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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Seriously, I need to know.  And no one loves to call out bad parenting like dcum.  My husband's criticism is driving me crazy, literally.  First, my work interferes with my parenting and doesn't pay enough, either.  If I work too much, he says I am too stressed and busy and it's bad for our family.  If I don't work enough, he says I don't make enough money and it's bad for our family.  I spent my son's elementary years doing volunteer work in the classroom like I worked there, working in the evenings and on weekends, and he complained I ruined every weekend by working (but still didn't make enough money).  Right now I work about 15-20 hours a week, flexible (but unpredictable and odd), and sometimes he has to make my son dinner or lunch or take him to something, which makes him mad because he works all day (from home).  When I work, I work online, with camera and mic on the whole time, and I can't do anything else.  My husband gets angry that I can't be bothered during that time.  He also doesn't think I should ignore him and my son while I'm working because I don't make enough money. and that makes him angry.

I am not a good cook.  I try, I have a collection of cookbooks, but still, I'm not a good cook.  Often I'm busy with work or just tired (maybe I'm just lazy, I'm not sure, but I feel tired) and I cook prepared food.   Like, Trader Joe meals that are frozen and you put them in a pan.  Or I make simple things, like hot dogs, or chicken drumsticks with frozen corn and a microwaved potato. It's sad, I know, but it takes a long time to find a new recipe and make something fancy.  Sometimes I buy ingredients planning to cook something fancy, but never get to it, and the ingredients go bad.  He gets angry I'm wasting food that he pays for (actually, my salary pays for groceries, but he figures my contribution doesn't count since he pays for everything else).  My son is overweight, and I think it's because he sits on the couch all day playing video games, but my husband says I feed him bad food.  I honestly don't know what else to feed him and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't eat it anyway (my husband says if I die then he will feed my son only super healthy food and my son will eat it.  Guess I'll never know.)

My son, who is in 5th grade, is not doing well in school with distance learning.  I spent most of the year sitting next to him, trying to get him to focus, but our DL was pretty awful.  Just slide shows, no cameras or sound.  My son couldn't do it, wouldn't do it, just eventually got up and refused to even look at the computer anymore.  So I hired tutors and signed him up for outschool classes.  I made binders for each subject, photographed work and sent it to his teachers to try to show them he was doing something.  It was expensive.  It worked a little.  My husband seems to think if he were not working all day making all the important money, then he could have done better than I did.  I'm a teacher, so I don't know, but that's what he thinks.

Oh, and I don't clean that much.  The house is not a pig sty or anything, but it's not great.

My son is unhappy because he doesn't see his friends much.  I try to host parties (well, outdoor, distanced covid parties with 4 kids) to help him stay in touch with kids, but his two close friends don't go outside much.  They are too busy doing homework and practicing violins or piano.  My husband says we should be doing that, but my son refused to continue with musical instruments after everything went virtual.  I tried, but you can't force a big 11 year old to do much that he doesn't want to do.  Another parenting failure is that when my son is screaming that his life is awful and he wants to die, the stress is too much for me to keep forcing him to do what he doesn't want to do.

So there, all the ways I am failing as a parent.  Am I really bad, or is my husband just too critical?  Does anyone else do these things?  I think the worst part of it is that I can't do better.  This is actually my best.  That's sad, right?

[/quote]

How much do you make and what does DH make?[/quote]

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