One of my comments from my previous post about chores for children asked what to do when one parent has chores and the other doesn’t. I, for one, can relate to that question since my ex-husband does everything for the kids when they are with him. Maybe he is doing it out of guilt for not being with them every day, maybe he doesn’t think they should spend their time with him doing work, or maybe he just doesn’t “get” that they should be picking up after themselves, or otherwise doing certain things for themselves.
Whatever the reason is, the bottom line is that they are not required to do any sort of manual labor when they are with their father, and it definitely shows when they come home. They just assume since they had a chore-free weekend or week that they will come home to the same. Wrong!
My 10-year-old likes to remind me of how “terrible of a life” she has, and that “nobody cares about her”. All because I make her put a dish in the sink. And my three-year-old, who can’t verbalize his frustration quite like his sister, will just throw an old-fashioned temper tantrum.
I have tried to rationally (and, I admit, sometimes not-so-rationally) discuss this with my ex-husband, telling him that just because he only sees them every other weekend, or for a week here and there, he still has to act like their father. He usually agrees with me, but yet never follows through.
It is quite frustrating, and I wish I knew what to do to fix this, but in the meantime I suppose the day-home routine will remain much as it has for the past couple of years. They will continue to be spoiled with daddy, and then come home to “tough-love” mommy, where they will fight and yell and cry. But in the end, when they are responsible adults who can take care of themselves, I will know I have succeeded in my job as their mother.