Husband says he is embarrassed by our adult kids

[TudorMary]

This is my first post and it’s long and has a few strands and don’t know where to start I keep rewriting.

I thought we were happy and husband was a good father. Kids no longer go on holiday with us etc and this upsets my husband.

Three kids. Elder 2 definitely took scenic route. Dropped out of uni, now happily working, 2 initially took science, failed 1st year exams, took year out now finishing 2nd year of Humanities degree at local university. Both live at home along with number 3 who last week came home to say she was convinced she had failed one of her papers, I think this is correct having done big of research which means she won’t get first choice and she now wants year off.

My husband has gone fucking ballistic and has gone from blaming me to blaming himself for not standing up to me. He has called all the kids losers but thankfully not to their faces but has said to daughter she will have to go to whatever uni will have her.

Now if you are with me! Husband close to brother and I actually like him and his wife but only when we meet them alone. When the kids were younger I used to have anxiety every time we saw them with kids. They had tons of them. It was chaotic. Litter on the floor. Debris everywhere. Rotting food the lot. Kids were sworn in front of, occasionally sworn at, if a risqué anecdote had to be told it was told no matter if the kids were around. and spoken at like they were 30. No concessions were ever made for their age.

First time we went out a four year old actually summoned a waiter to order another fizzy drink. Two year old given a knife to cut their birthday cake. I was on tenterhooks and no exaggeration sometimes took to my bed after seeing them.

Well every single one of their older children are either at medical school, are studying or graduated from an Oxbridge College.

My husband is now suggesting sister-in-law is parent of the year and he should have stood up to my prissy ways. A bone of contention is that they all still holiday together whereas our kids don’t want to know. He is embarrassed by our beautiful kids.

I am so sorry this is a novel. I am heartbroken thinking I must have done something wrong.

I know it's not - I have made the same point more than once! And no, I don't know exactly how academically intelligent she is but she made snarky comments about cryptic crosswords, Guardian reading and about having to Google 'pathologising' when out with SIL. It builds a picture.

It’s hard not to use obvious indicators of ‘success’ (medical degree) but you know that those things aren’t the true indicators which will be different for different people. Would you really wish a career as a physician for people you care about, knowing how stressed doctors are. And your kids are still so young and literally just starting out on their adult path which they will carve out themselves. Give your kids credit, show an interest and listen to what they have to say rather than telling them what to do.

Pp who said it would be worse if kids grew up to be friendless, boring, unhealthy - be honest, was ‘unhealthy’ code for fat ? ;)

Are you and your husband very academic, @TudorMary? Intelligence is largely hereditory: most recent genetic research suggests around 80% of IQ is genetic and only 20% down to early environment.

Your brother in law and his wife may, for example, be neurodiverse and therefore chaotic but highly intelligent (ADHD and autism are highly correlated with elevated intelligence) and therefore their children are similar. Or they may just both be rather intelligent and therefore have very intelligent children (intelligent people tend to find others who are their intellectual equal attractive and therefore couple together and have very intelligent children).

If your brother in law was far more academic than your husband that may explain his resentment, and perhaps your BIL marrying someone similar and having very bright children which has made your husband even more jealous.

Did you and your husband go to prestigious universities? Did your in-laws?

There are other routes to success but to me this sounds rather like a childhood sibling rivalry and jealousy being replayed in adulthood.

If you are a rule-follower as you’ve indicated then I presume he is, too, otherwise it would have been strange to marry you. Perhaps he’s angry at his brother because his brother could achieve with minimal effort when they were children and he achieved less while doing everything “right”. Then he married someone who also did everything by the book and the same has played out in the next generation so it’s brought up all those old feelings again and now he’s taking it out on you because he’s angry at this part of himself that he sees reflected in you, which he thought would be vindicated as an adult and allow him to look down on his brother as inferior.

It all sounds like a very unhealthy dynamic and to me it sounds like your DH has some unresolved issues around his childhood. Insist he goes to therapy and do not accept the role of his scapegoat. He is equally responsible for how your children have been raised and ultimately that would make little difference to their IQ or academic capability anyway: this is largely determined already at birth. Their value as human beings is not determined by their IQs so while he understandably may be jealous if your in-laws children are smarter he will damage his relationship with your children immensely with this attitude. Don’t think they don’t know about how he compares them; I am sure they do.

