July 2, 2013, 1:12 pm, It wasnt deliberate. There are times I dont have any interest in my husbands hobbies, but I know that if I go with him to a Magic: The Gathering tournament this weekend, hell accompany me to see the new Pixar movie when I want to go. Educational trivia game, reading articles and discussing them together or in a game format. You became a drudge, in spite of him being a great guy and loving you madlybecause. Addie Pray July 2, 2013, 1:17 pm. I think its great that he invites her and wants to share his interests with her. Spyglassez I definitely DONT think my experience and this familys are similar. From one mom to another. He is also very critical of both of US That doesnt mean she shouldnt modify her behavior, but her desire is understandable and its easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Maybe shell end up in the entertainment industry, or become a writer. Also, now I know how to fix stuff. he wants to teach her to drive. I hope the LW sees your comment. I dont know why the father doesnt like Star Trek, but shows like Eureka, Warehouse 13, and Revolution are all pretty good cross sections of fangirlyness and science. That way, everyone gets a say and is sort of forced to share each others interests. Yeah, I think its going to be hard for her to get her husband to listen to her parent to parent if hes already being alienated. lets_be_honest He may think that if she leaves the home then shell be safe from his alcoholism. And to be 10, 11, 12, 13 and know that my sheer presence could make my dad so happy? But it sounds like dad needs to remove the ginormous stick from his ass and let his daughter fangirl. Everyone can have a relaxing hobby. I know I did. To care for our two young kids. The daughter will then learn to respond in similar (asking others about their hobbies, showing genuine interest, accepting of differing hobbies). Some people say yes, a parent should love their child more than their spouse. This results in a reflexive coping mechanism that severely restricts their hopes and desires in life. This day is going down in history as the first day that Ive ever agreed with every single word youve said, BGM. And he lived 10 minutes away from us. My other daughter moved out recently into a flat-share with some friends. Definitely. My daughter and I are a lot like you and yours. Mommy and daddy love each other. My husband is a HUGE Firefly fanboy. Im sorry, but the father is an asshole. Once they believe that true love need not be obligatory and that intimacy is not automatically correlated with entrapment, they are often eager to learn new ways to make their needs and fears knownand let love in. July 3, 2013, 1:13 am, Wait, is it possible to watch Sarah Michelle Gellar try to act and NOT roll your eyes? LW, your daughter sounds awesome. Expect my son to mediate a dispute between my daughter-in-law and myself. I just happened to end up having a pretty great kid, and a pretty great guy. Seriously, though I obviously realize the error of my ways now My point being that while my dad exposed me to things that interested him, he also jumped feet first into things that interested me and NEVER EVER made me feel silly or stupid because I was a 12 year old who liked things that other 12 year olds did. Cardinals games and all. His dad wasnt a particularly avid fisherman, he just thought it would be a good father-son activity. It also says the father is critical about her lack of competitiveness, initiative, and how she is uninformed. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. I adore them and love them as people, not just my parents. I hope that you can in the process of all this also try to strengthen your marriage, because when your daughter gets new interests in two years or doesnt want to hang out with her parents or even when she moves out of the house, your husband is going to be the one who youre left with. If he feels like thats going to impede their time together, then fine, youre off the hook. Is It My Fault If My Partner And Daughter Dont Get Along? Courts take action when substance use, in the form of alcohol and illicit drugs, and/or misuse of prescription drugs actually hinders a parent's ability to care for their children or when the parent poses a danger to the children's well-being. Agree i cant imagine being receptive to spending time with my dad when it consists of him mocking what my 12-year old self likes AND assigning me reading assignments. Here are some signs that your father had narcissistic tendencies or was an outright narcissist. Yes. My mom and I both liked movies, reading, pop culture, and shopping. But for practical advice: board games. Well-intentioned, devoted partners of crazy-making people can become obsessed with trying to find the magic potion that will make their partners happy and appreciative of their efforts. I was closer to my mom, and even closer with my friends in the neighborhood. The first theory is that her husband is jealous of the close relationship she has with their daughter. I fell in love with football and cooking and baseball, which were things he loved. Yes, this is the stuff a 7th grade girl needs to hear to boost her self-esteem. Its her birthday today So Im taking her out for a steak dinner and then were going to watch fireworks (which she has decided the city has put on for her). The thing is, what the