[Closed] Wife -v- Teenage daughter - help!...

Those of you making misogynistic comments about wives and women, has it occurred to you that their apparent faults may have bugger all to do with the fact they are female. No need to write off all women!

Those of you making misogynistic comments about wives and women, has it occurred to you that their apparent faults may have bugger all to do with the fact they are female. No need to write off all women!

EDIT: (hope you didnt consider my input as misogynistic an any way vicky, thats not how it was meant to come across)

vickypea - Member
Those of you making misogynistic comments about wives and women, has it occurred to you that their apparent faults may have bugger all to do with the fact they are female. No need to write off all women!

Really ?
You have one slightly iffy post in a very balanced thread and you throw that in
If I'm wrong please show me the misogyny in this thread

I am not a parent - however I was a teenage girl, and like most, I was good at playing the parents off against each other. Divide and conquer, mixed with mis-direction. You daughter seems to have the instinct.

I think it might be a matter of trying to work out exactly what is going on as I think you are beginning to do -seeing a pattern.If for instance it's a matter of your daughter pushing boundaries and challenging her mother then you have to be solid with your partner .If your partner moves the goalposts and is inconsistent- thus making you either support her in doing something you don't necessarily agree with then she is putting you in an impossible position .I think as parents you and your partner need to discuss basic parental values which you may have inherited without realising .Hope this helps - just don't get in a position trying to placate both sides

As a part of the solution in the shorter term, I'd be tempted (if it's not noticed by your wife that is) to do some of the crockery sorting some of the time, just to lessen the number of instances for tension, and take it upon myself to try and do a bit more of the asking for getting get to clear it up.

I'm thinking that if your wife is doing cooking and general housework, she might feel less inclined than you to keep going back to get her to finish putting the pots away, from feeling that she has enough to do already - which is probably true from her perspective.

A mixture of talking to your wife about how daughter probably won't be hearing her if she shouts, doing a bit of the sorting yourself, and getting on at your daughter to sort things 'as and when' so that she doesn't have to asked is how I'd try and tackle that particular issue - because that's inline with my personality you might say, it might not work for you.

vikypea has a really good point about not tarring all women as being mental and illogical etc, it's not fair at all.

Men can be just as illogical...

My friends have 3 kids. Their eldest daughter is absolutely gorgeous and always polite when we visit.
The plain fact is that they don't like her. I don't know why.
The youngest daughter is pure evil and gets away with everything.
It's horrible to see.
Maybe your wife just doesn't like your daughter. My wife and her mum never got on. There must be some hormonal thing going on.

Not getting on can be down to similarities in personality, my mum and I only reached a place of continuing calmness after we realised that we were very alike (in an unhelpful way), am glad that got to happen before she passed away.

I think there's a territorial thing too, whilst my son and I just got on and made space for each other my wife [ ex] and daughter were always creating confrontations like they were vieing for alpha female , as others have said quite quite unpleasant and hard to witness - the level of nastiness out of all proportion to the cause of whatever conflict

Really ?
You have one slightly iffy post in a very balanced thread and you throw that in
If I'm wrong please show me the misogyny in this thread

Women like confrontation and argument.

Women are 100% mental.

There must be some hormonal thing going on.

my wife starts an argument because my daughter has shovelled up a bit of mash with her fork in her right hand.

I think if I were you, I'd have a chat to your OH when you're both calm and not post-argument. Suggest that "we" (not her) are having a lot of rows, and that perhaps "we" can come to an agreement to not sweat the small stuff.

She's 13. In a little while she'll be potentially discovering boys (or girls), alcohol, cigarettes, weed and goodness knows what else, at which point neither of you will give the slightest of shits if she's eating mashed potato with her feet and licking the plate clean afterwards. By the time she's rolling on condoms you'll be glad she's being safe rather than worrying that she's doing it with the wrong hand.

The whole knife and fork place-settings is arse-backwards anyway. You eat with your right hand if you're using a fork or spoon on its own, but swap hands if a knife is involved as well? What's up with that? I'm left-handed, I eat with my left regardless of what's in my right. You righties are odd.

"I think if I were you, I'd have a chat to your OH when you're both calm"

That's the problem. Trying to have a conversation that isn't a row with someone who wants to escalate everything into a row.

If she was reasonable, the problem wouldn't exist.

Have you tried vacuuming the house? Or cleaning the bathrooms?

