in a tornado right now.

 

00;22;52;11 – 00;23;10;18

Lesley Adams

We have like a metaphor for it. That’s something that we’ve called it. You can call it whatever you want. Like anything that’s been troublesome in your relationship, we call it tornado because we just feel like we’re going round and round and round about multiple different topics and not seeing each other’s perspective. To combat that, you really need to build a culture of appreciation for your partner.

 

00;23;10;20 – 00;23;30;15

Lesley Adams

And that’s difficult to do, man. That’s the what’s one of the hardest things, especially when you feel like you can’t see their side and their perspective. You need to remind yourself of your partner’s positive qualities and find gratitude for positive actions. They helped out at bedtime. They did bath time without you having to like, watch over them. I’m using personal examples, right?

 

00;23;30;15 – 00;23;39;19

Lesley Adams

Yeah, yeah. You know, like you have to take pockets of positive quality. And that’s kind of in that finding Joy book that you recommended to that because.

 

00;23;39;23 – 00;23;41;08

Dr. Mona

Yeah. Phenomenal. Right.

 

00;23;41;08 – 00;24;02;14

Lesley Adams

Yeah. So yes. Right. I’m working through it. And my partner is going to read it after. And I told them I was like, this is how I want our relationship to go when it comes to finding joy. And I think that’s going to be like a huge shift for us, because it’s going to be how to reframe our mind, the negative and change it to the positive a lot of the times.

 

00;24;02;17 – 00;24;22;15

Lesley Adams

But also you also have to take responsibility, and this might be the hardest for everybody. For me, I do a really good job. I think it’s just kind of an occupational hazard. I do a really good job of zooming out, and I can look at things from the outside, looking in pretty quickly, and I’m not allowed to do therapy in my relationship.

 

00;24;22;15 – 00;24;43;03

Lesley Adams

We’ve kind of just, you know, I can’t take on that role, but taking responsibility to accept your partner’s perspective and offer an apology for wrongdoing is going to be huge in the repair cycle of this, right? Your partner’s not coming to you completely innocent. Of course, we all do something wrong, but you also have to accept what you’ve done wrong.

 

00;24;43;03 – 00;25;05;10

Lesley Adams

And maybe in those conflict discussions, did you take an unfair fighting jab at them? Did you say something that you knew was going to trigger them? Did you walk out in the middle of a discussion? He probably did something, and you hurt your partner inadvertently during that moment and taking responsibility for your own actions is going to be tough.

 

00;25;05;17 – 00;25;23;02

Lesley Adams

And it’s not always easy to realize your wrongdoings and how your partner’s perspective was in that moment. And that’s part of like, the listening, the eyes statements and stuff like that. It’s tough guys. Like it’s not easy to look at your conflict discussion from your partner’s point of view. Oh yeah.

 

00;25;23;02 – 00;25;40;00

Dr. Mona

I think that is very hard. And the book that you mentioned, by the way, The Book of Joy, absolutely recommend it for I’ve talked about on my social media channel, but that book is like I think so you can actually practice truly practice that book. Like how much peace you could find in your life. I mean, one of the biggest things that I take home from that is what you’re describing, which is the compassion piece, right?

 

00;25;40;00 – 00;25;54;28

Dr. Mona

That you’re having compassion for your partner. And if you chose this partner to be your partner for life, you know, hopefully, if that’s what you want, having that compassion and it is so easy to fall into the what didn’t you do today? You don’t do this, and I’m guilty of it too. And I’m happy you’re being transparent about that.

 

00;25;54;28 – 00;26;10;27

Dr. Mona

You know, like I do all of this. You don’t understand. You do this, like starting to kind of almost tit for tat itemize things when that’s not, that’s really not what it should be. It really is this sort of teamwork, like you said, this big picture of. We all bring something to the table, hopefully in this relationship.

 

00;26;11;19 – 00;26;26;04

Dr. Mona

And so you already mentioned, like, what to do if there is yelling and voices raised in front of the child. Right. You talked about the repair. Is there anything else you wanted to add? Yeah. Anything else I wanted to add to that piece? Like, what do you do if you end up getting into this sort of criticism?

 

00;26;26;04 – 00;26;32;12

Dr. Mona

Content is defensiveness, stonewalling in front of your child where you didn’t have the healthy conflict discussion, like how do you repair after that?

