6: Don't Argue in Front of the Kids

This is #6 in a series of 40 things you can do to stay married for 40 years.

My husband and I didn't consciously set out to not argue in front of the kids. We just didn't until one fateful New Year's Day sometime in the 1990's. To this day it is know as "The black eyed pea incident."

We both grew up poor in families with four kids. Our mothers were not short order cooks and we were not allowed to demand a diet of chicken nuggets and only chicken nuggets. You were expected to eat what Mom cooked. End of story. My husband had to sit at the table until he'd eaten everything on his plate. No exceptions. My mother didn't demand that, but you weren't getting anything else.

One time my dad was watching the four of us. Very rare, and maybe the only time ever. He'd brought us some kind of deli hot dogs for dinner, not the Eckrich brand we were used to. I don't remember what the other kids thought of them, just that I thought they were awful and I'm not a picky eater. He made me sit there and eat the entire hot dog. Then I went outside and threw it up.

Fast forward about twenty years and I decided to make black eyed peas for New Year's Day. Previously I'd made baked beans or great northern beans. Anything to punch that prosperity ticket on the first day of the year. The boys did not like them.

I said, "That's okay. At least you tried them." My husband said, "You sit there until you eat them." Game on.

I'm not sure why it escalated into the angry shouting match that it did. I know for me I was triggered by "the hot dog incident" but I don't know why my husband was so adamant, especially after the many times he'd talked about the torture of sitting in front of a plate of cold spinach, liver and onions, or warm milk. (Side note: turns out he's lactose intolerant, so the forced drinking of milk was particularly heinous.)

It was a terrible way to begin the new year with us shouting and the boys crying. I guess the good thing is, the reason it sticks out so strongly in their memory is because we didn't ever argue in front of them like that. We strived to be a united front when it came to parenting, and hashed out disagreements behind closed doors.

I'm not a psychologist. I'm just a mom, but it doesn't take a psychology degree to figure out that arguing in front of the kids is distressing to them. The anger. The power struggle. Whose side should they take?

In the heat of the moment you can say some ugly things you don't really mean, but the kids don't know that. Keep your adult situations in an adults-only environment. And remember you're a team. (See #3 :-) )