Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Your Village podcast, Parenting Beyond Discipline,

the place to learn about all things parenting, and get your questions answered. I'm your host,

Aaron Royer. Again, as a reminder, in case you missed last week's episode, I'm still happily married, but we realize the hyphenated name may be a little too long and complicated.

So I decided to just go by my maiden name for professional purposes.

So today is the first day of school here in our neighborhood.

So this morning, I dropped off my new second grader and my new kindergartners.

My babies are starting kindergarten.

I can't believe it.

I don't know where the time went.

So I'm sure lots of my listeners here in the Northern Hemisphere who have kids in these school

ages have either already started sending kids back to school or are getting ready to send

kids back to school.

And we'll soon be dealing with those realizations as we get every day that their kids

are just growing up too fast.

But on to this week's topic. This week I'm talking

about power struggles. These are a common everyday occurrence in families that start as early as

18 months, sometimes even a few months earlier, and go all the way through the teenage years. So it's

important to know what they are, recognize them when they occur, and know how to handle them well.

Not just because they're so common, but because when handled well, you will see and experience

a lot fewer of them over the years.

So what is a power struggle? Obviously, we all know what it is, but just so that we're all on the same

page, I'll share my definition of a power struggle as it relates to the parent-child relationship. A power

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