[b]outof breath[/b] I think that's a bit of a leap on from the posts by the OP... possibly projecting from your own experience, and I've been there in one relationship...

"I think that's a bit of a leap on from the posts by the OP..."

I suspect he wouldn't be posting here if a calm civil conversation with his wife was feasible.

Obviously if it is he should simply do that.

That doesn't mean she is the sole source of unreasonablness, Or that she can't, once she sees he isn't in league against her, listen to what he has to say, when things are quieter and they are away from their daughter.

Anyway, sometimes people just need to ventilate, and this is a good a place as any...

"That doesn't mean she is the sole source of unreasonablness, Or that she can't, once she sees he isn't in league against her, listen to what he has to say, when things are quieter and they are away from their daughter."

No, but the OP sounds reasonable to me.

I didn't mean the whole thread was misogynistic, but there were a few examples as pointed out by ransos (thanks).

I realised that I hadn't contributed to the thread though! My thoughts are that we should cut teenagers a certain amount of slack because their brains aren't wired like an adult's, but on the other hand that shouldn't mean they have carte blanche to be rude and hurtful. OP, could you maybe act as a mediator and not take either side, see if you can negotiate peace?

I don't think the OP should be a mediator, he should be 50% of a united front in bringing up their child.

vickypea - well said. a few comments on here have really made me go WTF?

It's the small things that get blown up - crockery being left around the house being a major source of angst for example! I'll get my daughter to come from wherever she is and put it in the dishwasher, I'll get her back time and again depending on how many items I find.

Approach it from a different angle? Put the dirty crockery in a box in the garage/shed and serve her food up on paper plates and with plastic knives and forks when you have no more clean stuff left. It might be a pain but if you approach it with the right attitude you and your missus can have a laugh at teh same time.

When my oldest son was doing the 'I can do what I want' thing I cut all of the plugs off of all the electrical items in his bedroom, he got them back at the rate of 1 a week if we'd had a good week. How I laughed when the first plug he wanted back was his Playstation one! 😀

Psychological warfare is what it is.

jondoh- I agree that parents should in general present a united front, but in this situation where the other 2 are at each other's throats, a bit of mediation to regain some kind of peace first could help.

I honestly don't see how that would help – his wife will see mediation as just another way of undermining her.

Johndoh - thats not what mediation or family counselling is at all.

"his wife will see mediation as just another way of undermining her."

Agree.

Clearly in normal situation parents need to be 50-50 of a divided front and that will require a fair but of both joining in making issues of things one or other of them doesn't think need to be addressed.

Sounds like this situation is beyond that and one of them is causing a ton of needless friction. In that case the united front needs to be shifted to a reasonable and sane point and that requires the one who is seeking drama and confrontation to chillax a bit and help create a cheerful environment for everyone.

But what if both of them are perhaps guilty of unreasonable behaviour?
I don't see what's wrong with saying it out loud that the 2 of them aren't getting on, and how can we work things out to regain harmony at home? That's not taking sides or blaming one over the other.

Cougar: The whole knife and fork place-settings is arse-backwards anyway. You eat with your right hand if you're using a fork or spoon on its own, but swap hands if a knife is involved as well? What's up with that? I'm left-handed, I eat with my left regardless of what's in my right. You righties are odd.

Lol at this! I've always been left handed and had never registered that I don't switch hands like right handed peeps. 🙂

My Dad would sometimes erupt if my Mum and I were being petty with one another in a 'Jesus peeps...both of you' kind of tone - though not in those words, with certain justification when I think about it. It can sometimes seem like the less parents say the more they're listened to when I look back on my childhood, with short sharp interventions working better than background grumbling, like 'STOP' as hammyuk phrases it.

I think a bigger contrast between calmness and anger from parents can possibly have more effect...

"actions and consequences" goes for all involved.
Wifi access, device use and many more can be used regardless of "age" to make things go differently.

Also quite simply stopping the argument or comment as it happens works.
Simply "STOP" its not nice at first but it'll have the desired effect regardless f which side the grief is coming from.

How I laughed when the first plug he wanted back was his Playstation one!

Not the TV it's connected to, then? Awesome.

I've always been left handed and had never registered that I don't switch hands like right handed peeps.

It took me years to spot that's what they did, to be fair. Bizarre behaviour.

I wonder if part of it for me is being veggie. I'm not likely to have to start hacking at a tough steak, a table knife is very much a supporting role when I'm eating.