 

00;26;32;18 – 00;26;50;10

Lesley Adams

Yeah. So let’s say we just lost it, right? Like we were able to get to a discussion, but then it just blew up and maybe like somebody said something that was triggering, or maybe you didn’t mean for it to like go into this huge conversation about X, Y, and Z. But it did. It happens guys. It still happens to us like all the time.

 

00;26;50;12 – 00;27;11;02

Lesley Adams

Literally happened like two weeks ago. So the first thing we did was we sat our son down and he’s again, he’s just turned two. So the conversation I’m having with him is going to sound different than the one I’m going to have. Even with somebody who’s in school age, they’re like 8 to 12 or even teenagers like, you got to make sure that conversation is age appropriate.

 

00;27;11;05 – 00;27;39;14

Lesley Adams

We both apologize and said, hey, Mommy and daddy were feeling frustrated. We yelled, maybe we completely shut down. We ignored each other. We were name calling. Whatever happened, apologize for the actions done. The next thing you’re going to do, mommy, you kind of have that follow up and said, mommy and daddy talked about it later and we decided X, Y, and Z, you know, and then you want to action plan on how you want to handle conflict discussions as a family next time here.

 

00;27;39;16 – 00;27;59;10

Lesley Adams

Next time when we feel like we’re going to escalate to do these things, we’re going to take a break. Everybody’s going to take a break, and we’re going to have a follow up conversation later. This is what personally, what we do in our family like, right. We say, okay, we’re all emotionally charged. We’re going to do table this until maybe tomorrow.

 

00;27;59;12 – 00;28;15;14

Lesley Adams

But just know we love you. We love each other. We need some time to think about how we’re feeling, and we want to think about each other’s feelings. And right now we can’t do that because everybody’s upset. So let’s take a minute back up and then have that follow up conversation in front of that later, get through some kind of resolution.

 

00;28;15;17 – 00;28;39;01

Lesley Adams

Now, if this is something that you guys are doing continuously and it’s just like you just can’t you can’t get over it. You can’t get over it. Therapy always regularly check ins, regular or not. It’s always worth it for yourself. You can even do this individually if you feel like your partner’s coming to it and doing really well, but you feel like you’re just not and you can’t get through.

 

00;28;39;03 – 00;28;56;13

Lesley Adams

Maybe you’re having some past trauma that’s coming up that’s really triggering. Like, let’s say your partner raises their voice and it makes you shut down and etc. again, using myself as an example, right. Like I go to individual therapy and I go to couples therapy. Did you check ins you as your self, as an individual or as a couple?

 

00;28;56;13 – 00;28;58;23

Lesley Adams

There’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah.

 

00;28;58;25 – 00;29;18;01

Dr. Mona

And and yeah, for those who are unfamiliar with couples therapy, I would love if you could. I mean, obvious you’re not going to explain, like, everything that happens, but are you working with those the the your clients or patients on how to kind of prioritize the statements, how to communicate more effectively, like what is kind of the goals of your therapy sessions.

 

00;29;18;08 – 00;29;39;19

Lesley Adams

So I think the goals can be so different based on what’s going on. But for the most part, when it comes to couples, the goal is always how can we communicate better? Yes. And how can we create a safe place where we can see each other’s perspective and where we can have healthy conflict discussions without hurting one each other?

 

00;29;39;19 – 00;30;03;08

Lesley Adams

We talk a lot about fighting fair. We talk a lot about my statement as cheesy. It’s it is. I will make somebody in a couples face each other and have a conversation with one person talking, and then the other person repeats exactly what they think they heard. You will be so surprised the amount of times where somebody will say something and they repeat it back and they’re like, wait, no, that’s not what I meant.

 

00;30;03;14 – 00;30;30;18

Lesley Adams

That’s not what I said. Let me reframe it in a way that makes more sense. I mean, a lot of it’s just misunderstandings, miscommunications, misunderstandings and not seeing each other from each perspective. And if you take the time to have those honest discussions with people where you’re taking the time to talk through conflicts all the way through, from the beginning to the end, you’re going to see a resolution and you’re going to see changes every single time.

 

00;30;30;20 – 00;30;32;17

Lesley Adams

It just takes practice.

