This parenting gig is hard work…..
Being a dad to two girls only 16 months apart is almost a full time job on its own. Without my wife I don’t know how I would survive. I know people in this world do by choice and sometimes because of necessity, and I truly admire what it takes to raise children on your own, but I’m glad I have a partner in crime. She keeps me out of trouble all the time.
My wife and I always stay aligned when it comes to parenting the girls, well mostly, it’s not uncommon for me to say yes to something and then have to back track so we don’t have a good parent bad parent situation. We never correct each other in front of the girls and we try and stay consistent with our responses. But it’s not easy. Working fifo my wife can have 50 conversations with the girls in the week that I am gone. When I return I have to manage that to make sure I don’t undermine what my wife has said or say something that will make life hard for her like “yes you can have all your friends over on Wednesday” – I’m not the one that would have to deal with it so we need to be consistent in our approach. That and I’m sure my wife would be well pleased with me if she came home to a house full of 7yr olds on a Wednesday wondering what the hell has happened…..and I’m 1400kms away at work.
We talk most nights and are sure to tell each other if we have promised the girls something or have said no to something. At the moment it’s pretty easy as we are talking about basic things like can the girls have their iPads or can they go to the park on the weekend. It will get tougher as I can see it coming. Parties, driving, borrowing money. My wife and I will have to talk more than ever otherwise our girls will divide and conquer. It’s almost like they are built with that gene embedded in them. I have become a master asking “what did mum say” and I’ve heard my wife say “what did dad say” few times as well.
Do we get right all the time? Nope. I’ve put my foot in it a few times, to the point where one child ended up at dancing one night when she really didn’t want to go and mum said she didn’t have too, me not paying attention demanded she went and my wife ended up taking her. It was only hours later my wife explained to me what had transpired earlier and I had missed the point in the conversation where she had said Jade didn’t need to go.
I felt terrible afterwards and chalked it up to another parenting fail. We both understand we will make mistakes now and then and we role with it. If we didn’t we would end up fighting over random stuff and the girls would end up with ponies or something. It’s not an exact science but it works for us.
My wife is also amazing at guiding me back if I head off into the sunset with a conversation or promise that is not aligned with something we have agreed to earlier. This is the joys of one parent working away. It’s not perfect but we make it work, and I don’t think we are messing our girls up too much in the process.
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