Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Hi, everybody! Welcome back to another conversation on the Parenting with Impact podcast. You've got Diane and Elaine here today.

Diane Dempster: Hey, everyone!

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We’ve got something really interesting to talk about today.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, we're going to discuss something really important—managing and navigating conflict. I don't think we're going to be able to cover everything in just one episode, so we’ll likely need to break this up into two.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Absolutely.

Diane Dempster: Sounds good!

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, let's start by identifying the issues in this episode, and then in the next one, we’ll dive into what to do about them.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, that sounds good.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So, conflict is so common—whether it's between you and your kids, between you and your co-parents, or honestly, the stuff we're going to talk about could apply in any situation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Anywhere, always.

Diane Dempster: And we're going to try to apply it mostly to the context of parent-child relationships. This came up a lot this week when I was doing a parenting group for parents of young adults.

There’s a lot of conflict when we’re trying to help our young adults launch successfully, and I think that’s a big piece of it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and I think it’s come up a lot for me, too. I was speaking at a school in New Jersey, and we were talking about what happens when kids, or parents, or teachers feel powerless—and how that leads to reactivity. Right?

So what kind of conflict does that create? What are the different ways that conflict shows up in these dynamics?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: So, there are four things that we've identified. Should we just jump in?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: There are four things that kind of underlie conflict.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or potentially, let’s call them sources of conflict, right?

Diane Dempster: Potential sources of conflict. So it’s like, when we were talking about the trigger model, this is where it could have started. This is where the conflict could have started. And the first one is power or priorities.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Can I just add something before you go into the details? What you just said—this is where it starts—because it’s never really about what we think it’s about.

Diane Dempster: No, it’s not.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It’s about what’s underneath.

Diane Dempster: We’re fighting about picking up the toys, we’re fighting about what to have for dinner, we’re fighting about—right? It’s about this sort of...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You don’t break down crying just because you dropped the bag of groceries; it’s everything that led up to dropping the bag of groceries, right?

Diane Dempster: Well, and let’s be really clear here, we’re talking about conflict, but we tend to use "conflict" and "arguments" interchangeably, and they’re really different. You might be in a heated discussion, let’s call it an argument, but what’s really going on underneath is something else that’s leading to the conflict.

You may have a conflict with another person. You and I have conflicts all the time in managing our business. Sometimes we navigate it without the explosions.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: Sometimes we don’t even know how hard it is, or...?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: How much food we had?

Diane Dempster: Yeah, about a day when I was having... right? But conflict is normal. The argument? Go listen to a trigger management podcast episode we’ve done if you want to learn how to handle the escalated stuff. But what we want to do is, once you recognize there’s a fundamental conflict here...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Whether there’s an underlying conflict.

Diane Dempster: What’s really going on underneath it?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right? Because when we’re dealing with things on the surface, we’re not really engaging—we’re reacting. But when we understand the cause, and we get underneath it, we have much more access to respond.

We’re much more likely to be able to respond the way we’d like to respond when we understand what’s going on.

Diane Dempster: Well, conflict is normal, right? Everyone has their own worldview, unique values, and unique perspectives. The world would be boring if we all wanted things to be exactly the same way.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: If you imagine a movie without any conflict in it... How boring would that be?

Diane Dempster: Can you imagine? Yeah, no, I mean, think about your day. How many decisions do you make? When you’re trying to make a decision with someone else? I mean, conflict is normal, and it’s healthy.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And some people really avoid conflict at all costs because it feels stressful for a lot of people. The other piece here, that I think is important...

Diane Dempster: Right? And I think the question underneath that is, is it the conflict you're avoiding, or is it the fear that conflict will escalate into an argument? For me, I’m a conflict avoider—I know that for a fact. It’s not because I think conflict is wrong, I get it.

But there’s this underlying anxiousness, like, “My gosh, are we going to get into a fight? My gosh, are they still going to love me?” It’s like these little voices in your head—not stupid, but these voices that cause you to avoid it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, or, "My God, am I going to be able to make my case?" Sometimes I know that my glib, golden-tongued husband can talk circles around me when I get agitated. So avoiding it might be because I’m afraid I won’t be able to express myself. There are a lot of ways it shows up.

Diane Dempster: Well, and just to plug in for some of us who have trauma around conflict—right? Some of us grew up in environments where conflict was forbidden, or conflict was so intense that it really caused...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right.

Diane Dempster: That pain, where it's like, "Nope, nope, nope, don't do conflict. That's not what we do." Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Especially for a lot of us women who were raised to be "good little girls," right?

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We were raised as girls not to avoid conflict, and certainly not to be the ones creating conflict or continuing it in any way. So there’s a whole other cultural paradigm around it.

Diane Dempster: So, the underlying things are power and priorities, trust and closeness, respect and recognition, and lagging skills and unrealistic expectations. So, let’s start with power and priorities. It’s like, whose priorities matter more, and having to decide...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: The power to decide. So, in our realm, a lot of parents working with us hear us ask the question, "Whose agenda is it?" Right? When parents ask, "How do I get my kid to fill in the blank?" one of the questions we often ask is, "Well, whose agenda is it?"