It took me years to spot that's what they did, to be fair. Bizarre behaviour.

I wonder if part of it for me is being veggie. I'm not likely to have to start hacking at a tough steak, a table knife is very much a supporting role when I'm eating.

It's not anything like what you might call a grievance - having had to adapt to a right handed world, but it is quite nice to feel like left handed is the most logical thing to be a for a change.

Having adapted I can write equally neatly with my right hand, and use scissors in either hand just as well, so having had to has possibly been of benefit in the long term - after realising I wasn't less capable than others, just not provided for adequately enough at school instead.

I use scissors right-handed cos they're designed that way; the twisting of the thumb forces the blades together, left-handed it forces them apart. I [i]can [/i]use them left-handed but I've consciously think about it to 'pull' with my thumb against instinct.

get left handed scissors?

"I don't see what's wrong with saying it out loud that the 2 of them aren't getting on, and how can we work things out to regain harmony at home? That's not taking sides or blaming one over the other."

I agree, I just don't think the OP's missus will see it that way.

"I use scissors right-handed cos they're designed that way; the twisting of the thumb forces the blades together, left-handed it forces them apart. I
can use them left-handed but I've consciously think about it to 'pull' with my thumb against instinct."

As a leftie I consciously think about the pull. Until this moment it has never, ever occurred to me that for a right handed person it's a push, and that might be easier. Every day's a school day.

get left handed scissors?

Yeah, but then you're knackered outside of your own home if you need to use a pair of scissors.

That option wasn't available to me in primary school anyway, so I never learned until much later.

Yeah, schools can be shit at thinking about left handers, right handers won't realise that if you're left handed you can have to cross your arms over when drawing a line 'From 0cm to 10cm ' or something, so that the ruler wobbles and the line goes funny, leaving the left handed child feeling less able - where as it's down to the equipment provided, if you add scissors to the mix and anything else with a right handed bias (which is quite a lot of things), it can leave one feeling less capable as a kid. Scissors didn't click till I was an adult when I suddenly looked on the wrong side of the scissors to see what I was doing. Due to a lack of thought by a lot of people left handed children can feel somehow 'lesser' than the rest.

On the other hand, left handers have a higher survival rate in areas with a higher rate of homicides, from their attackers being caught by surprise when a left hand comes towards the, so it isn't all bad. 😉

( I'm a pacifist by the way. )

do something bad, like have an affair with the neighbour's cat.
then your wife can take her frustrations out on you instead of the kids.

I'm right-handed and it wasn't til I had a go at using left-handed scissors that I realised the problem with scissors for left-handers.

tjagain - Member
Johndoh - thats not what mediation or family counselling is at all.

do you fellow lefties not switch your knife to your left hand when you want to spread butter etc then?

I've missed a page out of the thread as I am need of bed, but would also like to reply to the OP.

Not sure where all the scissor rubbish came from, however I am step dad to two girls aged 21 and 17, and have been with their mum for the last 14 years.

There have been many arguments between all of us but one thing remains - whilst they are in this house and around me and their mum they show some respect.

Old values maybe but I see parents struggling with kids of many different ages because they are too scared or incapable of repremanding kids. If respect is taught and given from early enough there won't be a problem growing up.

Don't mean violence or smacking, just firm no's and direct tellings off for calling parents 'stupid' or swearing towards us etc.

My theory is to give them enough rope but be there to pick up the pieces, then educate them enough to tell me why whatever they have done went wrong. They don't make the same mistake again.

In the OPs case, a 14 yr old girl should not have the run of the house. Equally her mum should not be stood shouting then going off on one because daughter doesn't answer in 15 seconds.

Both of them need to change the ways a little and meet in the middle.

Again, I'd make sure I told the daughter that if she wants to behave like a child she'll be treat like one and sent into her room with no phone or interweb.

It is old school but it works - or it does if it is started early enough. Try starting it when kids are young teenagers will probably result in destruction 😆

I get the:
"you need to be on my side"
"she doesn't need both of us going on at her"
Can't win.

OP put it this way, if it was your wife complaining about you being like this - society and this forum would probably accuse you of having anger/control issues.

But because she's your wife, you gotta take her side man - at least until she throws an iron at someone - wonen are delicate creatures....didnt you know bro?

Ahhh the sexism of low expectations...

"I get the:
"you need to be on my side"
"she doesn't need both of us going on at her""

Me too.