Here is my quandary: my wife wants our son to work harder in school and she wants me to push him harder. It is not that she wants to push him harder. She wants me to do it.
Our son is bright and conscientious. He is a slow worker and hates to read. We are working on that. His primary fault regarding school, in my opinion, is he is forgetful. He forgets to turn in assignments and sometimes he forgets to do them. My wife thinks he is deliberately shirking work.
Guess maybe she is something of a Tiger Mother. She was always at the top of her class. I was a mediocre student until I got to college. She thinks we should be cracking the whip. She wants him to be an engineer and go to MIT. He is only 9 years old and is a long way from knowing what he wants.
I am content so long as he turns in his work and has at least a B average in the subject. He pulls A's and B's. His reading grade teeters on the C/B precipice, dipping and rising as we keep him turning in his assignments.
She says he doesn't listen to her, which is mostly true. He has found out she is all bark and no follow-through. It is not lost on me that maybe all the barking isn't so much to get him to work as it is to get me to give in and make him work. Like John Lennon, I am only looking to have me some peace or its homonym.
I have no problem with my wife making my son work harder, if she wants to put in the effort and the time. Don't see why it has to be all my effort and time. So a lot of the time I blow her off and feel guilty about it.
On one hand, I feel like we as parents should have a united front. On the other hand, I resent being expected to push an agenda I do not share.
Any Cyburbians have a similar predicament with a spouse and possible suggestions how to handle this?
LP gave the best advice IMO. Its definitely true with my kids as they get older that they relate to each of us in a different way. I think that is ok, but it does sometimes lead to situations like you are describing. I think its fair to say exactly what you posted to your wife and she should be open to having this conversation. But it may also be true that you, in the role you have with your son, may just have to suck it up and make him get to work, even though it may not be as important to you. But maybe part of the issue is making sure your wife knows are doing it, but are perhaps not that excited about that role and feel burdened by it.
Spouses are different and gender can obviously play a big role in this. It is often the case, for example (across time and cultures) that at a certain age, boys begin to differentiate themselves from the mothers and that may be part of the difference in how he relates to each of you. In some cultures, the men even come and steal the boy away from his mother while she cries and he cries and then they take him off for a retreat where they teach him about "manly" things and he returns changed and with a new and different relationship to mom. I'm not advocating this, of course (though its interesting think how this might go down in modern America) but my point is simply that its a common human pattern that each parent has a different relationship with each kid and sometimes one is the Heavy and the other the Confident. Sounds like you are the Heavy.
I was trying to find this great Bill Cosby routine about this, but I failed. I think its from "Russell my Broth Whom I Slept with." He talks about the difference between moms and dads:
Moms are like "will you cut that out!" and you stop for a minute, but then you keep going because, its just mom and she can't whip both of you at the same time. But if dad says something - "what's going on here?!" - you better just walk away clean, jack, 'cause that's the Old Gunfighter, man.
He goes on to compare asking each of them for a nickel:
"Mom, can I have a nickel?"
"No, I don't have a nickel to give you"
Then, starting to cry "But, Larry's got a nickel, and Bobby's got a nickel and I don't have any nickel.."
"Ok, fine, here's a nickel"
"Thanks, babe, see you around...."
"Dad, can I have a nickel?"
"No, get out of here!"
"Ok, dad, I'll go look elsewhere, sorry to bother you..."
Or something like that. That's Old School. of course, but some things stand the test of time. I'm definitely the "just wait until your dad gets home" person in my household.
