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.

The OP has got children at uni and doing A levels, now she's not going to have left school in the 1970s!

This.

No young adult in their right mind would want to go on holiday with a parent who is so judgmental.

“The OP has got children at uni and doing A levels, now she's not going to have left school in the 1970s.”

I said 1970s and 80s
SIL/BIL have grandchildren so I’d expect them to have been school leavers in the 70s.
I have children around OP’s age and went to university in 1984.

My stepson dropped out of doing a business degree and bummed around a bit for a couple of years. He was regarded by his mother's family as a total waster. He then went to agricultural college and did a BTec in arboriculture, which he passed at the highest grade. He absolutely loved it.

He's gone on to to do several further qualifications and is now a Master Forester. He has his own tree surgery business, trains an apprentice, has a p/t role as the senior tree officer at a local authority, and does consultancy work for a couple of large country estates.

He makes a good living, is doing useful work that is beneficial for the environment and community and, most importantly, he loves what he does.

Some young people simply take a while to realise what it is that really floats their boat.

Stop the press!
Families who don't mollycoddle kids end up happier, healthier and more productive.

Two adult children who haven't left the nest and a third who thinks one bad exam means taking a year long break to recover? Something has gone wrong here.

Comparing to SIL isn't helpful as there are many factors that influence how kids grow up, and DH isn't being fair to blame it all on you when he should have been parenting them all along too, but the fact you can't see that there's a problem here suggests that you're part of it.

SIL and family: frustrating
Why frustrating? someone's success is frustrating?

they are just riding a bit higher at the moment.
Why at the moment? Statistics is on their side, kids chances after Oxbridge are better than after failing A-levels. @MyIvyGrows your post is so full of pure envy it's almost amusing

I am working class, I run a tight ship. Most working class people I know do. I was saying if this woman and her husband weren't middle class intellectuals then they'd have been reported to SS by now. They should have been reported anyway, because making your kids live in filth is shit.

ETA, and I bet it wasn't very nice for the cats either. Cats like a clean environment too.

@Tiswa

how has Op prioritised chores and cleaning over everything else?? Are you saying young people should never do any chores around the house if you want them to be successful academically??

Honestly your DH is being really unreasonable.Children are not new cars or some sort or status symbol FFS! Comparison is the thief of joy as they say.Your DC sound great ,Your in laws sound a bit "bohemian" as they say.Their house sounds messy and chaotic to me . It's a moot point whether your DC would have been the same as them if brought up differently or not.They are hardly under achievers anyway.Why is DH putting their achievements on you only?Unless MIA, he should be having equal input surely.

I've just finished reading a NYT article about a 26 year old American entrepreneur called John Cronin.

John owns John's Crazy Socks, the world's largest sock company. It's a multi million dollar enterprise, selling around 450,000 socks to 88 countries last year.

He set it up in 2016, having left high school with no qualifications. He told his dad he didn't want to work in retail and refused to do any crappy menial jobs.

He's already a multi millionaire.

He's already 10000x more successful than any of OPs neices and nephews will EVER be.

Their Oxbridge degrees are worthless next to John's achievements.

And you what's even better?

John has Downs Syndrome.

Yet he's done better in life than any of OPs Oxbridge graduate relatives, or OPs shitty brother.

No surgeon or doctor or Oxbridge grad has set up a business that's not only worth millions but is also the WORLD LEADING company in its field, at the age of 20.

Most doctors will only earn 150k a year at most. John's earning several times that, with no student loan repayments and decades of compound interest to give him a more comfortable retirement than any Oxbridge graduate could dream of.

So to you and anyone else who'd be disappointed in a kid who drops out of uni - you're a fuckin' twat and your kids deserve better.

Whether OP's drip feed is to be believed or not, the SIL is a red herring. Plenty of parents manage to raise their children in nice clean homes and to go on to Oxbridge. OP is trying to make herself feel better by claiming both are mutually exclusive — you can only have a clean home or go to Oxbridge. What if both were true? Does that mean OP has failed at half the equation? I think OP and her husband need to look deep inside themselves and think about their own values, definition of success, and sources of self esteem. The SIL is just a trigger for their own deeply held internal beliefs.

While I will always celebrate the success of those with a disability, you're being a little disingenuous here. John's Socks is a father and son business, and John's dad was already building online businesses when John said that he wanted to go into business with him.