As for taking it out his complexes on you, I would mot tolerate this and would tell him he needs therapy to deal with his issues or divorce him if he will not do so.

your husband is just picking for an argument and is saying anything to get under your skin. He wants you to feel like shit. You’re the one tolerating his behaviour

It’s also unclear whether the issue is lower IQ and therefore your children not being capable of Oxbridge/ Russell Group grades etc, or whether they are lazy. That is a parenting issue whereas IQ is not. But if that’s the case (bad work ethic, lack of ambition or perseverance) then that’s equally his fault as much as yours so again it’s unclear why he’s be blaming you for this.

Many of the most successful people don’t fit into the usual moulds and find school in particular very hard because of the authoritarian approach and nonsensical rules. But that doesn’t seem to fit here if when things have fallen apart is university, which is when you are finally free from that. People who fall apart there are usually those who haven’t been given sufficient independence and work ethic to manage themselves and be responsible without their parents overseeing every aspect of their lives. Do you think this is the case? If so, these are the skills you and your husband should be working hard on to belatedly teach your now adult children. Arguing with each other is hardly going to help you or them.

I think this perfectly sums up everything on here without any further debate needed 👏. This is exactly the core of the problem.

The more people are saying they don’t see it as a problem, the more outrageous the OP is getting with her story telling. Cat’s spaying her son now apparently. There will be a horse in the sitting room next.

It is interesting that the educational attainment of the OP and her husband has not been revealed. I am getting the feeling that the OPs husband is the brother of the husband of the other couple, ie SIL is not OPs husbands sister. As others have said the other couple may both be more intelligent /academically gifted than the OP and her husband.. Maybe the other couples children are more comfortable in their parents company and that's why they still choose to holiday with their parents.

Does your husband acknowledge the positives in your kids' personalities ?

My 2 kids are very different (2 school years aprt )

The eldest ( was affected more by Covid )has spent the past 2 years re-doing A levels , alongside working and gaining experience. She travelled Asia last year and doing Europe this summer. Her social skills / sense of adventure and desire for £ to do nice things is superb.

My son is far more academic, yet lacks the adventure / social skills and desire to earn / travel.

They will bring different skills to employers.

PS I haven't found it easy not compare them. But ,
they are different individuals :)

@TudorMaryhaving read your posts I don’t know what to make of them. If what you say is true then presumably you’d have reported the living conditions of your nieces and nephews to social services.

If you did not then you’re not a very good person yourself, to knowingly leave children living in a place full of cat poo (dangerous) and dirty nappies on the floor, and instead just use this as a way to look down on the family but do nothing to help the children growing up like that.

And now, years later, you’re happy to write all about it on the internet while at the time you were quite happy to go to bed each night knowing your nieces and nephews were growing up that way and making a simple phone call to report it was too much effort?

It does sound very much like you were happy to look down on this family, also, and had no genuine concern for the children living in that environment and are now quite resentful that those children have become successful when you should be delighted for them and also feel very guilty that you were aware of them being neglected and did nothing about it. I don’t think you have any right to boast here. Having a house with 5 toilets, one of which you keep pristine for guests, doesn’t make you a good person if you ignore child neglect and do nothing to intervene.

SIL may be very intelligent and has passed her intelligence on to their children. Tell DH it’s HIS fault for not being intelligent enough genetically 🤣🤣🤣

Exactly. Smart people tend to find smart people attractive so intelligence tends to become concentrated over generations.

OP needs to tell us really about the achievements of her BIL, SIL and her and her husband in order to make a reasonable judgement on whether children from either family are likely to have over- or under- achieved.

People don’t like to acknowledge that IQ is largely hereditary, but sadly science doesn’t care whether we acknowledge it or not and this appears to be the elephant in the room…

I think your husband is unreasonable to blame you for the perceived lack of success of your children especially as they still young. In the same vein, I think you need to check your attitude to your in-laws parenting as it seems like you think they should have had a worser outcome due to perceived poor parenting. They reality both set of children have different parents, personality, intelligences and temperaments.

UANBU

kids take different paths. My eldest flunked out of 6th form 2x, lay in bed being total waster for a year (we absolutely did not tell her that, but were frustrated) and then went to tech college to do an Access course once she had a sensisible and objective plan for uni. Found out this week she got 100% distinctions across the board and will be going to a Russell Group uni that is 3rd behind Oxbridge in her subject. She had to work it out for herself and get over the fact she will be a couple of years older than her peers when she gets there, but she is very evidently ready to go now.

Youngest got mediocre GCSEs having been predicted 8/9s. Lost a place at one of the most prestigious 6th forms boarding school in the country (and part of Oxbridge programme) as a result. He was devastated (as was DH who cried, nearly quite his job to refocus on the kids as eldest wasn’t in school at all at that point and threatening NOT to do the access course).

