I'm currently struggling with my marriage at the moment, my husband has a totally different parenting style to myself and it is causing our marriage to fail. Our son who is aged 8 is a lively energetic child but also is prone to extreme meltdowns and has hyperactivity issues. I work part time 3 days a week and then spend most of the time at home looking after our child doing all the cooking and cleaning, school runs, shopping etc. My husband works very hard but can often work a 55 hour week so he is exhausted when he gets back from work understandably.
During the week when it is just me and my son together at home, my son is much more well behaved but when he's with his dad, all hell breaks loose and he becomes argumentative and defiant towards me. His dad is the "fun" parent allowing him things which I wouldn't normally allow and therefore making my life harder. When I get upset about it, he puts me down in front of my son telling me to "come on, you're being harsh" and completely undermining any kind of authority I have as a parent and making me feel like an incapable mother. I often think life would be less stressful if we parented separately where he would be with his dad all weekend and stays with me during the week. Our son isn't a stranger to playing us off against each other which is what kids can tend to do I know but also to not have any kind of emotional support from my husband and he actively goes against my decisions and wishes on a regular basis just makes me want to give up. We are no longer a parenting team, it's usually my husband and son against me when all I'm doing is trying to feed our child healthy food, provide age appropriate entertainment, instill a good bedtime routine and I have very little support with this. I'm parenting like a single parent already with the downside of constant defiance both from my husband and then our son as a result.