Frustrated Dad

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2009
Frustrated Dad
2943
Wed, 09-09-2009 - 3:28am
I really need some opinions on my situation. I am a 30 year old dad with 3 children. I work 10-12 hrs a day 5 days a week and every other Saturday. I am pretty much a homebody, the only time I really go out is on Sundays during football season to watch the games. I do what i need to in order to support my wife and kids. But I am at wits end with my wife and need some help.
My wifes day is as follows. She wakes up any where from 10am - noon (which means 2 of our children (11 and 7) wake up feed themselves and walk to school) at which point she will got downstairs to the kitchen to light a cigarette and call her sister or best friend. During the 1/2hr to an hour that she is on the phone she will make (for herself)and drink about 3 cups of coffee. At around noon when the baby wakes up (11 months) she'll feed him change his diaper and set him on the floor and mostly ignore him as she calls her mother. Usually around 12:30 she'll head out to do errands leaving me with the baby until 1:30 when she'll get home so I can rush out to work where I'm 20 minutes away from and need to be in by 2.
Heres the thing i have no problem being the sole financial gainer in the house hold but I expect certain things. I guess thats the reason for this post to find out if my expectation are to lofty. I expect her to get up in the morning with the children make them breakfast help them pick out cloths make sure they have their homework and send them off to school( I would even help in the morning but i got sick of waking up in the morning while shes still sleeping when i was the one at work last night). I would like breakfast every once in a while made when i wake up i don't expect it but it would be nice. I would like the baby up before 11am I just don't think he should be sleeping that long. i expect laundry the be cleaned, folded and put away! The laundry in our house gets washed and dried them it usually ends up on the dining room table for half the day then it makes its way over to the living room where its folded and left on the couch for a day or two (is it to much to ask to have it put away). I expect the house clean! Cleaning the kitchen for her consist of of doing the dishes and mopping the floor! Cabinets, frig, counters, stove maybe once a month. Cleaning the dinning room consist of her wiping the table and vacuuming one area of the carpet. Bathroom, living room are cleaned in the same manner and the children's room and bedroom upstairs can go months without cleaning! I expect lunch made before i got to work! No breakfast and lunch not even a packed lunch/diner!I expect a home cooked diner for my children! Not pizza, macaroni or canned spaghetti!!! Is this to much to ask? i expect diner when I get home, real food not something she sends me on yoville or farmtown, which she's on until 2am!! DO I EXPECT TO MUCH? I thought these where to things a stay at home mom did? Are my expectations to old school? I need answers I feel like I'm being taken advantage of and I don't know how much longer I can last.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-1998
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:14pm

LoL.....


PumpkinAngel

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-1998
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:15pm

So how about....give them to her in smaller batches....and have a place for dirty clothes that is not in her bedroom.


PumpkinAngel

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2005
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:15pm

Nobody is asking whether it has ever been an issue. Nobody is asking whether it was physically possible. The question is: IF you had a 2-year-old and IF that 2-year-old WAS about to burn himself/herself on a hot stovetop, would you:

A) pull him/her away from the stove

or

B) let him/her burn himself/herself















iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-1998
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:17pm

Again, a two year old is pretty much irrelevant to those comments as my parenting style has changed in the last decade or so,

PumpkinAngel

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-08-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:18pm
She might also have too many clothes. A lot of time "too many" anything really overwhelms these kids. You can cut her down to the nine or ten outfits she wears most of the time and store the other things someplace else for awhile, and then gradually add clothes back as she shows ability and willingness to take care of the clothes that she has access to.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2005
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:18pm
Okay, good (not that I ever doubted that you would). That's really an illustration of what some people are trying to say - that there are some mistakes where the consequence is simply too high a price to pay for a "learning experience".














iVillage Member
Registered: 03-08-2010
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:18pm
Yes. They have given me advice and I have taken it but it does not always work and after so many years, it has basically come down to "why aren't you taking my advice" even after I explain it will not work for this child.
I guess they feel I do not take it and try it and because they have never dealt with a person like this on a daily basis they don't understand and support me in the fact that it is not working.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-1998
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:20pm

That's my answer, I don't know how else to answer the question about my parenting a decade apart from my current

PumpkinAngel

Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:20pm

I don't recall anyone saying they left a 7-yr-old completely unsupervised at any time. There were some parents who said they left kids as young as 10 or 11 unsupervised at times, but no one who said anything about leaving kids of that age alone on a regular basis such as every day before or after school. There is a difference between leaving your child unsupervised at home for short periods of time and leaving the child home every morning unsupervised and expecting him to get himself to school on his own without any parent contact at all.

No, rollmops is not an example of no supervision in the mornings. She did supervise what time her child got up. She's also the only example you came up with.

Oh, yes, there was one person, the op (who most people think was fictitious) whose kids were getting themselves off to school on their own every morning. Then there was a lengthy thread of other posters who all got their kids off to school in the mornings.

Diversion, indeed.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-10-2010 - 4:20pm

you hit the naill on the head~ Agreed.


I think we all or al least some of us went thru or

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