Aibu - dh siding with ds leaving me upset

[FindingNemoAgain]

Ds (12) made an electronic toy at a club. His had wires sticking out whereas I noticed one of his friends looked neater. I commented on it and said it could do with wires being inside (from a purely aesthetic point (I did also say it looked very cool). He then got home and tried to push the wires in which apparently he now says made it have an intermittent fault with it. It is of course all my fault and I MADE him do it. At dinner he was upset constantly repeating it was me who told him to do it. I was trying to say I didn't make him do anything. DH comes home and hears out conversation and instantly gets on ds side saying to me I was stupid to ask him to do it because it broke a connection... I am still trying to explain I didn't tell him anything, I only mentioned that the other boy's toy looked neater. DH then says I was being critical of ds toy. This is all happening at dinner in front of ds and our other child. Aibu to feel betrayed and upset about DH siding with ds? Even when he saw I was getting quite upset he carried on and it almost felt he was happy I was being blamed for it...

Saying 'your friend did better than you' is not positive criticism. It's just another way of saying 'whatever you do, I see someone else doing better'. If in the adult work place, your boss said 'your report was very good Jane, but Mark used nicer font in his', you'd just think your boss was a picky knob and couldnt care less how much prettier Mark's report was.

Putting a positive in front of a negative, still equals a negative regardless. If this was messy school work, it would be more than fair for the person 'judging' to say 'come on, you know thats a bit messy, but the overall work is good'. When it's a bit of a fun project in the holidays, why upset your child over something he's proud of? I think it says more about an adult than a child who cannot seperate positive and negative comments when praising a child. As for the 'positive, negative, positive sandwich', that's just a load of bollocks.

My Sil is just like this. Me to Dniece 'wow well done for your A, that's fantastic.' Sil responds 'It was only just an A, only one percent in it' Unsurprisingly, they have a lot of unspoken issues...

I get what you all are saying, it really wasn't as bad or negative as it seems to have come across here. With a bit of extra soldering the toy is fixed and ds is fine. As some of you picked up, I was actually posting about DH.
The least confident people I've come across often come from families where parents were too soft and never gave criticism. They weren't pushed and all grades etc were praised. I agree there has to be a balance though.
Another thing is you don't seem to see that there might be a cultural difference in how people raise their children. If you look for amazing kid pianists or gymnasts, ballet dancers etc they almost always come from outside the UK. Reading your comments here made me realise why. The British would rather 'beat around the bush' in fear of hurting someone's feelings.

You're really not getting it OP - I feel for your children.

However! Perhaps with your husband's criticism helping you along, you'll grow to become a brilliant parent eventually!

Keep up the good work. You were shit on this occasion - a much worse parent than your husband obviously is - why don't you try emulating him in order to be better next time?

Op takes onboard comments then compares british children unfavourably with those from outside the UK

PS. Happiness should be your goal for your children - not achievement. The latter comes automatically from the former. It does not always work the other way around.

Lots of messed up pianists and ballet dancers and gymnasts though Finding. I don't think the push for perfection is worth someone's mental health.

FWIW, I used to push my kids, particularly DS1 to try harder, do better with their school work. Because yes, he is lazy, he is sloppy. But he is what he is. Nagging him didn't make his work any better but it had a really detrimental effect on our relationship.

Anyway, something happened (to a friend of mine) that was a real wake up call. And I came to the conclusion that DS feeling he had parents who were proud of him, and loved him, for who he was, whatever, was more important than an A* compared to an A, or even a B.

And yes of course you love him, but if you chip away at him he may stop feeling like it. Really happy secure kids do better in life that unhappy ones with great grades anyway.

Finding, maybe concentrate on your own family, instead of seeing how other children do better and other parents do worse. Being the best always comes at a price. Children are not play things to compete against others, there is no joy in being the greatest at everything. I find your point of veiw quite sad, your children must live under a constant cloud of possible disappointment. Culture is a very weak excuses for acting horribly.

