Jeff, are you ready to address these issues? W has lost the respect of the kids, and soon enough she will have to get angrier and angrier to get any amount of cooperation from any of you. Your whole house will turn into a screaming match. Ugly.
What do you want to do?
Hide under a rock?
I think you are right. I have no idea what to do. She stopped treating me with any respect long ago. She have any 'discussion' in front to the kids, pointing out all of my 'faults', and I rarely stood up to it, being a conflict avoider. Plus, she either should have been a lawyer, or really thinks these arguments through, because even when I disagree she manages to use some kind of logic to make her point. It is very important to her to be 'right'. And, of course, sometimes her point is valid, at least partly, an sometimes more than that. But, I think that by doing it in front of the kids, it backfires on her. At least the older ones, I think, realize it isn't really appropriate, and I think it has something to do with them losing respect for her. I think the younger two just tune it out (which I must admit to, as well), which I expect leads to them tuning her out when they should listen as well.
If I try to tell her she's losing their respect, I would anticipate that will be my fault as well. Since I don't always enforce discipline the same as she would (though I think that I always back up anything she has put in place that I know about), she will see the disrespect as starting from me, since in her mind, I don't respect her.
So, all things considered, the rock looks pretty good.
What do you think? I mean, I know the rock is probably not a good idea!
