Month: September 2021

Charlie wakes up in a negative mood. I can tell before she’s even out of bed by the way she keeps sniffing and picking at herself, I get up and take myself to finish sleeping on the sofa until it’s time to get up.

Sure enough, Charlie is up and fussing constantly, the day plan is easy. Evan to the nursery and Sam to the dentist after 8am. But Charlie is packing or moving things around, it’s not clear but she’s making a lot of fuss and muttering things to the children about selling the house or moving somewhere new.

She tells me that she can’t take Evan to the nursery this morning, I’m not sure why she manages to get Evan to nursery on plenty of other days like when she’s heading to work. Basically, she’s freaking me out and the children, it seems like she will explode any moment at anyone that even looks at her. I suggest that she is a bit tense and she denies anything is unusual whilst moving all the cooking aprons from the kitchen to the bedroom for some reason.

I cannot cope with this, she’s just baiting us all so she has an excuse to go off on a rant. I’m shaking with fear and realise there is no way I can work in this environment so I quickly pack my things and explain I’m going to work from the office today. Charlie is not happy about it, after I leave I can still hear her ‘talking’ to the children from two doors down the street. It’s awful for the children but I just can’t cope either and I have no idea how to deal with Charlie when she is in this place of extreme anxiety, she just becomes more controlling and aggressive than ever. She is convinced everybody else is wrong all the time. I message a good neighbour who knows it’s difficult and ask her to check on Charlie and the children later in the morning.

When I get home, I’ve no idea how the day has gone. Ollie is in a very uncooperative mood. I want to help him so badly but Charlie just interferes and is negative to him all the time. Sam says she didn’t get to the dentist, I’m not sure why but apparently it was too hard for Charlie to take both Ollie & Sam at the same time. Charlie wanted me to stay home and keep Ollie there. It’s really annoying as Sam was worried about the appointment and seemed to improve after I gave her some assurances which will now all have to happen over again.

Quite honestly it’s ridiculous, anybody else wouldn’t think twice about taking them both along if that’s what needed to be done.

Our wedding anniversary. I was hoping to avoid this with no drama and stayed out of Charlie’s way. She has been her usual passive aggressive self recently. Lots of back chat and following me around so it’s impossible to talk with the children. It’s been an awkward time.

By the evening, it’s obvious Charlie wants us to have a meal separate from the children, she’s lingering around making remarks that basically she wants me to sort something out and I haven’t. Eventually I go to cook tea and she takes over saying she’ll do it. She makes food for the 3 children and I stay out the way, all through meal time she never says a positive or affirming thing, just negatives on the children’s behaviour.

I can tell she is anxious but why should I have to be pushed around by her demands. Why can’t I just make myself some food to eat when I’m hungry. I literally cannot get 30 seconds with any of the children before Charlie starts hovering around. Nobody is looking after Evan and eventually Charlie loses it and is swearing in front of the children.

I grit my teeth and present a cam face. Eventually the children are all in bed – I explain to Charlie that I wasn’t planning anything, we’ve done really well at not fighting for all of September. Charlie is major grumpy, complains that I don’t want to ‘chill’ with her, even though she is the least chilled person I know.

I am feeling the pressure from Charlie so I agree if she gets food I’ll eat it. Charlie storms off swearing still, slamming doors and I can hear the tyres squealing as she drives off. I hope she’s OK, but I can’t live my life continually being responsible for Charlies out of control behaviour. I have done nothing today to deserve a hard time, I’ve done some cleaning/tidying, tried to look after the children in between her fussing around and not made any remarks that could be taken the wrong way.

Every wedding anniversary is the same, Charlie just needs to feel in control of something and when she’s not, she has a meltdown. It’s not like we even get on or enjoy being around each other. The anniversary is just a painful reminder of how we (I?) got stuck in this mess.

Charlie is messing with the children’s money. For the past few years I’ve been trying to create a process that works for the children’s pocket money.

We used to give them cash but Charlie starting being very controlling and linked pocket money to jobs like cleaning the toilet. Every week the rules seemed to change and the children seemed to get whatever Charlie felt like giving them, plus money sometimes seemed to disappear.

To make things clearer 6 months ago I got a ‘money book’ each for Ollie & Sam and wrote ‘bank of Mum & Dad’ on them. The basic premise was that each entry got a row on a page just like in accounting. Any changes or irregularities would be clear to see. To keep it as simple as possible, I had also been putting the money in weekly with Ollie & Sam when Charlie wasn’t around.

It seemed to be going well. In recent weeks though, it’s clear Charlie is still tampering with the children’s money. Entries in the books have been crossed out and numbers on other rows are being modified to change the sums. How are we supposed to teach the children financial management if we can’t even follow the rules.

The children are frustrated that the money they thought they had is being changed out of their control. I try to raise it with Charlie, but she is having none of it. She insists that she has a right to make all the decisions on the children’s money and in her view, there is nothing wrong with what she is doing.

Charlie is distracted today. Yesterday I brought a very large expensive model set. I’ve wanted it for four years since before it was released and it’s a big deal for me to finally get it. The family know this is the one thing I have wanted for ages.

Charlie however needs to make it about her and compensate, she’s suddenly decided that now is the time to buy a piano. And it has to be a real piano which will require hiring a moving firm. She’s been spending a lot of time on her laptop looking at piano’s yesterday and this morning. She’s not really interested in the children all morning her focus is a piano, but then she finds a piano and asks Ollie to go with her.

I am not sure what happened next as I am sweeping in the yard. When I come in Charlie is driving away in the car and Ollie is in tears inside. He says Mum called him ‘stupid’ and went off. It’s frustrating, Charlie’s needs and distractions are coming before the children.

