We have two kids—six and four years old. When the second child was only two, I lost my job and stayed home for over a year. While at home, I did my best to take the burden off my wife. I woke up early, prepared their breakfast, bathed them, served them, and later sent them to school. After school, I would give them their lunch and help with their homework.
I was doing everything so my wife didn’t have to come home tired and be bothered by the kids. Now we both go to work and come home late. Her mother lives with us, but whenever these kids go to my wife for anything, she’ll shout at them and say, “Go to your dad. Don’t come and worry me.”
It could be food they want. It could be a hand they need with their homework. It could be that they just want to sit by her and talk, but my wife would drive them away and ask them to “Go to daddy.”
Recently, the first boy went to her and she flared up. Before she could say, “Go to Daddy,” my boy said it, so they both chorused it together. She said, “So you know that and you’re coming to me?”
It gets on my nerves so much I want to scream and warn her not to do it again. We’ve talked about it. I’ve made my concerns known to her: “They are not only my kids. Why are you driving your own children away?” Her response: “You know I don’t like clingy kids.”
How does, “Ma, help with my homework” become clingy? Or “Ma, I’m hungry” from a kid become clingy?
But at night, she will crawl under my arm asking for a cuddle. Who is clingy here?
She’s not changing. I’ve reported the issue to her mom, but her mom could do little about it. When I’m around, she does things for them grudgingly. When I’m not, according to my first child, she tells them to wait for daddy.
So sometimes my kids stay up very late waiting for me. The youngest will wait for me to bathe him because “Mommy bathes me hard.”
What kind of mother treats her own children like this? Are there any measures I can take to correct this? And please, it’s not postpartum depression
