To have grabbed phone off DD and shouted at DH

[GrilledPrawn]

Teen DD has had plenty of warning/time/reminders to get homework done.

DH works 6 til 9, does very, very little support with our two children.
I’d already helped DD/DS with assignments. Put DS to bed. DD had started on her last assignment of two. DH arrived home, and I thought he’d help her finish off if needed.

i got ready for bed, but at 10 could still hear her downstairs crying. DH is just watching TV.
I went down to help. She finished and I told her to then go to bed.
She didn’t.

10.30 so now I’m insisting she goes to bed, but she wants to print something off.

I insist that we do it in the morning.
DD refuses, shouts at me - and now DH decides to join in and tries to get the printer working, but it’s not responding. I know I can do the printing from my phone in the morning.
This makes things worse as it’s undermining my stance and now DD is siding with DH.

I shout at them both and insist that DD goes to bed.
She goes - shouting at me.
I then check 15 mins later, and she’s in her room on her phone.

So I take it but need to grab it out her hand as she refuses.
DH then joins in (to undermine me) and I just shout at him to leave it.

DD wants her phone back, but I’m keeping it until sleep and then apologies in the morning.
DH is really pissing me off. He had the chance to help her, but didn’t. And then when he did decide to get involved he just made things worse.

Husband is shattered after a 16 hour work shift. He can sit and watch TV for a bit.

It sounds like the only person getting upset here was you. Had you not been there at all I presume DD would have printed her thing with help of DH and then gone to bedm I'm not quite sure what you want anybody to apologise for.

Tbh sounds like you’re the one who caused the fuss and made things worse.

You were being controlling over bedtime, the printer and her phone. You kept escalating. You threw a tantrum basically all because DH annoyed you.

Carrying on shouting especially at bedtime helps no one.
Control yourself op. You can’t control other people.
It all sounds completely unnecessary, and honestly how much help does a teen need with this? You’ve made a mountain out of a molehill.
Plug the devices in to charge, go to bed, apologise that you were ridiculous in the morning, and move on.
Theres really no need for all this drama.

I think you are so used to doing things yourself, that when your DH gets involved you don't feel like it's very helpful. You can't have it both ways, you either wants his help or not. And you can't have the attitude of 'you are doing it wrong because it's not the way I'd do it'.

You are a team, and need to work as one. Tbf, it sounds like he was trying to defuse the situation to just get you to stop shouting - whether it was helpful to you or not. The biggest concern here, is your DD shouting and refusing to give you the phone at bedtime.

What prompted me to intervene was DD sobbing downstairs. I initially calmed her down so she could finish her homework and helped her.

On a school night, I don’t think she should still be up at 11, and it was getting later and later.

And I think DH working those hours daily is ridiculous, but he won’t organise/change roles or do anything about it.

I work too, plus all housework/mental load.

Weekend, nothing is organised unless I do it. Otherwise he’s on his phone/watching TV.

It sounds as though everyone was tired from a day that was much too long. No one was wrong, just tired and wound up. Try not to worry.

Sounds a very unhappy household

There are a few things here. First what time does she get home from school and why was she still doing homework at 10?

Why was she crying? Does she normally take her phone to bed if so, is it monitored and is she getting enough sleep?

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.

@OfficerChurlish

I agree the prep should have been done in time. I’ve been - positively - all week, reminding DD about what needs doing, and when. I assumed she was doing her homework - but she was on her phone/doing other things.

So it got left to the last minute and she had a meltdown, and I was just fed up with the attitude when I’ve been trying to help her all week.

I’m now going to have a battle getting her up. Plus I think I should withdraw her phone until I get a proper apology.

TBH DH has never really helped with the children. From birth. He’s always chosen work over being with them. If he spoke to someone, organised his workload or clockwatched. The only thing I’ve seen him home early is when the World Cup is on.

i also think things escalated last night after he came home. DD played us off each other and he only popped up in order to undermine me, not to help DD finish her homework. Or because he realised I’d picked up on him ignoring her sobs so he could watch tele.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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 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?

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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?

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.

One Time Machine, please.

Comments like these are always so pointless.