Are You Enabling Bad Behaviors In Your Household?

by | Jun 15, 2017 | Family Counseling

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find myself guilty of enabling bad behavior inside my own household. Do you ever notice that you might be tolerating somebody’s unwanted behavior or are you really good about addressing things, setting boundaries, and establishing consequences and fairness? In our relationships with our partners and our kids, there is always a yin and a yang at plStrategies for Harmonious Familiesace. Sometimes one of us is underperforming and so the other one will step in and overcompensate. The challenge with that kind of imbalance is that it usually breeds resentment over time, and resentment is never good for any relationship, right?

Common Examples

  • Do you have a kiddo who is underperforming and not following through on their chores and household responsibilities? If so, how do you handle it? Do you jump in and do those things for them or do you hold them accountable and give them consequences when they fail to follow through?
  • Do you have a partner who loses their patience with the kids all the time, so they’re kind of underperforming on that patience front? Do you overcompensate for them and jump in to manage things when they get heated? If you’re overcompensating, how is your partner going to learn how to increase their patience and their parenting skills?
  • Do you have a significant other who really has a lot of anxiety and they seem so overwhelmed that you find yourself overcompensating by taking on more and more of the shared responsibilities? If that’s the case, how are they going to learn to create more bandwidth for the responsibilities that the two of you need to share more equitably?

What Can We Do?

Any time someone is underperforming in our household, it’s always a good idea to check in with us and ask ourselves, “Could we be a part of the problem?” “Could we be overcompensating and maybe even enabling some bad behavior?” Of course the key factor in all of this is, if there is an imbalance is that imbalance causing resentment or friction between you and a loved one?

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