Month: November 2021

Before school, Charlie is harassing Ollie big time. He’s not ready this morning – because we all had a big day out yesterday and he didn’t do his jobs the night before. It’s clear that Ollie just needs 5 mins to ‘reset’ and then he will get himself organised.

Charlie is shouting at him to do different tasks, he is shouting back that he want’s leaving alone. As he moves away to different rooms, she is following him. It’s awkward to observe.

As an example of how hard it is to communicate anything to Charlie. The other day, Charlie was cooking three pizza’s for tea. When she does this, she always uses one of our large pizza trays which does not fit in the dishwasher. I gently suggested to her that she used the smaller trays which are still large enough and do fit in the dishwasher. Charlie immediately replied that she did that every time in a slightly offended tone.

Fifteen minutes later, the pizza is done and she has used the larger tray. It’s not a big deal, but we can’t even communicate politely about such a mundane and trivial issue – and Charlie can’t even match her own behaviour with her words. This is the kind of daily challenge there is to communicate anything with Charlie. She just does not listen to myself or the children, and is immediately defensive of her actions even when it’s trivial. So when Ollie is trying to ask her to give him space and she is not hearing him, this behaviour is very difficult to handle.

I have been following the Birthday card politics since Ollies Birthday. On his birthday, I put up all the cards, just arranged in no specific order so they looked presentable on top of a cupboard. The next day I noticed they had been re-arranged and all the cards from my family & friends to Ollie had been quietly shifted to the back.

Charlie was away for a couple of days until yesterday. Today, I notice that the cards have been arranged again. The cards from my family & friends have silently vanished. Charlie is very good at vanishing things, so I look around. The cards are not in the usual bins.

She also vanished a recipe book that she got from my Mum for her birthday, that was a book she had mentioned she wanted several times. Yet Charlie will tell people my Mum is the one who ignores her. She also tells people that my family do not support us. But once again it is Charlie that is blocking the relationship between the children and their family.

It is a Monday school day. Charlie is an hour later out of bed than the children.

It’s obvious from the children that they are a bit twitchy this morning and need a bit of guidance. Ollie & Sam are being negative and I steer them around for an hour until Charlie is out of bed. Then I need to get to work in my office. Charlie must know the children are twitchy as she will have heard it. But she leaves them be until school time and they are mostly well behaved.

Time comes for school and Charlie is not in control, it goes crazy. Charlie is arguing with Ollie, then Sam- she’s telling them to get ready to go, but not following through herself. It’s time to go, the children have been told to get ready, but Charlie has vanished. I find Sam writing swear words about Charlie on a whiteboard in the kitchen.

This is why the children mess around. Charlie tells them to get ready and then she goes off an does something else. I have to almost force the children out of the house before Charlie appears and says she’s doing the washing. I ask Charlie why she doesn’t take children to school and then do the washing.

It’s like she shouts at them, gets them all jumpy and then neglects them right when she should be following through on making them do what she has just said. Charlie blames me, she says she can do what she wants and now the children see we are shouting as Charlie slams yet another door as hard as she can.

This is where the children learn there negative angry behaviour that they copy. It is annoying to see it happening when it could so easily be avoided by being there for the children at a time when it is clear they need a bit of direction.

Ollies Birthday. Charlie hasn’t sorted a present for Ollie from her parents, she’s been mentioning it all week but hasn’t sorted it out.

To be fair, it has been a very busy week with 3 of us sick, another birthday birthday and a school trip for Sam. So some things haven’t been done yet.

But Charlie now wants all family gifts to be held including from my family until she is sorted. In the morning she is texting me not to do family gifts, but then she goes out and comes back, still with nothing from her parents.

It is not my families fault that Charlie isn’t organised, so later in the day I go ahead and give Ollie his presents from my family. Charlie stays in the next room muttering the whole time. It is a massive shame she can’t be happy for Ollies birthday and see it is about him. The children can hear what she is saying too. I have to hide afterwards with Evan downstairs to diffuse the situation, I tell Ollie to move his presents to his room as well so that there is less for Charlie to be negative towards.

Charlie was in major mood this eve. She found out she hadn’t been offered an interview she wanted. It is bad news, but Charlie makes huge fuss, lots of huffing, banging drawers, sounds like she’s crying in the loo.

Everybody has to know that she is having a bad moment. She scrubs out our family name and replaces it with her maiden name on a different letter she got in the post then shreds it and puts it in the bin. It’s a loan letter that she needs to respond to. I have no idea what she will do about that now. Probably ignore it until she gets an overdue notice.

Fortunately she does conceal the worst of it from the children, but after children are asleep I can hear her ranting downstairs for 15 minutes. It sounds like things are crashing off her desk as well so there’s some physical outworking of her feelings. It is scary to be near somebody behaving like this in your house. I just keep tucked away in the bedroom and pretending I haven’t noticed.

It feels like Charlie is ready to explode and I don’t want her to start waking the children up. I make sure to get to bed before she does and look like I’m already sleep.

Ollie & Charlie were fighting in the morning. Ollie told Charlie that he feels bullied by her. It’s an incredible statement to hear from a child to his mother.

Charlie is having none of it and keeps bugging him over minor things. She eventually heads out racing down the road in the car with Evan. She is only late because she spent ages in bed and got up after everybody else. It is not fair to take out her lateness and blame it on others who aren’t even going with her.

I have a chat with Ollie on the way to school and encourage him to keep out of Mums way in the mornings. He gets a whole hour after she has gone to work before he needs to go to school, so I suggest perhaps he could stay in bed longer.