Put Up Yer Dukes

This week’s shoot with the Miller family included bike riding, watercolor, magna-tiles, and plenty of play fighting. It had me thinking about how we model healthy relationships for our kids.

Many of us come from the families of Baby Boomers; and many of those parents-who-are-now-grandparents grew up in settings where fighting in the home was considered taboo. If you fought, it was a sign that something was wrong with you or your marriage or both. So fighting either didn’t happen at all, or it was bottled up until some kind of explosion occurred.

Now so many of us are asking if there is a better way; a family methodology where healthy conflict allows people to express their needs or frustrations and then keep loving each other on the side of that moment of expression. For those of us trying to family this way (let’s try out “family” as a verb for a bit) we model fighting to our kids.

If we do it right, maybe our kids will find a way of being that includes conflict, but without it being catastrophic. Maybe we can help forge a path where families are able to grapple - emotionally wrestle - with each other, to endure some of the pain that may come with those moments of conflict, and then find out that - even after that fight - they are still deeply, passionately loved.