father is doing is rude. Her mission is to share practical and realistic parenting advice to help the parenting community becoming stronger. We are extremely close and love doing the same things. He wants her to watch history and science shows with him, and go hiking, camping and backpacking. I had and to some extent probably still have some self-esteem issues that stemmed from my dads iffy parenting. But since I knew his motivation for liking things was less about me than it was about his own inadequacy, and I didnt actually like him as a person. I cant think of a single interest that we shared from when I was a teenager that I didnt learn from him in some way. I watched a show about what would happen if aliens were discovered, and I know there are some about how realistic certain science fiction shows are. sign, Get the day's headlines delivered directly to your inbox, You need to be gentle but honest with your friend about her crush. And LW- anyone who tells you Firefly is not a good show doesnt know what their talking about! Whatever you do, make sure you stay true to yourself. He does not say that to her but expresses it to me. If you dont find the info you need in this column, please visit the Dear Wendy archives or the forums (you can even start your own thread), do a search in the search bar, or submit a question for advice at wendy(AT)dearwendy.com. Generally, Ive found that geeky fandoms have more respect for and interest in learning than, say, those who follow the Kardashians would. and hes an attorney, and Im sure the rest of the family wants to stab us). Dad was self-centered and pretty vain. As always, your anonymity is golden. Soulmate Initial On Left Thumb? Or even more fun than you would. Apparently I am super wrong about This Old House my college friends would just give me a blank stare if I brought it up. 2. You do her a disservice by being greedy with her time and attention. Did I fight with my dad as a teenager? He is clearly not getting the message. But nurturing these relationships between your daughter and both you and your husband while exposing her to things that may or may not be of immediate interest to her WILL help her be a more well-rounded, confident young woman secure in the knowledge that both her parents love her. Their partners also need to understand that most of the sabotaging behavior is not only unintended but carries significant grief and guilt with it. Forget it. We think theyre awesome. It was infuriating. Seeing him cultivate her interests and introduce her to things I never would have has been a blessing. lets_be_honest . By keeping a few key things in mind, you can make headway in even the toughest situations. All letters are treated in complete confidence and, to protect this privacy, Fiona is unable to pass on your messages to other readers. I would rock out to Tom Petty in my room while playing with my Sanrio boxes that were full of Lisa Frank erasers. AITA for saying my husband's ex is interfering? I notice my 14-year-old daughter and her 17-year-old brother, enemies of old, enjoying a detente in the TV room over Xbox and popcorn. Wendy, this advice could not have been better. I never did the gross stuff either. Sometimes that means taking a step back and letting things calm down before you try to mediate. You couldnt easily figure out what was going on, and you probably liked the challenge, so you became an eager relationship sleuth, avidly assembling clues that seem to make the next move more predictable. But every time they think theyve got it right, they find themselves, as if in a bad dream, back at ground zero, frustrated, undermined, and terribly confused. When my family went on vacations as a kid, I didnt get a say in where we went. Husband treats 15 year old step son badly. Its like a circle of hell specifically for we of the ADHD. Her free spirit and spontaneity. I promise, the daughter will remember and cherish the efforts. As you agree, there needs to be a balance and it sounds like Dad is the only one whose realized that. Yes, he makes fun of my sister and mother and i whenever we talk a lot about Girly things, like makeup and hair, which I find annoying and a little jerky; but I dont think hes failed at parenting because of it. I was so bad at the sports I was enrolled in that I would cry and beg not to go back, because I was the worst and everyone let me know it. My eldest daughter left for university five years ago and has never come home, though I do chat with her by phone. You need to be very careful, then, to avoid reacting out of worry or false guilt. I am, but I mostly just read others, so Im boring. I think dad is being a bully. Also, by disparaging the hobbies of the daughter, he is also disparaging his wifes interests. If you are involved with a crazy-making partner, dont think youre alone. Or its hilarious I have seriously never watched football in my life, so I once got called on to do a touchdown dance. lets_be_honest I cant believe you didnt address that. We watched Eureka last year and our daughter loved it and talked about it with her friends. My free advice e-newsletter, Heroic Love, shows you how to avoid the common pitfalls that keep people from finding and keeping romantic love. How dare she share her own interests. Most of them are women. Does he like the 80s music? I always hated fishing growing up, but it meant that