The strange thing is when I was reading The Manipulative Child I kept thinking "Aha! so that's where H's parents went wrong". He is reading it now. We had a really big row about it. Basically he was upset with me about wanting to use the methods which as far as he could see were overbearing and my insistence that he read the book before criticising. I know I was wrong for going ahead and implementing the program without discussing it first with him and I apologised loads of times about that. I also told him that if he read it through then he had the right of veto, no more argument.
Anyway he came out with something the other day which made me think - OK he's reading it and now he is taking some of the ideas on board.
Like you say Nik it is parenting 101 to present a united front. Whenever I point out to H that we need to back each other up he just says I mean I want him to fall in line with doing it my way. (Where is the tearing hair out emoticon!). If I try to back him up by saying “do what Daddy says” he looks daggers at me like I am interfering.
He won’t hear a word said about how his parents brought him up, even though he is quite happy to imply that my folks did a rotten job. My parents focused on themselves and lived their lives and we were along for the ride. They fed us, clothed us, educated us and took us to church. Mum provided the warmth and affection, Dad provided the serious discipline (as well as the intellectual and physical challenges). Mum and Dad had huge rows all the time but stuck it out nonetheless. I will not say my upbringing was perfect and certainly at the time I had a few problems with it, but now I feel you can only judge by results. My emotional life is well balanced, I am a basically happy, optimistic and self-motivated person. I have been told this many times by others as well as feeling it for myself. As far as I can make out, H’s parents focused on the kids rather than themselves, never smacked, allowed the kids to go off on 3 day sulks and only ever had their own rows in private. H to me seems like a sulky prima donna who depends on the approval of others to make him happy. I DO NOT want that for my kids. And I feel that pandering to the kids will make them unable to depend on themselves.
I love my kids, we have fun, we play, we have cuddles etc. I am not in favour of making home like boot camp, I just want there to be rules and for the rules to be stuck to. So many times H has looked at me in a frustrated way because I am trying get one of the kids to stick to a rule and he is looking like “we haven’t got time for this, just leave it for now”. Whereas I am thinking a rule is a rule and if you put the effort in now it will be second nature later.
Sigh!
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
