You shouldn’t treat this like an ordinary parenting dispute, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. This one involves lives and laws
My husband and I have three children, aged four years, three years and four months. A recurring source of parenting conflict has been our differing stances on safety. Basically my husband has almost no regard for our children’s safety, while I would say I am pretty middle of the road. It’s a weekly battle between usFor example, he refused to buckle up our children in their car seats ‘because it makes them upset’, despite me saying it’s unsafe.
He has always been a risk-taker, and has come out largely unscathed in all his adventures. His parents were very hands-off with him and his siblings, so perhaps that is part of it. How do I get him to accept that recommended safety measures are there for a reason, before someone gets hurt? I am sick of having to argue for basic safety for our children.How are you supposed to change someone’s mind when words don’t work? It sounds like you’re dealing with a particularly frightening version of the problem of how to reach someone once conversation has run out.
If this were any other conflict, you might just do what you need to anyway, without changing his mind. But this isn’t like that: if the kids aren’t wearing helmets or seatbelts when they’re with him, that’s not something you can fix unilaterally. It sounds, unfortunately, like you’ll need to change his mind.For risk-insensitivity, it can help when people actually see or hear what it would be like if the bad outcome eventuated.
Sometimes when perception doesn’t work, sanction does. You don’t need him to agree that his philosophy on risk is wrong; you just need him to agree to put the helmets on the heads. Sometimes people change behaviour only when it gets too expensive not to.
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