Barrybran III - New job, new life?

[Barrybran]

Kids are fun to deal with. The past couple of nights my girls have been fantastic at bed time. On Saturday, my wife wasn't here and they went to bed and went to sleep fairly easily. Yesterday, they were taken by a family friend for a while and gave us no trouble in the evening. My wife has been unresponsive when I've asked her her opinion on how to deal with our three year old so I conducted an experiment today.

Today, I went about our day as per normal. I gave the girls lunch and sent them to their bedrooms. I had a fair idea they would act up tonight and I wasn't let down. The three year old started so the two year old chimed in. The three year old has been extremely difficult of late and my wife did really well to ignore her. After about an hour my wife had had enough and went in. Long story short, both girls wound up out with us, my three year old falling asleep on the tiles at 10pm, my wife taking my two year old to bed just now at 10:30pm.

My wife really rattled my confidence a few weeks back with an incident regarding my six year old. Since then, I've asked her how she would deal with certain situations and she's not answered once. Instead, I've had to try and take on board the limited complaints my wife has had and develop a new parenting style. Funny thing is, when the kids are with me without my wife, their behaviour is excellent. I have some issues with the three year old but she'll grow out of it. She dares not throw the tantrums she throws when my wife is around. When my wife is around though they all act up to a certain extent.

Because of my wife's lack of response I've sat idle when my girls act up. I hate this because it is not the way I normally do things. When my six year old was three we employed a technique we learned on Supernanny and it worked brilliantly. I've tried all sorts of ways to get through to my three year old to no avail so now I just sit and ignore her. I know I shouldn't mind read but I really feel that my wife thinks I'm useless in these situations. I know that is my problem but I really do feel lesser in my wife's eyes. I do feel that I'm on the right track though and that my wife either has to learn to ignore my kids herself or ask my opinion. I know I can not "fix" my wife's handling of the situation.

So today's experiment was a success despite the behavioural problems. What I thought would happen did happen so tomorrow I'll remove their afternoon naps and reassess tomorrow night. I expect to have some very moody girls in the evening but I'm hoping they sleep. If that doesn't work I have another hypothesis up my sleeve.

None of this helps my situation directly but I know my wife and I will feel more at peace when we do resolve my girls' bedtime behaviour. My wife still appears to have little to no interest in me, particularly since last week, but I do feel that that will turn around when my parents leave. I could be wrong as I don't know what's going on in her life right now but she did seem more at ease when my parents left last time and I hope the same occurs this time.