To have grabbed phone off DD and shouted at DH

@Notamum12345577
a) I would have no clue about how to answer a maths question from my children’s curriculum after year 5
b) over dramatising, “sobbing” over a homework question especially homework they’ve had plenty of time to complete would get extremely short shrift from me I’m afraid.
Maybe we have different parenting styles.

DS did get frustrated with his maths homework last week. I told him to ask ChatGPT. He did, got the concept and completed the homework. Kids homework is just not on my radar as something that’s my problem!

Why was DD crying?

YABU . Shouting and grabbing are unacceptable here. Sending her to bed with it hanging over her is hardly likely to lead to a good night sleep.

I would have sorted the printer and let the upset and tiredness be the natural consequence of her action. Then in a few days ask how she is managing her workload.

I have a teen and it's tricky but I don't agree with shouting nor grabbing.

You need to stop shouting and also let your DD face the natural consequences of her actions. Personally I would have let her go on her phone for ten minutes to decompress after all the shouting as I couldn't have switched off and slept otherwise.

Reminding her is fine. Offering help at a sensible time is good, but after that if it isn't done it isn't done and she will have to deal with it.

I do think you need to apologise for shouting and escalating everything though tbh.

When do dd and dh get to relax? 😳 It all seems very intense and dd sounds like she’s doing homework all evening! That’s ridiculous. Everyone needs time to relax.

Christ, none of this is worth it, not his absurdly long hours, not the child's tears at homework demands nor your stress about it all. You guys need to take a breather and figure out some priorities. This is not one person's ills, this is a family situation that you all need to examine and repair to a point whereby everyone is on the same page. It's only life.

Id probably take a huge step back with dd and her homework, she is a teenager so needs to take responsibility for herself. A few reminders is fine but if she doesn’t complete the work, that’s on her. You could make it clear that you will support her if she needs help but not last minute and not at 1030pm at night, which is just ridiculous. Last night sounds chaotic and unnecessarily confrontational.

A lot of teens need help with their homework. Not doing it, maybe just explaining what something means. Do you would let your teen sob because they didn’t understand a maths question for example, and still wouldn’t help them?

Why is asking why one lets oneself get into a situation pointless?
Granted, it is what it is now

One Time Machine, please.

Comments like these are always so pointless.

DH sounds like he's had years of experience in creating chaos by just sitting idle and not parenting.
Why is a man not questioning his child being up so late? Why is he not concerned about her sleep deprivation? His time management seems to be deliberate.
Your DD has picked up on both these skills and more. She sounds like she has great potential.
In your situation I would continue to parent when DH has gone back to work.
For a whole week you've kept your cool despite your DD avoiding the school work. It's quite a reasonable behaviour for her age but she needs to learn there's consequences.
You're doing an amazing job regardless of your DH sabotaging or parallel parenting as I've recently read.

Forget the phone and the printer and bedtime. This isn’t your issue. Your issue is that you don’t feel supported in your marriage or with parenting. You feel that way because I’m assuming your DH won’t engage with you seriously regarding his working hours and/or he doesn’t show up for you or the family when he isn’t working (for reasons of exhaustion or laziness, I don’t know).

What are the reasons for this working pattern? Financial, logistical? How legitimate is his refusal?

So why didn't you just have 1 child if he was so removed?

You all sound utterly exhausted. Your husband is tired from working long hours, you are tired from holding everything together and your daughter is shouting because she is exhausted. I think you need to talk seriously with your husband and explain to him that you need to make some adjustments to your lives to ease the pressure on you.

Personally I hate homework, I think it causes too much tension at home with parents feeling the pressure to enforce it and children feeling too tired from the school day to do extra work. My daughter is neurodivergent and the pressure of homework used to send her into meltdown. No-one has the energy to be working late in the evening, she was crying from exhaustion. It was too late to be doing it. She couldn’t go from working straight to bed, she needed time to mentally wind down and that is why she felt she needed time on her phone. Her shouting tells you she was highly stressed.

I think instead of punishing her, you need to sit her down and talk to her, listen to what she needs the evening to be like. You might find it helpful and more productive to all draw up a timetable for your evening where she can relax a bit straight after school, then homework is done early and then there is time for winding down after homework, then no screen time for anyone (including dh) after say 9:00pm. Let her be involved in it. Then step back from the homework, if she misses the time slot to do it then she can take the consequences herself. You don’t need to shoulder the pressure of it.

Get DH involved in it too, include things that you need to do as parents and see what tasks can have his initials next to them! Sometimes people don’t have that ability to know what needs doing and do it so having something pinned on the wall that you’ve all agreed to might be a useful prompt.

How old is dd?

If I am honest, it sounds like the situation was massively escalated by you. But I do kind of understand if you are already wound up and resentful of dh.

when she was crying downstairs did she ask him for help? Did he just ignore her sobbing so loudly you could hear her upstairs?

If her homework isn't done she gets a bollocking from the teacher. She is old enough to face the consequences of that herself.

Your DH is a different issue - don't take it out on her.

Unless there are bigger issues a teen shouldn’t need her homework micromanaging. If she doesn’t do it then she faces the consequences at school.

you need to talk as a family about bedtime but that doesn’t mean you get to decide for everyone. With a teen things will change and she needs some autonomy

I think you over reacted tbh. Neither DD or DH did anything that warranted you yelling at them.

What was you daughter sobbing about anyway? Her homework?

So wat would have happened if you couldn’t get the printer to work in the morning? She is then on a deadline to get to school and stressed!
This all sounds far too dramatic with way too much hostility and shouting from all parties. Happy families ehh?

I don’t understand why she’s getting so much help with her homework? I haven’t helped a single one of my kids with their homework ever except to log them on to google classroom when they were a bit younger and reading out their spellings? If you’ve given her a couple of reminders and chucked out “are you up to date with your homework?” a couple of times then that’s surely you done I would have thought. You’d already been helping them both with homework all evening!

You’ve finished school and you don’t need to do anymore homework. Their homework is their lookout and if they don’t do it let them get the associated detentions and punishments.

Sounds like the evening routine doesn’t quite work. Let the children get in and have wind down time, then it’s screens away for homework, dinner, shower, screen time then phones left downstairs whilst they wind down/read and lights off for 10.30 or whenever suits? I find imposing a fairly non negotiable routine for mornings and evenings has really helped us all here. It all sounds a bit chaotic and fretful and like your children are outsourcing stuff to you way too much.

Why do you remain married to someone you don't see or like anyway, and who has zero involvement with your children? What's the value?

Are you saying that as far as you can judge, your DH’s job does not require him to be out of the house that long, it’s just that he chooses for it to?

I think you need to apologise to your DD as much as she needs to apologise to you. I think it would have been wiser if you’d printed off the projectlast night, just to have it sorted before morning.

Back off on encouraging/nagging her to do homework, she’s old enough to know what she needs to do herself and if her work’s not completed, then she has to answer yo her teachers and deal with the consequences. If your DD is a younger teen, adopt a no phone in room at night/or after 9pm.

There's an awful lot of shouting going on, and it same seems that prep that should have been done in time was left to the last minute. It happens. In this specific case, I would think that your DH DD is not trusting you when you say it can be taken care of in the morning, and I'd ask her why not.

What also stands out to me here is: DH works 6 til 9, does very, very little support with our two children. How and why? I understand that he is out of the house a lot by necessity, but they are still his children. He should be doing as close as he reasonably can to 50% of the whole range of parenting duties.