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: 03-27-2000
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:14pm

I'm fortunate that we have an extra closet in our bedroom. The closet is actually inside the doorway to our room, but there is a hallway that you have to walk down to get to our actual bedroom, and the closet is off that hallway. It fits perfectly inside that closet, plus, when it's overflowing, it's sight unseen behind the closet door!

I can understand not wanting to have to look at an ugly sorter with dirty laundry in your bedroom anyway. Hampers can definitely be much prettier! And it sounds like your system is working well now.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-08-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:17pm

An individual professor can not and should not take a high school IEP and start trying to interpret it and convert it to the university setting.

What happens when we admit a student who has had high school accommodations and tells us is that the student, at the very beginning of her (let's use "her" here) college career, has a meeting with the student to find out what the accomodations have been, and what we can offer. Quite often, we have better technology than the student has had access to in the high school setting, and the disability services people can suggest things the student hasn't had before. For instance, we can provide textbooks in alternate formats, either large print, or audio. We can provide peer notetakers for students who have auditory processing problems or dysgraphia. We have soundproof rooms where easily distracted students can take tests, and often get extra time. There are so many different diagnoses and so many different remedies that it is impossible for an individual professor to keep up with current technologies, diagnoses, laws, and accommodations. For instance, when a student comes to me and tells me she needs "extra time" for an exam, I am not really qualified to test her and find out whether she needs time and a half or double time. That is the job of the educational psychologists.

So the kid talks to the educational psychologists, who then decide what is available to help the kid succeed, and the ed psych people then write up a plan, and so if the kid shows up in my class, I get a letter saying that

"Susie Jones will be a student in your History 4000 class in the Spring of 2010. The Office of Disability Services has determined that Susie Jones has a disability as defined by section blah blah blah, and therefore will require the following accomodations:

A peer notetaker

Time and a half on all examinations

A quiet place to take all tests.."

In most cases, the student in question will have to schedule exams in the soundproof rooms (we only have about seven of them) the same week or hopefully the same day the rest of the class takes the exam in class.

It is an unreasonable burden on both the student and the professors involved to expect the student to have to approach four or five professors every semester, prove they have a disability, and then try to figure out how to accommodate it, when there are good, trained professionals who can serve the students' needs much better than professors, who might be excellent mathematicians, scientists, literary critics, or historians, but who generally know squat about the best way to test a blind student on knowledge of European geography or something like that.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-1998
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:17pm

I can see that...that makes sense, although I think that would vary from person to person based on different specifics.

PumpkinAngel

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-1998
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:18pm

I think my kids go through at least 3 sets of clothes a day sometimes....


PumpkinAngel

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2000
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:18pm

Yes, I hear you! We are a big sports family too but for winter, we don't have as many practices, so that doesn't add up much. In the spring/fall, my kids usually put their sports clothes on afterschool rather than play clothes and then having to change. My kids wear a uniform to school, so we have double clothing each day as well. However, in the winter, as long as my kids don't go outside or otherwise get their clothes dirty, they usually wear their jeans/sweatpants/etc more than once so it's only the shirts that go in the hamper every day.

I'm usually only caught up for one day out of the week and often it falls on Monday b/c I'll catch up on the weekend.

I actually have two loads to fold right now and two that need to be washed. But I'm procrastinating....

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:19pm

~Do you still have a monitor in each child's room?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2000
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:20pm
Oh yeah, my kids are notorious for going through several outfits in the summer. Swimsuits and towels I do not wash every time. We go to the pool every day in the summer, so unless they got gross/dirty at the pool, I just throw them over the fence or in the dryer when we get home and wash them maybe once a week. Bathing suits we rinse out and hang dry and then I wash maybe once a week also.
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-1998
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:20pm

Yes, I agree....


PumpkinAngel

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-27-1998
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:22pm

I'm jealous about the extra closet, I love my old quirky house....I just wish they put in more closets!


PumpkinAngel

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-08-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Thu, 03-11-2010 - 1:22pm
You may not be actively supervising your kids while you are sleeping, but you are definitely available should they need you for something. Otherwise, we could just put toddlers to bed at 8 pm and then go out clubbing with our spouses from 10:30 pm until 1:30 am and there wouldn't be any problem. Actually, my mother-in-law used to do that routinely, and claim that her next door neighbor was "watching" the sleeping children. And apparently, in the 1940s, that wasn't that big a deal.

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