You stepped on my parenting again last night.

A quick text message sent this morning.

Ack. Sorry.

I’m not angry, you’re not angry, we’re both simply trying to become more aware of how we co-parent in this four-adult-three-kid house of mixed approaches.

I love that you are involved as a parent, as I grew up with a single parent in a two-parent house and as I started off as a single parent in a two-parent house back before we became a family.

I see your intentions when you step in, and you see mine when I do the same. But we also see that this needs to change. We need more practice co-parenting and more agreement on handling things the same way.

When I see you doing something that I have tried and that has not worked, I try to save you from failing in the same way that I have failed. When you see me dealing at the end of the day, sometimes you step in to save me.

We each take primary responsibility for our kids. We each jump up to handle situations, and come from the other room when we hear a ruckus.

This is a good thing. And this is a thing that we need to handle more gracefully.

I do not want you to butt out so that I can do things my own way, and I do not want to back off to let you do your own thing.

This is a thing for us to work on together, just as we work with our kids.

I’m okay with that.

I’m okay with us slipping up sometimes and stepping on each others toes. Our kids learn from our mistakes just as we learned from the mistakes of our own parents. They learn from the things we handle well, and from the things that we handle less gracefully. They learn that there is no absolute right or wrong most of the time and they learn about fairness and discussion and agreement and compromise.

We both have the same destination in mind and it’s okay for each of us to follow our own path as long as we make sure to not lose sight of the other parent or drag them kicking and screaming off into the undergrowth in an attempt to get them onto our own path.

We’re drawing our own map as we go, and we each have our own style. It’s okay for the map to be less than perfect.

I’ll try harder to avoid stepping on your parenting, as I know that you do try hard to avoid stepping on mine.

We’re in this together. Let’s make it draw us closer and not drive us apart.