We have no effing idea what happened though DS, now, a year on, admits he didn’t revise as he should have nor took the enormity of the exams seriously. Got form grade C/Ds in first few weeks to straight As/100% scores and just today. We are holding our breath to see if those were achieved in the AS Levels at the tech college we begged to take him into. Find out in August. His attendance is 100% and he also obtained an award for ‘Most Enthusiastic Learner’. He’s hoping to go to Imperial/Warwick/Manchester to read Physics (MPhys) now and is utterly driven. He needed to fall flat on his face and then rebuild to appreciate what he wanted.

I guess what I am trying to say is that kids grow up at different rates. Mine are ND but irrespective of that not all kids are ready at 18 to go to uni. Many [esp after the impact of covid/lockdown] need some breathing time, work experience and a real understanding of what uni will bring to a career/life goal. Mine needed permission to fail, permission to take a breather, permission to just be themselves and are exceeding our expectations… because they are setting their own goals, not trying to achieve ours. I do wonder whether your DH, if he discovered in 10 years that his DNs have MH issues, failed marriages, etc will still feel as though his kids are ‘less than’. Yeah, they may be at Oxbridge now, but does this mean they will really be happy and successful? My DH went to Cambridge - has it shaped his career? Beyond recruitment 35 years ago? No. Could he care less if his kids go? No. Does it actually predict life-long success in a career or otherwise? No.

TLDR: Your DH needs to grow up. And your kids need you in their corner until your DH realises what a dick he is being.

I think the issue is that circumstances, poverty etc may mean intelligence has no chance to reveal itself. My parents, from very poor backgrounds, aren’t fully literate and had to leave school aged 12/13 as their wages were needed, and DH’s likewise had poorly-paid unskilled jobs all their working lives. Yet DH and I are both academic high achievers, despite no one ever having gone beyond primary school that ‘re aware of in either family history. It was purely free secondary education and university grants and scholarships that allowed our intelligence to ‘show’.

@Strawberryfields18

no it doesn’t. Studying medicine in particular has always been seen as admirable and it always will be.

Yep. The uni thing is irrelevant really

But they are all uni/school age. It's not unreasonable at all for them to still be living at home.

I went to Oxbridge (and loved it) and if you asked me if I’d rather my kids grew up to go to Oxbridge or grew up to be competent humans who could tidy up after themselves and behave in a respectful manner to the people around them and their surroundings I would definitely choice the latter (great if they do both :). Plenty of my peers at oxbridge did nothing with their lives and plenty of people who didn’t go have had amazing lives. Being self motivated matters much more. Saying all that your kids do sound a little like they could do with a tiny bit more resilience / perseverance - so I’d try and encourage that characteristic a bit more if you can. Obviously ignore your husband’s BS.

This is MN. Thread not going as you hoped? Drip feed with more and more far-fetched ‘evidence’ in your defence.

But the OP has derailed her own thread. This is no longer about her unreasonable husband, it’s turned into reams and reams of ‘stories’ of SIL’s inferior parenting. Does OP really want advice on how to deal with her husband, or does she just want to bash and judge her SIL and be validated for it by MN?

This probably isn’t what got them into Oxbridge. It will have been expecting them to be able to order from a waiter at 4 yrs old. Doing cryptic crosswords and having parents who know what pathologised means and use those sorts of words. Reading the Guardian (to the Times) and talking about current events with them. Sharing esoteric and educated opinions on art, science, philosophy. Sharing literary works and discussing them.

They can let them drink fizzy drinks or insist on water and carrot juice; they can have a collapsing kitchen or a model home; they can have cats running amock or a pristine home with no animals allowed and age appropriate chores. This isn’t what helped or hinderd their (or your) kids academically. Being surrounded by intellectually curious parents who are educated themselves in the way that universities like is what makes kids more likely to get in to, and thrive in, elite universities (money and a place at a school that gets kids in is also a massive advantage). But this isn’t all on you. Did your DH spend time with your kids talking about politics/history/physics? Did he take them to concerts and talk excitedly about great musicians? Did he teach them chess? Or mahjong? Or in any way encourage them to be academic?

OP you say your kids are wonderful, how are they womderful? Work with them to emphasise that. Build on their strengths. And tell DH he needs to stop comparing and work with what you have.

Mad replies here. Lots of Contrary Mary’s wanting an argument.

Rolled up nappies and pet shit left on the floor would normally have cries of contact SS. But this is a cool, fun family?

Right.

The mad replies are probably because of the mad OP: "First time we went out a four year old actually summoned a waiter to order another fizzy drink. Two year old given a knife to cut their birthday cake. I was on tenterhooks and no exaggeration sometimes took to my bed after seeing them."