So this isn't quite the achievement that you're claiming here, as he did not do this alone.

https://johnscrazysocks.com/pages/our-story

Not to add to the pseudo-psychoanalysis here, but I think the problem here might really be yours and your husband’s relationship, and maybe your husband’s historic competitiveness with his own sibling?

Both your families sounds totally ‘normal’ (what is normal anyway) but perhaps very different social groups and values.

Quite.

Plus you have to have a certain set of values to view success in purely financial terms.

Even if it is a major achievement, so what?

Again, statistically, what proportion of Oxbridge grads fail to do well? what proportion of general population?

All other things being equal, I stopped going on holiday with my parents when I was 15. Amongst my friends that was completely normal. A decade or two later, my older friends were taking their grown children on holiday, nice cruises and fortnights in Goa. Infinitely preferable to a wet week in a caravan in Torquay.

But more seriously, your children are adults, they will holiday as they wish. You should let them.

It shouldn’t matter where your children live, who they end up with, what job they do the only thing that matters is are they happy?

Happiness means different things to different people.

To one person it’s living in a big house with a fancy car to another it’s a quiet cottage in the country.

To one person it’s having a high paying job and wearing a suit to someone else it’s having a low responsibility every day the same routine kind of thing.

Happiness is the goal in life. Your husband needs to stop focusing on Grades and Unis.

It seems to me that only you know whether your DH is being unreasonable. My instinct is that he's not otherwise you wouldn't be asking for a second opinion on MN.

Sounds like you hate your kids because they are not academically intelligent and they resent you for this

I'd be embarrassed too tbh! And you're clearly a snob about your SIL!
So what if a child is allowed to cut a birthday cake or ask a waiter for another drink, that really shouldn't make you feel so anxious that you take to your bed!
I'm guessing you taught none of your kids life skills and did everything for them if seeing other people's kids doing that upset you so much.
Also why are you doing research about your DD's course - surely SHE should be doing that.
I'm also guessing that you fund your children when they take a year out or drop out!

Yes this stood out to me too that the four year old had a lot of confidence to summon a waiter !

Yes- you have to do well to get out.

Which his school should have given, surely? I was (probably) the first in my family to go to university. My parents were interested and supportive though both left school at 14 (yes, I am that old). My school provided the guidance on choosing courses and getting me through the application process, preparing for interview - all universities interviewed then and I got questions lobbed at me quite tangential to my A levels, on medieval crop rotation (I was studying economic and social history from 1760), El Greco and whether I had read the Lord of the Rings. This was entirely proper, of course, because it checked that I read outside my subjects and had an enquiring mind. That I got from my parents. I lived in London and was encouraged to visit the galleries and museums available (mostly free or cheap to enter) and my father, who was interested in art, often accompanied me.

So the school let down your DH, really.

I am still here but nothing to add.

People are interested in our education attainment I was a primary school teacher but now work for a charity. Husband has a MSc from a northern Redbrick.

The idea that we should have called Social Services for husband’s nieces and nephews is absurd. They were kind, funny, articulate and happy. Their manners at times were like Debretts’ Level which I wouldn’t have wanted for my kids but husband would have . Fairly convinced they wouldn’t be at Cambridge if they had been taken away. I do remember at a wedding a cousin’s wife did say if that house had been a local authority one there would have been interventions.

I don’t think I am a judgemental person per se but there were conditions in that house that did make me judgmental.

Because I clean the kitchen and make them help me doesn’t make me Hyacinth Bucket.

Keeping the loo in the hall clean for guests doesn’t make me her either.

As for my family we get on well. My daughter comes away with me and elder son went away with husband when a friend dropped out of a trip. He would like us to all go away together. His nieces and nephews have holidays with friends but go to the same location with their parents every year as well.

I adore my children, I admit that I worry about the elder one who hasn’t got a degree, just in terms of what will happen when there are inevitable changes in the industry he is working in.

My husband is now saying we should have done things differently. When my kids didn’t want to practice instruments etc I wouldn’t continue paying. SiL would have I imagine screamed and swore. Two of them were Grade 6 by Year 6, one in two instruments.

Last thing, I actually love BiL and SiL. When my MiL despaired sometimes I defended them. It is my husband who has brought them into the equation not me.