 

00;30;32;20 – 00;30;47;16

Dr. Mona

And like you said, you’re going to see changes in how your child approaches relationships to. Right. Like they absolutely like, you know, like you mentioned, you briefly mentioned about like they take this sort of interaction and dynamic to the playground or with their peers and they’re like, yeah, I’m going to do something like this because I have saw it be modeled.

 

00;30;47;16 – 00;31;04;21

Dr. Mona

Right. And that is so healthy. Like I said, from my personal perspective and your personal perspective, being on the opposite spectrum, right? Someone who was raised with parents who never discussed anything or disagreed. And then on your end, people who did do that. My husband is on your perspective as well. He did grow up with the parents that did argue a lot, fight a lot.

 

00;31;04;21 – 00;31;20;20

Dr. Mona

Unfair, very unfair. And I think, you know, everyone, you know, when you talked about the different communication or the communication styles, the criticism, the content, the defensiveness and the stonewalling, do you feel like those are a coping mechanisms that are kind of developed through a person’s life or childhood? Like that’s kind of how they cope with feeling like a threat.

 

00;31;20;20 – 00;31;21;15

Dr. Mona

Is there?

 

00;31;21;17 – 00;31;46;20

Lesley Adams

Yeah. I think that we bring so much to the table when it comes to adult relationships. There’s years and years of emotional experiences like little traumas, big traumas, and we’re bringing so much to the table that people don’t realize, wow, this is really impacted me and this is impacted the way I speak. This has impacted the way I deal with other people.

 

00;31;46;24 – 00;32;10;09

Lesley Adams

And that usually does come from childhood experiences. And then it goes through, like your relationships you have growing up with friends, where as a teenager, like your first boyfriend or girlfriend, like your first heartbreak, like those things all add up to the default communication habits we have now. Yeah. And again, like, guys like, know that there’s no judgment or no guilt in any of these.

 

00;32;10;09 – 00;32;37;17

Lesley Adams

We’ve all done them. And this is just a natural response to our past experiences. And it’s okay. It’s totally okay as long as you see what issue you may be having in your relationship and you work together to solve it. And the other thing is to like, as somebody maybe out there who are single parents, like, and you’re dealing with a co-parenting issue, you know, that these communication styles don’t change, right?

 

00;32;37;17 – 00;33;01;29

Lesley Adams

Like you should still be understanding what your other maybe ex partner is and how can you communicate to be better co-parents? That’s really difficult to do as co-parents when you’re not living together. And maybe you had a tumultuous last relationship, like it’s super important that you still model conflict. Discussion in front of your kids as co-parents. That does not change.

 

00;33;02;04 – 00;33;04;01

Lesley Adams

Yeah. Oh, and that’s hard.

 

00;33;04;03 – 00;33;22;05

Dr. Mona

It is hard. I mean, even in intact marriages, let alone I know with co-parenting is a whole different layer of of different things that can happen. Leslie, thank you so much for this conversation. You had an amazing final message, which you just mentioned, but is there anything else like as a closing statement you’d want to say to everyone who’s listening today?

 

00;33;22;07 – 00;33;40;18

Lesley Adams

Yeah, I mean, guys, I really appreciated the time. It was so much fun to discuss about all the conflict discussions you may be having in your future. Know that there are amazing therapists out there. I’m preferential to marriage and family therapist, but you know, there’s amazing people out there that will work with you and there’s no shame in that.

 

00;33;40;18 – 00;33;59;18

Lesley Adams

Please, always. Mental health is so important. We just got off a World Mental Health Awareness day and you know, we all preach it, but we all don’t want to take the time. Take the time for yourself. Take the time as a couple and you will have better parenting, a better relationship, better modeling for your kids.

 

00;33;59;20 – 00;34;20;02

Dr. Mona

Completely agree with that. And again, Leslie, thank you so much for joining me today. For everyone listening. If you love this episode, please make sure to leave a review and call Leslie out for her amazing education advice. It is just so important that we take care of ourselves and the people that are in our life and how we communicate them, and I can’t wait to talk to another guest next week.

 

00;34;20;03 – 00;34;35;24

Dr. Mona

Thank you for tuning in for this week’s episode. As always, please leave a review. Share this episode with a friend. Share it on your social media. Make sure to follow me at PedsDocTalk on Instagram and subscribe to my YouTube channel, PedsDocTalk TV. We’ll talk to you soon.