What effect does parents arguing have? How does it affect a child?
I'm Nicholeen Peck and I'm a parenting expert and author.
And today, we're going to talk about how parent behavior affects child behavior.
In this video, I'm going to share 8 possible consequences that your children and family
could suffer because of parents arguing. Number 1, children feel concerned or stressed when
their parents argue. They're not sure why it's happening. Maybe if they're at fault
and if there's something that they can do about it to stop it. Don't ever forget that they are
processing all the time. And they're processing things from a place of love and concern. And
that can lead to anxiety and stress. The second negative consequence of parents arguing is that
children sometimes pick sides. So, they start to think, "Oh, yeah. Dad's right and mom's wrong"
or "Dad's out of control but mom's nice" or things like that. They think that one parent is somehow
better than another because an argument occurred, they have to decide who was really right and who
was really wrong. That puts them in a situation where they potentially could be disconnecting from
one of their parents. When parents argue children often feel lonely because they feel detached from
their parents, when parents detach from each other, then that creates another detachment from
the children. Parents don't always realize that but as soon as you detach from your spouse, you
become selfish. So you start just thinking about your own self, preserving yourself, being right,
stewing over whatever happened. You know, you take your pick of what happens to you when you
argue. But then your children get detached too because you are only worried about yourself.
That's what arguments do. They make people take sides. And that means the children get pushed out
of the affection. When the child is disconnected, they look to other sources for bonding. So,
that means they're going to be looking to friends other adults, teachers, maybe even the media
to bond to. That's not nearly as healthy as bonding to parents. Children need family unity to
feel fully confident in their worlds as they learn and grow and make mistakes. When parents argue,
it helps a child feel like they need to bond with somebody else who can show them how to
be happy because their parents aren't happy. They're not setting the example for happiness.
Now, if you want your family to experience more family unity
and family happiness then I highly recommend the teaching self-government parenting course. Because
it lays the foundation for how you can create a united family. It gives you the skills,
the structure the tone that you need in order to get your family disagreeing in appropriate ways
instead of arguing. These teaching self-government resources are at teachingselfgovernment.com. You
might not realize it but one other thing that can be a negative consequence of parents arguing is
bad behavior of the child. So, the child sometimes subconsciously even chooses to misbehave so that
they can try to bring the parents together to conquer the bad behavior. Children
learn that misbehaving gets attention too. So, sometimes that misbehavior is just in an effort
to get parents to pay attention to them instead of thinking about their own marital problems.
When parents argue, children often adopt habits of lying. The reason why they choose
to lie is because this is a way for them to decrease some of their problems (they hope)
with the parents and to decrease their stress. So, it's very common for parents who are not having
good unity in their marital relationship to have a child who is dishonest to them so that they can
decrease everybody's stress in the family. Because the child might not be getting enough attention
during the time when parents are feuding with each other, a child can learn to be passive. When
their emotional and bonding needs are not met from the parents then the child just sits back
and waits for things to happen to them. In fact, they often become very dejected during this time
feeling like life is just happening to them and that they don't have the opportunity to be an
active player in the happiness or story of their own lives. When parents are arguing, they're often
aggressive and manipulative. So, guess what? The child often times learns to be aggressive
or manipulative too. It is a learned behavior. So, usually, when parents are arguing with each other,
it's not uncommon to see a child choosing to lie or manipulate as well. The way that
we choose to parent our children has a big impact on their happiness and their success in life. So,
as we can see from this video, there are a lot of negative effects when parents are arguing with
each other. But what if we could change the way we communicate with our children and with our spouses
all with the same skills and principles. Well, there is a way. We can. It's called
the teaching self-government parenting model and I talk a lot about it on these videos. In fact,
if you've liked this video, I'm pretty sure you're going to love my next video which is
How Do Parenting Styles Influence Child Development and Behavior. Click on that video
now to start learning more about how you can help your child and yourself be better self-governed.