challenges.

My wife and I are very different in our approaches to new or challenging experiences. The perfect example for this is how we enter a pool. She likes to take her time and slowly submerges herself, letting her body acclimate to the temperature. Where as I like to just jump in to the pool off the diving board with out testing the water since I figure we're getting in either way.
 Now this approach sometimes can cause conflict and mixed messages to the kids when we are trying to introduce them to new things. The problems normally happen when we come up to something that we haven't discussed before hand.
 I respect fear and believe that fear is something that should be faced and overcome the minute you come to face with it. I am afraid of heights but love the feel of falling. So I will go cliff jumping and bungee jumping with little hesitation. My wife on the other hand would never jump off of anything.
  My wife respects fear and will take her time and measure all the outcomes and normally will decide quickly if she will or will not do something that scares her.
  I don't think that there is anything wrong with this approach, it's just different from mine. Now with this dichotomy the children don't always know who to take their cues from. I am pretty sure I could get Iris to follow me into anything where as the boys tend to follow Maureen's lead when it comes to new experiences which can get difficult. I tend to get exasperated when I do what I feel is a simple thing and seem to dismiss the rest of the group's fears. Which naturally upsets the wife since it would appear that I don't care that she's afraid for her self or the children.
  Sometimes with the triplets it's important to remember that we all have our different ways and we both make the mistake of assuming that our way is the correct way and what we need to remember is that the correct way is a very relative experience.