Since my kids left for their long-awaited week-long visit to my sister-in-law’s on Saturday, I have been pondering a mysterious phenomenon. I have been pondering why my husband is so much more pleasant when our kids are not around and why my kids are so much more pleasant when my husband is not around. My kids are certainly not angels when it is just them and me but they seem much better behaved when my husband is not there. When we’re all together, the kids misbehave more, my husband reacts and quickly they are ALL getting on my nerves. I am not quite sure if the kids are actually behaving better when it is just me or if I am just more adept at ignoring them.
I suppose, as is usually the case, I can trace the root of the problem back to when my kids were babies. Their crying always got to my husband long before it got to me. Before I had kids, I was an extremely light sleeper jolted awake by the slightest noise. After my daughter was born, I got used to sleeping through noise; therefore, she’d have to be pretty insistent before I would rouse from sleep. My husband, previously a relatively heavy sleeper, became a lighter sleeper and would be awakened and running crib-side before I became coherent enough to figure out what was going on. Usually, by the time I would wake up enough to realize the noise was not a blaring alternative screamer rock band or a train whistle in my dreams but my baby crying, I’d roll over to find my husband’s side of the bed empty. Well, I’ve always been an intelligent woman so I wasn’t about to run after him insisting, “No, no, you go back to bed, I’ll take care of her.” So I’d just roll over and go back to sleep.
I should have seen the writing on the wall the night my daughter was probably approximately four months old. I woke to crying and an empty bed about 2 a.m. as usual. I continued to hear faint crying through my sleep for another hour when I woke up again to find my bed empty. I decided to investigate and groggily stumbled to my daughter’s bedroom across the hall. I found my husband slumped over the side of the crib, his arm dangling, holding my daughter’s pacifier to her mouth.
“What are you doing?”
“She won’t go to sleep. Every time I let go of the pacifier she spits it out and starts crying so I’m holding it in,” my husband said.
I replied with something along the lines of, “and how’s that workin’ out for ya,” and asked if he’d like to try something different. Frustrated, he dropped the pacifier onto the crib mattress and went back to bed. I stuck the pacifier in my daughter’s mouth and did the same. After about five minutes of crying, she quieted and, exhausted from keeping her father up all night, slept until morning.
This incident foreshadowed my husband’s entire relationship with my kids to date. Their crying, whining and complaining irritates him to the point that he will do almost anything, regardless of how crazy, to shut them up, including giving in to their wants and demands even when he’d be better off standing his ground. Anyone who has been a parent for any significant period of time can answer the question: what happens when you give in to your kids after they’ve whined, cried, complained and/or “tantrumed”? The next time you say no, they whine, cry, complain and tantrum with even more persistence and fervor because it worked the last time—you gave in! It is amazing to me that kids, even tiny cute little adorable innocent babies, learn this after just one experience. It’s like crack cocaine—works once and they’re hooked. But the parents often do not catch on to their devious schemes until it’s too late, they realize they’ve aged and they’re resolve is no match for theirs.
I think my husband has finally learned that my approach of “that’s the way it is, deal with it” and “if I hear one more sound, the next time you ask I’ll say ‘no’, too,” is more effective. But instead of adopting the tactic as his own, he sends the kids to me. Then I get to be the bad guy, the mean mom, the royal bee-atch—which is fine with me because I don’t have to deal with nearly as much whining, etc. They know my decisions stand and any acting out badly in response is just going to get them in more trouble.
I reiterate that my kids are not angels when it is just them and me. They still get on my nerves and we still have our arguments. For example, last week the kids and I went to Wal-mart to pick up a few things we needed while my husband was working—but that is really irrelevant because shopping is THE WORST place to take my husband and my kids and I’d pretty much rather pull my own teeth if I couldn’t leave them all at home or only take one or the other. While picking up my husband’s mouth wash, my kids asked if they could get a bottle of the fluoride rinse like they give out at the dentist. Snatching up the opportunity to say “yes” to something actually good for them, I agree. My daughter, savvy shopper that she is, picks up the store brand in mint and puts it in the cart. Immediately, an argument ensues because while my daughter likes the mint flavor, my son insists on bubble gum. I tell them, it lasts a long time, it’ll get used so I’ll get one of each. You would think that would satisfy them, right? Oh no, my son suddenly insists that he needs the name brand which costs twice as much the store brand. (My son is an advertiser’s dream consumer but that’s a whole other blog…) After a little argument between us with my repeating “no” and why (“because it costs twice as much”) a couple of times, I provide my final offer: “Here are your options. We either buy the store brand or none. You choose.” And what do you know? He chose the store brand.
Similar to experiences with my kids, since Saturday afternoon when I returned home without kids, my husband has been a delight. He’s seemed much more pleasant than usual, joking, relaxed and just more fun. I’m starting to think it’s too bad the kids weren’t biologically fathered by someone else; we’d get to have them go away every other weekend instead of just the week in the summer when we can sucker my in-laws into taking them. But the week off is good, much appreciated, and probably the sole reason we’ve stayed married these last eleven years—we need this time to remember why in the world we ever got married and had kids in the first place. So my kids are great and my husband is great; they’re just not that great all at the same time. I enjoy my family time; I just usually enjoy it better piecemeal. Although, other than the arguments over if and when to have popcorn, family movie nights usually works out well because most of the evening is spent with our attention somewhere other than on each other…