Yesterday was constant chaos trying to deal with Charlie’s chaos.

I have kept away from Charlie who is still anxious. It’s school photo day and Sam is excited about it, she wants to look her best. She tries to tell Charlie about sibling photos but Charlie insists they don’t do sibling photos. Of course they do sibling photos, we got an email about them last week – when I check my email’s there is another message from this morning reminding us they are on before school.

I am not sure why Charlie is lying about this but it’s a shame for the children. Something is making Charlie anxious again and I can’t think of any reason for it.

It’s bedtime. Charlie had a coursework deadline. I picked up the children from school, took Sam to her club and cooked tea. I’ve got Evan into her pyjamas and Evan wants to do a book, but Charlie is there and says she’s ready to give her a breast feed. So I leave Evan & Charlie in bedroom.

At that moment, Sam gets back from guides, she comes straight in, thrusts paper at me and shouts that I must read it right now. I want to calm her down and explain she can’t just shout at people because she’s excited about something so I try to calm her down. But Charlie is right there, I can tell she wants to know what the paper says and she’s distracting Sam by talking about tea.

I have to ask Charlie to stop so I can respond to Sam’s behaviour. Charlie stops and stands right there glaring at us whilst I try to slow Sam down a bit. The paper is just about no uniform for the end of term club party next Monday. As soon as Sam has finished repeating her information more calmly, Charlie is taking over and making out she is sorting Sam’s food, however I have it all on the table ready.

All the fuss makes Ollie flustered, he wants to play on the laptop but I have blocked his Wi-Fi until he sorts his tasks. I have told him he needs to make his school lunch and finish gluing his science project which is due tomorrow. But Charlie who was supposed to be feeding Evan is now trying to organise Ollie as well and giving him different instructions. I ask her to go and feed Evan because that’s what she said she was going to do.

Then Charlie gets angry and accuses me of interfering, totally typical behaviour from Charlie to be disruptive and then suggest everybody is exhibiting the very behaviour she is doing. I can’t see how I’ve interfered, I left her with Evan when she asked.

The noise alerts the children, Ollie & Sam rush in and are telling Charlie & I not to fight – it’s so tough, Charlie is accusing me of something I haven’t done. If she wasn’t here or had just fed Evan, then everything would be organised and calm. It’s impossible to manage the children when Charlie is following me and undermining me. Evan has now run off and Charlie is trying to call her from across the house, I suggest she goes and picks her up but she refuses and Ollie does it instead.

Eventually, I get Charlie and Evan off in a room feeding, but Charlie is muttering loud enough for the children to hear about how unhappy she is and how unsupported she feels. This is after I’ve just supported her all day whilst she hid and insisted she had coursework that needed doing.

Yesterday was fathers day, Charlie spent the entire day doing her assignment and even asked me to take the children off so she could get more quiet to work. However the house was filthy, we had ants in the bedroom and dining area, I spent the whole day cleaning and scrubbing both rooms, the children also helped with some of the cleaning. The day before that I had taken the children out for the day – we went to the beach and Charlie came along. She made no mention of any assignment deadlines and even saw a bookshop she wanted to visit on the way back. We stopped off and she went in for an hour whilst I was sat in the car outside with Evan.

Charlie is utterly ungrateful for all the support she gets. She’s done her own thing the whole weekend whilst everybody else has accommodated her. She should have stayed home on the Saturday or at least made it known she had a lot of coursework to do. I’ve worked my socks off and all she can do is complain and mutter in the presence of the children who have done nothing wrong. As a final sign of Charlies contempt for the house, she’s left soiled sanitary towels in the bathroom bin and the lid off so everybody including the children can see it there. It’s filthy and just another sign of Charlie’s attitude towards her family.

It is Parent teacher eve at school. I offered Charlie chance to go, but she turned it down so I went.

Both Children had very Positive feedback from teachers who seemed to know the children well. Later in the evening, I discussed the feedback with Charlie. She went on about how the school system is bad for them even though they both have strong grades. Then Charlie started on Sam having behaviour issues.

Sam’s teacher had been clear that her behaviour at school is very Good, the same as all her other teachers have said. I think Sam struggles with Charlie who is constantly passive aggressive and makes out that people around her are always in the wrong. So I tried suggesting to Charlie that Sam finds family life hard and perhaps Charlie needs to organise herself better before trying to organise the children.

Charlie was having none of it, then I said children find it hard when both parents are giving instructions. I explained how I hold back sometimes and suggested Charlie could do the same but Charlie said they are her children and she can talk to them whenever she likes. And this is a major issue in our parenting. Charlie will undermine me whenever she pleases, which is quite often even though it has a negative impact on the children.

Charlie is clearly not happy, she wants me to side with her view that Sam has significant behavioural issues. It just feels to me like this is yet another method of control. If Charlie can create a narrative for the children that they have problems, Charlie can present herself as the solution and increase her dominance over the children’s lives.

This term, Charlie has been working more. I told Charlie how the children have progressed along way since I’ve been getting them to school. They can now get up and ready themselves with out fuss, that’s something Charlie never manged. School days use to start with lots of shouting and blaming everybody. Charlie is unaccepting even though I chose my words carefully to not suggest any fault or blame. Charlie says she’s going to reduce her working days next year, I can see she doesn’t like not being in control even though the children are better for it.

Charlie goes off to bed, I hang back as I can feel her anxiety. She crashes around a bit upstairs and is muttering to herself in the bathroom. She makes me feel very uncomfortable, but I’m just trying to steer towards better parenting for the children.