I got to spend time with my dad, so I went. My plan is to lock mine in the basement and bribe her into going to a local college. July 2, 2013, 12:15 pm. We are this little team of 2. I dont care if they actually do or not, hes the adult and shes the kid here, so he needs to act like it. That doesnt mean you cant enjoy shared interests together, but just do so as mother and daughter, not BFFs. Yeah, funny thing for me was, my dad put me in basketball, and he was surprisingly non-pushy about it, but he was constantly telling me I needed to be more aggressive. I would go on drives to see the eagles, fished, endured Cardinal games and college basketball games. ). He still clips those articles, and even though he and I are a ways apart politically, I can always trust them to have something well-reasoned and thoughtful to say. When you try to get them to acknowledge what they are doing by weaving the past into the present, they dont agree with your account of what happened. She may still resent her father and you! LW, I dont think youre siding with your daughter & creating an us against him mentality; you just seem to be describing how your husbands attitude has made you feel more distant towards him as well. Huge difference one is laughing with you, one is laughing at you and I think when your daughter is 12 and you are having trouble getting along that it is on the adult/father to go the extra mile and make sure that you arent being a jackass in an effort to be humorous. Did my mother? To me, there are some red flags in this letter; the fathers ridicule of the daughters interests, and his labeling her as lacking initiative because shes not into the same things he is, jump right out at me. Youre right, though. (And those are two things I didnt care for as a kid that I really like now.) She grabs every opportunity to be near him but won't actually tell him how she feels. Especially a board game like Cranium where everyone can shine in what theyre good at, and it can be good to pair up with someone youre different from. Anytime someone starts a comment with an um, I dont bother reading it because its bound to be condescending. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[120,600],'therelationshipnotes_com-mobile-leaderboard-2','ezslot_18',131,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-therelationshipnotes_com-mobile-leaderboard-2-0');if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[120,600],'therelationshipnotes_com-mobile-leaderboard-2','ezslot_19',131,'0','1'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-therelationshipnotes_com-mobile-leaderboard-2-0_1');.mobile-leaderboard-2-multi-131{border:none!important;display:block!important;float:none!important;line-height:0;margin-bottom:15px!important;margin-left:auto!important;margin-right:auto!important;margin-top:15px!important;max-width:100%!important;min-height:600px;padding:0;text-align:center!important}However, when conflict arises between a parent and child, it can be even more difficult to resolve. I take little credit for how lucky I am. One activity we all enjoyed!!!! We were really physically active and loved camping and sports, unlike the LWs daughter, but those books made us voracious readers, which in turn made us verbally proficient, intellectually curious, and capable of exploiting our imaginations in sophisticated ways. Tell you daughter its important she spend time with her dad and why. I would let him know that you are going to encourage her to hangout with him more, but he needs to also every once in a while do something she loves. My dream is to just have a commune where all my family lives together , honeybeenicki I read ahead in my history textbook during class because I liked it so much. Yeah, unless you get something you cant do like spell backwards while jumping on one foot, then it just sucks, and you feel stupid. Neither father or daughter should make disparaging remarks about the other and you shouldnt make disparaging remarks about your husband. This is actually not difficult. My mother attended maybe a handful of my softball games in the 10 years I played competitively. So if you lend your car to your best friend, your sister or even your second cousin, your insurance is most often the insurance that will pay in the event of an accident. One of the strangest experiences of my life was attending a Sci-Fi convention with her on a lark where we learned she is on a Franklin Mint plate!! . They had all sorts of questions about those eras of American history, and we watched a couple of documentaries, and then I get my kids coming in and going, Hey, there was a thing on The History Channel this weekend about Salem, and I made my dad watch it! And then in American history, they were studying colonial America just after we read it, and so I get the history teachers going, Holy shit, thank you! Or else hes doing a disservice to her. As an only child, I didnt have to share my parents, and I just happened to love the things my dad loved. Definitely. Cool! Yes, I know firsthand how much some Buffy fans just need to shut up about that blasted show. July 2, 2013, 12:57 pm. Additionally, she may worry that if you stay together, shell have to deal with the same unhappy marriage later on in her own life. I see her occasionally, but she never stays long if her father is around. Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC, Psychology and the Mystery of the "Poisoned" Schoolgirls. I think compromise and parental teamwork will go a long way here. Like I said, I consider myself a mature, intelligent adult, yet I read People magazine. I camped. A highly critical parent or parents, resulting in a high sensitivity to being judged on performance. LW, would your husband be up for a night of board games with you and your daughter? She gets too invested in her daughters life. Even if they like different kinds of books (fantasy vs. history, for example), if they both like to read, Dad can take her to Barnes & Noble and buy her a novel and a cup of coffee. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. I think most people worry about their daughters if they arent active enough and lay around watching tv or reading too much. He thinks it's ridiculous. People who are closed-off in this way often become so as a result of a previous emotional trauma or traumas. That is why he is pushing her to explore new things. Shes doing archery and piano, Id say thats enriching. More of a this is silly than yall are stupid eye roll. And thats always stuck with me, and I find myself thinking about it a lot whenever theres something I dont want to do but that I know is the right thing. On the flip side, my mother was much like LWs husband in that she always encouraged competitiveness and athleticism and things she thought were good. I know that we all love the music from our generation. July 2, 2013, 12:06 pm. They clearly saw that parent as the good guy, and are unconsciously playing out the same part, unable to stop giving even when it cannot be reciprocated. Or raising a child who should have a bigger perspective about the world and what is going on. Placing a child in the position of having to be loyal to one parent at the expense of the other parent is heinous and very damaging to the child. FIONA SAYS: It's never too late to change patterns so long as he's willing. We have a 1-year-old daughter together. In this blog post, we will explore some strategies for resolving conflict between a parent and their partners children. Asking. My mom put me in ballet because she thought it would be cute, which was fine, but I wish theyd made me do a sport for a while or a musical instrument. I simply didnt get it.) July 2, 2013, 12:00 pm, Haha, I know your story honey, and am very jealous of your mom. I mean, maybe? Think of it this way: the car insurance typically follows the car, not the driver. He sounds like a domineering and boring person. EVER. MY HUSBAND is not an emotional man and has always found it difficult to talk about how he feels. . The advice to the LW is good, but she cannot change her husbands behavior. And the activities that your husband wants your daughter to do arent horrible, they are actually really good for her. You're surely not alone. But it can get super boring waiting for that to happen. Find your shared interests and go from there? Trust that Mark would have PLENTY to say if someone wrote in replacing Buffy with sports. But the problem here is not that the daughter dislikes her dads interests. Thats unfortunate (to say the least! Go to a murder mystery night and talk about Sherlock. And we always managed to have fun and more than a few laughs. Thats unfortunate (to say the least! In all honestly though, I call up my dad now to hear about all of the new great bands out there! We watch those shows now, pre-children, but I assume well continue to do so once we have kids. If one of them moves over 100 miles away, then the arrangement changes to each meeting half way. And who knows how their relationship might blossom if you and your husband would only make nurturing it more of a priority. Finally, try to create opportunities for one-on-one time between your husband and daughter. Guy asked me out and now makes me feel bad for saying no. So sad. Our differences are what make people interesting. I think your daughter will be too, if you listen to Wendy.. I just told her she wasnt allowed to ramble off all the names of plants/flowers unless I specifically ask as I really dont care (it would be like me telling her sports stats all day). , temperance Just because you dont like Buffy and have introduced a bunch of facts that dont exist in the letter (your comment below about what the dad has been putting up with for years!?!) I desperately wanted to be an astronaut? This is a throw away account. (I highly recommend looking into how to cook with your fish encased in salt, something magical happens.). lets_be_honest But, for example, my mom used to watch I Love Lucy and Alfred Hitchcock Presents late at night, and during the summers, Id stay up late, and I gradually developed a taste for both of them. A lot of painful disappointments in life. Obsessed with dolls? And, as I am sure you know from previous experience, exploding doesn't make anything better. But if she IS uninformed, then its good for him to point it out and provide her with ways to become informed. But I loved my dad and my mom encouraged me and sometimes when I was being a brat prodded me -into hanging out with my dad. Either the Dads behavior is bad enough that she needs to draw a line and tell him to stop with the eye-rolling and turning off the TV for no good reason; or it isnt and she needs to prioritize her marriage and get back to being team parent.