He Accused His Girlfriend Of Being A Bad Parent Because She’s Inconsistent When It Comes To Enforcing Rules For Her Daughter
This 38-year-old man’s girlfriend, 33, doesn’t have many rules that she expects her 8-year-old to follow. But whenever she does create rules, she doesn’t enforce them on a consistent basis.
When her daughter doesn’t follow her rules, she screams at her, which results in her daughter yelling back, kicking, hitting, throwing objects, and spitting.
For a year, he and his girlfriend have been living in an apartment together. Over the last several months, he’s watched this vicious cycle repeat constantly, and he’s understandably sick of it.
“I’ve repeatedly talked gently with my girlfriend about this, telling her I think she needs to be more consistent in her parenting and that she needs to stop yelling at her daughter. At one point, I even told her that yelling as she does at her daughter is abusive,” he said.
As an example of his girlfriend’s inconsistency with setting and following rules, she told her daughter that the rule was that she had to go to bed at 8:30 p.m. every night. However, she doesn’t follow through with making sure that her daughter does this.
Instead, he is the one who has to remind her daughter that her bedtime is in 10 minutes.
Unfortunately, her daughter isn’t thrilled when he does this, and she usually starts screaming in rage, which leads to his girlfriend screaming at her, also aggressively, that it’s time for bed.
If he isn’t the one trying to enforce the bedtime rule, his girlfriend doesn’t take the initiative, so her daughter then winds up not going to sleep until 10 p.m. or 10:30 p.m. When this happens, his girlfriend whines that her daughter isn’t sleeping enough.
“Her daughter also has a phone because she is diabetic and has to call her mom before she eats to know how much insulin to inject. Then, she still has the phone,” he explained.
Moon Safari – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
“Her mom has said several times, ‘She should only be able to use her phone for one hour per day,’ but then she never actually enforces this. It’s always me who has to say something.”
Every time he has discussions with his girlfriend about these problems, she rationalizes away her inconsistent parenting and makes excuses for why she can’t enforce the rules she wants to set for her daughter.
She claims that she’s too exhausted to argue with her daughter and that she’s scared her daughter will either break something fragile or yell and bother their neighbors.
During these conversations, she always tells him that she has no idea how to resolve these issues with her daughter’s behavior.
Time and time again, he tells his girlfriend that when she makes rules for her daughter, there has to be consistency.
“The other night, she said, ‘I try to make you happy, but it doesn’t work. I get that she is overworked and exhausted (she leaves for work at 6:30 a.m. and gets home at 4 p.m.), but I feel she is being a lazy parent. Not enforcing rules and then yelling at her daughter for not following them or for misbehaving doesn’t work,” he shared.
From his perspective, his girlfriend doesn’t want to admit that there is an issue, and she doesn’t seem open to changing her parenting in order to fix the situation.
Because she often allows her daughter to do what she wants, her daughter is becoming incredibly spoiled.
He knows he wouldn’t be able to put up with that, and he can’t continue living in an environment like this.
No matter how hard he’s tried to express to his girlfriend the importance of consistent parenting, discipline, and having clear expectations for her daughter, the two of them always have huge arguments about it.
He’s deeply in love with his girlfriend, and he feels terrible that he told her she’s a terrible parent, but he doesn’t know what else he can do. He’s so irritated and has done everything he can think of to reason with her.
Even though he acknowledged that it’s not easy to hear the brutal reality, he thought that it was crucial she knew her parenting wasn’t up to par.
Throughout this relationship, he has been as physically and emotionally available as possible for both his girlfriend and her daughter, and he’s loved them as much as he can.
From the very beginning, he intended for this to be a serious relationship.
Now, he’s debating on breaking up with his girlfriend if her parenting doesn’t improve.
He clarified that during the conversation with his girlfriend, he complimented the ways in which she’s a good mother, which included her emotional availability, the amount of time she spends with her, and how affectionate she is.
What advice would you give him?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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