Your DS may be 'fine' now. But he's learned a lesson. If what he's achieved isn't as good as someone else's, you won't be proud of him.

Good work

But why focus on high flying children? Tonnes of successful adults from the UK - Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Laura Trott, Tim Peake, Andy Murray, Maggie Aderin-Pocock etc etc etc. So we don't necessarily have very young super high achievers - not convinced that's a bad thing, tbh.

And as others have said, lots of ways to discuss improvement in a useful way - it's not about just gushing praise.

"Which bit was hardest to do? Why? What did you learn from this? Which bits did you think you did best, and which would you do again if you could?" - stuff like this; showing an interest without shutting down the opportunity to feel good.

Britain came third in the medal table at the 2012 Olympics so maybe us lax British parents are doing something right!

If you must give some feedback consider using a shit sandwich, positive thing, possible improvement, positive thing. Used widely in all sorts of environments - helps with self esteem as well as helping people to improve.

How would you feel if your sons teachers just told him about all the stuff he had done wrong every time he did some work?

Praise where there is nothing to praise is not helpful, but constant negative feedback will enter into a constant negative cycle as well.

Who helped with the soldering though?

Yes constant negative just like constant positive is unnecessary. Not sure where I said it was constant.

He doesn't need help with soldering. He's 12.

"But he's learned a lesson. If what he's achieved isn't as good as someone else's, you won't be proud of hiM"

... Because all children ALWAYS try their very best in all situations, and therefore we must always be proud of everything they do, no matter how shite.

And then they enter the job market and realise that the world doesn't give a crap about effort, it just cares about a good result.

Reading your comments here made me realise why. The British would rather 'beat around the bush' in fear of hurting someone's feelings.

Not sure if serious or goady fucker tbh.

Either way I've found most British parents want happy children, ones that don't shoot up schools, commit suicide, end up in therapy etc.

Personally I'd rather a blissful underachiever than a highly stressed and unhappy over achiever.

"Happiness should be your goal for your children - not achievement"

Kids need to achieve and compete in order to secure jobs which are interesting and pay enough to afford them a reasonable quality of life.

Ok OP, so you're upset because you have given constructive criticism and it wasn't well received.
Well now you've been given some constructive criticism, how are you going to behave? Are you going to put your hands up, admit you can do better next time and take this advice? Or are you going to sulk and blame someone else as your 12 year old has allegedly done?

Because you can't have it both ways. If you really believe criticism helps people improve, then you'll improve from this as a parent.
If you're just finding yourself upset and defensive based on comments from strangers on the Internet, well, then imagine how you'd feel if you were 12 instead of an emotionally mature woman and those comments were from your mother.

^^ SmallBee nailed it.

Your comment about singing? Geez. True colours and all that.

Really?! I'm 40 and I've nearly burned myself with a soldering iron loads of times...

Oh the irony

You're upset your husband criticised your parenting and you thought he was being cruel because his criticism upset you

But you don't think you were wrong to criticise your child's work

How did it make you to be criticised op? Shitty? Shittu enough to come on a forum and post about it! How about your ds?

You justify what you said to your son saying people aren't happy with less than perfect in the real world and you're trying to help him, maybe that's what your dh was trying to do for you!

If you don't mind people not beating about the bush and hurting others feelings , why are you posting ? Why are your feelings more important than your sons ?

You can't have your cake and eat it and make trifle out of it .

And for every successful non British gymnast / musician/ whatever , there are also plenty of happy non successful non British kids too . Wanting their children to be happy is a global aim for most parents .

minifingerz - you're reading an awful lot into what I wrote that I didn't actually write. I'm not saying shower with unwarranted praise.

As MrsTP has said, a 'wow - that's brilliant! what do you think is best about it? What would you change for next time?' would have been better. Shame the OP won't acknowledge that and is convinced that she is right to feel 'betrayed and upset' that her husband 'sided' with her DS.

have you actually apologised to your ds yet?