How should parents handle it when they disagree about disciplining a child?

Rabbi Landau answers with a familiar scene: “You think your child needs a consequence. She thinks your child needs a conversation.” In that moment, he teaches, “marriage is not deciding which parent disappeared. It is creating an answer that contains the strength of both.”

Neither side should simply give in. Surrendering to everything your spouse thinks is no answer, “because then you disappear.” Real love, he says, “is when you bring what you see, she brings what she sees, and something new is created.”

So a disagreement between parents is not a sign that something is broken. “Your differences are not the enemy of your marriage. They are the material from which your marriage is built.” Love doesn’t erase the difference; “love creates something from it.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

When parents disagree, the goal is not deciding which parent disappears.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

Giving in to everything your spouse thinks is no solution, because then you disappear.

Deepest human truth

Love creates something from the difference. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that from the two positions a third answer is born, holding gentleness and limits together.

More questions from this teaching

• Should I look for a spouse who thinks exactly like me, and what do we do when we disagree?