And very often, what’s happening is that we have a priority that our kids may not share, or we have an agenda that they may not share. Then we get into this dance or battle between whose priority is more important.

That’s where the power struggle comes in. It could be as mundane as, "I want my kid to take a shower before dinner or before bed," or as complicated as, "I know my kid’s not doing the work on a project that’s due."

It’s a long-term project, but it doesn’t matter whether the agenda is large or small. This speaks to the notion of buy-in and ownership. Who's making the call?

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that’s the piece of it. When you do have a different agenda than your child does, which is often when we talk about being in "director mode," and if we’re in director mode, we’re going to say, "I don’t care, it’s time for bed," or "I don’t care." And we go to that place of power. The reality is that our child may have a different priority in that moment.

I remember distinctly having a discussion—may have even been an argument, I’ll admit it—with my youngest about internet use at a certain time of night. I went into her bedroom, and it was, I just told you which one it was.

Sorry, that happened in her bedroom late at night. She was on the phone or something, and I’m like, "Girl, it’s past your bedtime. What’s going on?"

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Is this up? Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And I shut down. And so it does. He may not even mean that he doesn't care—it may just be the language he’s using. But I realized I have a visceral reaction to it, and I don’t think I knew that until just now. So thank you for that, Diane.

Diane Dempster: Well, and that ties into, I think, maybe the third one, which we’ll talk about in a minute, which is respect and recognition. If we feel disrespected, if we feel dismissed, all that sort of stuff...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Why don’t we make that the second one?

Diane Dempster: Okay, great. So, power and priorities is the first one, and respect and recognition is the second.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Do you value me as a person? Do you value my perspective? Do you value my experience? Do you honor or acknowledge me?

And if I don’t feel acknowledged, seen, heard, or recognized in some way—if I feel disregarded or dismissed—that’s going to create conflict and a power struggle.

Diane Dempster: Right? Well, and what’s coming up immediately is this word "respect." And we’re in another place where we’ve talked about this as mutual respect, right?

It’s like how many times do parents get really upset because their kids aren’t showing them respect?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: And what we’re talking about here is mutual respect. In order to avoid conflict, there has to be, "Okay, wait, I see you, I get you, I understand you." I don’t necessarily have to agree with you, but I respect your right to have an opinion.

I respect your right to have a different value. I respect your right to whatever it happens to be.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and that notion of "agree to disagree" shows up here, right?

Diane Dempster: I don’t like that one.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You can’t agree with someone if there’s no respect.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And sometimes I hear parents say, "Well, am I supposed to just roll over? Am I supposed to just give up?" And that’s not what we’re saying here. Because you are entitled to your opinion.

What’s different here, I think, is that we have a tendency as parents sometimes to assume that our opinion is right, and they should see it the way we see it because we’re right.

Diane Dempster: Well, respect doesn’t mean you do it my way, right? This goes back to the first one, which is, who has the power to decide or how? And we’ll talk next week about how to make decisions when there’s conflict. But I can respect your opinion, I totally get it, I understand it. I don’t have to agree with it. But it’s this fierce commitment.

I don’t want to get too deep into this, but it’s like I always have conversations with people about free speech. It’s like, I can’t claim my right to free speech and not give it to somebody else.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. I’ve been dealing with that a lot with my parents in recent months. I had this conversation with my dad recently, where I heard myself say, "Dad, it’s not that I’m not listening to you. I’m just not agreeing with you."

That was a great moment of clarity for me, but it’s really hard for him because he comes from a different world where authority is absolute.

Diane Dempster: Well, and not only that, but a lot of times in our community, think about kids who are super sensitive, right? I have one client I can think of right now whose kid constantly says, "You aren’t listening to me! You aren’t listening to me!"

It’s like this broken record. And it’s because the kid has a story that if you don’t agree with me, it means you’re not listening. Right? There’s this attachment to the idea that my perspective has to be right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah.

Diane Dempster: And they feel like they’re not being listened to.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, my father might be similar to that. But he’s 95, so I’m cutting him a little slack. Okay, so the next one is trust—trust, relationship, connection. There’s the notion of, do I trust that you have my back? Do I trust that you’re on my team?

We talk a lot with parents about getting on the same team and being able to set clear expectations so that we can be on the same team and we can be compassionate, instead of being the enforcer or the judge.

Diane Dempster: Well, what’s coming up as you’re saying that, Elaine, is like sometimes we talk about—though we haven’t talked about it here—internal conflict, right? It’s conflicted because part of me feels this way, and part of me feels that way, and that’s part of this as well.

And sometimes that internal conflict is based on not trusting ourselves, right? There can be that lack of internal trust that causes us to think, "Well, should I do this? Should I do that? But whatever I do..."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and I think as parents, one of the things we do a lot of work on with parents is calm and confidence, right? We want to help you be confident in the decisions you’re making, the conversations you’re having, and the role you’re playing with your kids.

