‘Why Teach Our Kids To Agree To Disagree?’

I’ve written ‘Why Teach Our Kids To Agree To Disagree?’ as our kids’ seem to have a complete and utter lack of ability to agree to disagree at the moment!  Why am I bothered?  I don’t want to our kids to bully people either now or as adults.  I want them to have a respect for others and their views.

‘Why don’t we have a build-a-bear sleepover and your bear can sleep on this and mine will sleep on that.’

‘No, I want mine to sleep there not yours and anyway I don’t want to play build-a-bears.’

‘Yes you do and we’ll dress them up and yours can sing.’

‘No I don’t want to, I want to build something.’

‘Exactly!  You can build something for the build-a-bears!  how about you build them a cave or a rocket or a cosy bed??’

‘NO, I HATE BUILD-A-BEARS, I HATE SINGING AND I HATE BUILDING’.

‘WHY WON’T YOU AGREE WITH ME?  Muuuuuuuuuum he’s annoying me, he always says no to everything I say….’

Now what are we meant to do in this type of situation? It suddenly hit me that I actually need to TEACH our kids to be able to agree to disagree otherwise we’re going to be breeding a generation of narcissists, which is NOT good.  How else will they know how to learn to be able to agree to disagree unless I teach them?  Or at least have a stab at it?

Then I thought about it – I’ve been in this situation so many times as an adult where the other person just keeps on going at me trying to get me to change my view to theirs or do what they want me to do.  I’m sure I’m not the only one either – at work, at home, in friendships, in relationships, in family situations…well, that’s bullying isn’t it?  It’s can be really unpleasant to be on the other side of it.

As a child and young adult I didn’t cope very well with it at all.  I would always bow down to the other person to either a) avoid a row or b) because I didn’t have the courage of my convictions.  I could never decide if I was being reasonable or not, or if their argument was better than mine.  (I’m still hopeless at decisions!)

Now that I’m nearly a hundred years old I just don’t believe that’s right and I don’t want my children to be in that mindset or to leave themselves open to being manipulated.

So, I’ve been on a mission to try and teach our kids that to have an opinion is brilliant, that they must always listen to someone else’s opinion, genuinely consider it and then they can choose to agree or disagree / take parts of the other person’s opinion on (or not) and that the other person must respect that with no ill feelings.  And move on.

I think this naturally extends on to loving people for who they are and accepting that people are different.  Some things are incredibly important to others and you need to respect and support them in that.  Accept your friends, your partner, quirks and all and without trying to turn them into versions of yourself.

People are wonderful beings.  We’re all different. Some things we admire in others and some things we don’t.  That’s absolutely ok.

We’re getting there slowly…

But – they are still very young and I don’t want them having the view that they’re always right and that they can just default to ‘agree to disagree’ without due knowledge and care.  I’m hoping this aspect will work it’s way in naturally but if you have any thoughts on the matter I’d be very grateful!

***
If you enjoyed reading ‘Why Teach Our Kids To Agree To Disagree?’ and would like to see other similar ones, you can find them here in Parenting and don’t forget’Why Teach Our Kids To Agree To Disagree?’ to sign up to receive future posts straight to your inbox (over on the right hand side of this page).