Researchers who have observed married couples over decades - John Gottman's work is the best known of them - found that the couples who lasted were not the ones who argued least. They were the ones who repaired fastest: a joke mid-argument, a hand on the shoulder, a return to the subject the next morning, an apology naming the specific thing. Conflict is not the diagnostic. Repair time is.

Repair has parts, and they can be learned. Name what you did rather than what you were provoked into. Acknowledge the effect, without immediately explaining why it was reasonable. State what you will do differently. This applies across generations, which is where most Nigerian homes have room to grow - a father who says, I shouted, and that was mine, not yours, teaches a child what accountability looks like far more effectively than any correction. Children learn apology from watching it be normal, not from receiving one.

The habit worth retiring is silence as punishment. Long deliberate silences teach a household that connection is conditional, which is precisely the fear that makes people conceal things later. Better to agree a norm out loud: we can disagree loudly, we do not leave a matter unnamed overnight, and if we are too tired we name a time to return to it.