And that speaks to that directly. The notion is that if I’m internally conflicted, if I’m not really confident, it’s going to come across that way. The kids are going to feel that, and that’s going to create this other kind of conflict externally.

But when I’m really clear about where I’m standing, what my expectations are, whatever it is, and I can communicate it clearly and with respect and recognition, then it’s going to avoid a lot of conflict.

Diane Dempster: Well, and that’s, again, something we talk about all the time because we can feel like we’re trying to be on our kid’s team, right?

And that’s the thing. It’s the difference between them being on our team and us being on their team, right? We can think that we’re on their team, but if they don’t think we’re on their team...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We’re not on their team.

Diane Dempster: We’re not on their team. And trust me, the other thing you want to bring in here is trust. Trust is like the marble jar. It’s not something that you either have or don’t have—it’s something that you build, or shrink, or cultivate.

And if you’ve lost my trust, well, okay, that means that my trust in you has reached a point where I’m not comfortable with you doing X, Y, and Z. But it doesn’t mean I literally don’t trust you necessarily. It’s just that I need you to relate differently. Right?

And so, again, it’s just paying attention to not just where our kids have broken our trust, but where we may have broken our kids’ trust.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, that’s a big one. A lot of times, when parents come in, particularly during office hours, something will come up where my response will be something around that issue of, it looks like there’s some trust that needs to be built. Because right now, what your kid is trying to tell you is that they don’t trust that you’re on their team.

And that’s the normal place for us to be as we begin to do this work with a coaching approach. So, no beating ourselves up for it. It’s just part of it.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, it’s part of it, right? And so, the fourth one is about lagging skills and unrealistic expectations.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: This is Elaine, Diane, and neurodiversity-informed overlap or addition to gap.

Diane Dempster: Neurodiversity-informed conflict management, right? So, when our kids have lagging skills—which a large percentage of our parents’ kids have lagging skills—what often ends up happening is that we set the bar here, and it’s not realistic, right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Because she’s showing you—and a lot of you are listening—we set the bar a little higher than they’re really ready to meet yet. Not that they can’t get there, but they’re not ready to meet it yet.

And if we set that bar too high for too long, oftentimes our kids will start giving up because they just feel like it’s not worth it. Why should I bother if I’m never going to hit it?

Diane Dempster: So, there’s reactivity and a sense of victimhood. And that’s where it’s like, “Why should I bother?” They kind of cave in because they can’t meet this expectation. Or, going back to the first one about priorities, you have an expectation that’s incongruent with my priorities.

I mean, there are all these pieces, but if we set unrealistic expectations as parents, our kids are going to constantly miss the mark, which will lead us to conflict because we’ll think it’s because they don’t care about what we want—not that they can’t care, or they can’t get there yet.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and there are two things that occur to me here. Part of it is their lagging skills, and sometimes the unrealistic expectations come from our own perfectionism. So, I don’t want to miss the chance to call that out.

Sometimes our perspective can create conflict unintentionally because, again, it feels like there’s no winning for losing. No.

Diane Dempster: And there was an example yesterday. I was on a call with a couple, and the mom was having a hard time with her young adult cleaning the kitchen. The mom’s like, “Clean is clean,” but the kid could spend half an hour cleaning, and in her mind, it’s still not clean. She has a certain standard of clean.

I don’t want to judge her for having that standard, but if that’s not understood universally or if it’s not realistic that anyone else can meet that standard, it’s a great example of how I might have an unrealistic expectation based on a standard I hold, either because of a value I have or because of an unrealistic expectation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. So, okay, those are the four potential sources of conflict, with a lot of nuances around them. Five, if we add the internal conflict. So, let’s wrap up for this episode, and then we’ll come back in our next one to talk about what people can do with this information.

Diane Dempster: Awesome.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But it’s good to start by understanding because, in coaching, awareness is half the battle. Just getting clear on what’s underneath the surface of challenges and conflicts will help you begin to see what might be happening underneath. That will really move you forward in this process.

Diane Dempster: So, two pieces of homework: one, which we try to do all the time, is what insights have you gained from our conversation today? What do you want to add?

Maybe the homework is to go back and reflect until the next episode comes out—I'm not sure when it'll be out—but watch and see, okay, what are some of the conflicts we’re having, and what are the underlying sources of them?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay, so a conflict journal.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right? And that’s like, you've got four areas to look at: what's underneath the conflicts that show up in our home? Is it power and priorities? Is it respect and recognition? Is it a feeling of trust or closeness? Or is it an unrealistic expectation or lagging skill? Got it?

Diane Dempster: Awesome.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Awesome. All right, folks, y’all are amazing. You're doing the most important stuff in the world, which is working on yourself to support your kids. And we really honor that. Anything else?

Diane Dempster: No. Thanks for being here, everybody.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Take care.