Lifts to school

[Bluebaron1]

My wife and I are at odds on this one, who's right?

Scenario:

My 15 year old daughter is always late for school, we live about 1/3 mile from the school, (12 min walk). She always waits until she's late they begs for a lift. Ironically sometimes it take longer to drive due traffic! Its not that she late getting up she spends 45 mins doing her makeup!

Me: Every time you give her a lift she learns that she can rely on it without consequence. She needs to learn that she has to take responsibility for herself and learn time management.

Wife: She's always late, she needs to be there on time thats more important, i'm happy to drive her.

Thanks for advice

I’m with you- let her face the consequences of being late

Deffo let her be late, a detention may increase her time management skills. I have the same argument, frequently, with DH.

I'm with you.

Ha! No way would I be giving her a lift. That's doing her no favours at all.

I'm with you. Your wife isn't teaching your child to be independent or self-reliant.

It depends what you think it’s the job of a parent to do. Ultimately I think it’s to help mould happy, healthy, independent adults so I’m with you. I would happily sit with her and help her plan her time and put routines in place but it’s her responsibility.

I'm with you and I'd be supporting the school with any sanctions for lateness.

I'm definitely with you if i were your wife
However your daughter and wife are the ones involved, not you, and they both claim to be happy with the situation.
Try to focus on how the situation affects you, and if it doesn't affect you, consider whether you are being controlling.
It could be that you don't want to spend the money on fuel, it could be somehow undermining you, it could just be you feel lonely when your wife is away, but try to work out what it is rather than having a fruitless discussion about who is "right"
Good luck!

Insightful John, I guess if she was giving her a pile of sweets and letting her watch tv all day they would both ‘be happy’, but my point was whether or not I was in the wrong to refuse to drive her every day.
It doesn’t bother me too much except that I feel it isn’t very good parenting.
I do tend to fail in matters relating to daughters, it seems fathers are never right!

I agree with you, but that's not going to make your DW change her mind. The current set up where she's supposed to go on her own then ends up getting a lift isn't working or teaching her anything good.

You and DW need to sit down and work out how to deal with this. There's more options then lift or no lift, a series of incentives/rewards for her getting there on time by herself. Lift on prearranged days each week, but agreeing no lifts on others even if she's late. Looking into the reasons she's late, maybe she needs extra help to work out how to get ready on time. Lifts to school but only if she's ready at the time she'd need to be ready to walk, then slowly reduce the number of lifts. Set your daughter up to succeed.

I'm definitely in your camp. Driving a 15 year old 1/3 of a mile is crazy.

However if your wife is happy to continue doing it, then not sure you can stop her other than ask if she plans to continue driving her to university, job etc etc.

Does your daughter take interest in environmental issues? Could you use the angle that driving short journeys is bad both in use of fossil fuels, pollution, asthma etc? Does she do other things independently at home? Cook the occasional meal etc? Or is she treated the same as when she was at primary school?

Doesn't she want to walk with friends rather than being dropped off by mummy?

You are certainly not in the wrong for refusing to drive her. i thought the question was about whether your wife should not drive her.
You can not drive her and your wife can drive her. It's fine to have different preferences. All you can do is listen and understand each other, and agree to disagree.
Saying your wife is not doing good parenting is unnecessarily categorising into good and bad. You can both be good parenting while doing something different.
I notice you feel like you are never right, but do you need to be right? Do you want to be the authority? I think a wider conversation is in order about how you all feel, but that may be out of scope here.

YANBU to refuse to drive her. YABU to try to stop your wife when she is happy to do it. It’s a judgment call but this alone isn’t going to make or break your daughter’s ability to be an independent adult. My parents were always trying to “let me learn my lesson” in the way you describe but I really struggled with executive function and was ultimately diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, and their consistent refusal to help me was really hurtful. Luckily I’ve had treatment and learned some good strategies and I function much better but it’s not because of negative consequences — quite the opposite in fact.

YABVU to throw up your hands that “fathers can’t do right with daughters.” That’s ridiculous and not at all true in my experience.

If, at 15, it takes her 12 minutes to walk a third of a mile, I think she's badly in need of more exercise, not being driven everywhere.

Most teens can walk a mile in 15 minutes.

Did she attend the Extinction Rebellion?

If so, then use that. Total hypocrisy to be driven to school.