But often enough I find myself in a situation where I have to back her—but don’t know to what end. That places me into a situation where I am bound to fail.
To me that sounds like the rules that your wife sets a too complex. If you don’t understand that they make sense as an adult, they will be completely arbitary to the children.
Insightful.
The rules I am talking about are mostly about every-day routine. The grand picture of these rules is clear—but that doesn’t help for particular cases where
a) the children may know the rules or rather the pragmatics of the rules better than I and
b) I don’t know the ‘usual’ consequences with respect to rule violation.
This manifests especially if I care for the children only for a limited time and then my wife takes over again—and gets dissatisfied with the consequences of my decisions—mostly because she has to ‘clean up’ after my ‘misapplication’ of the rules.
And believe me: My children will tell me if I’m to strict but not if I’m too lax.
A corollary to this is: If you are less strict than your partner and never want to disappoint him/her, then you have to be stricter then him/him.
To me that sounds like the rules that your wife sets a too complex. If you don’t understand that they make sense as an adult, they will be completely arbitary to the children.
Insightful. The rules I am talking about are mostly about every-day routine. The grand picture of these rules is clear—but that doesn’t help for particular cases where
a) the children may know the rules or rather the pragmatics of the rules better than I and
b) I don’t know the ‘usual’ consequences with respect to rule violation.
This manifests especially if I care for the children only for a limited time and then my wife takes over again—and gets dissatisfied with the consequences of my decisions—mostly because she has to ‘clean up’ after my ‘misapplication’ of the rules. And believe me: My children will tell me if I’m to strict but not if I’m too lax.
A corollary to this is: If you are less strict than your partner and never want to disappoint him/her, then you have to be stricter then him/him.
That’s when the only thing your partner cares about is that you enforce a certain level of rules.
Sadly that has a true part in it.