Ah, the drama of modern-day parenting! It’s like a Netflix soap opera that no one asked for but everyone is strangely addicted to. Today, we dive into a scintillating story sourced from the always-entertaining carnival of chaos that is Reddit. Hold onto your mojitos, ladies and gents!
Our protagonist, a 33-year-old business mogul, let’s call him Sam, is in a bit of a pickle. Sam’s job has him travelling more than a free-spirited millennial with a beaten-up van and a penchant for Instagram sunsets. His visits home are shorter than a cat’s attention span, leaving his wife, let’s call her Emily, a 30-year-old stay-at-home-mother-turned-small-business-entrepreneur, holding down the fort.
The Drama Unfolds
So here’s the setup: Sam is out globetrotting once again when Emily drops an atomic-size text bomb. Their daughter had a “rough day,” complete with her brothers engaged in WWE-level brawling. The poor girl was crying for Sam like he was a rock star at a tween concert. But did Emily let her call him? Nope. Why? Because she was—wait for it—“overstimulated.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but “overstimulated” sounds like something you’d read on the side of a headache pill bottle. But I digress. Sam, smooth operator that he is, calls Emily the minute he spots the trigger word. They chit-chat, he showers her with affirmations (because happy wife, less strife, am I right?), and then she pops the million-dollar question: “Are you mad that I didn’t let her call you?”
Big Yikes
Sam, bless his heart, takes the no-BS approach. He’s not mad per se, but he’s definitely upset that he wasn’t paged when one of his offspring had an epic meltdown. He even dares to ask how Emily would feel if the shoe were on the other foot. And here’s where things go from lukewarm to boiling. Emily, already teetering on the edge of sanity, erupts like a Diet Coke and Mentos experiment.
According to Emily, Sam has no clue what she endures daily—you know, the usual SAHM gig of wrangling chaos and performing minor miracles. The emotional rollercoaster peaks when Sam questions why she doesn’t allow the kids to phone in their dad during
Original story
Before we go into the situation, I (33M) own my own company, but the job requires me to be away from home for weeks at a time. When I am home it’s usually only for 4-5 days before leaving for work again.
My wife (30F) is a SAHM who is often overstimulated and who just recently started her own small business. Now on with the situation.
So my wife text me this evening saying I may want call my daughter tomorrow and talk to her, because she’s had a rough day. According to her my daughter was tired our two boys were fighting and this caused my daughter to become upset and start crying for me.
My wife being overstimulated didn’t let her call me so she could talk to me. When I asked why my daughter wasn’t able to call me my wife responded with “I was overstimulated and just wanted them to go to sleep.
”
When I read the word “overstimulated” I called her. My wife’s love language is affirmation and I’ve learned that calling and giving her words of affirmation helps her calm down.
We talk for several minutes with me telling her how great of a job she’s doing with the kids and with sales at her business. Because honestly she has been doing great with keeping the business up and holding down the home front.
Then she asked, “are you mad that I didn’t let her call you?” I said “no but it does upset me when I find out one of my children was literally verbally crying for me but wasn’t allowed to call me.
”
This caused her to blow up on me saying I don’t know what she goes through on a daily basis because I’m always gone for work and that she feels like I don’t respect her feelings as much as I do our children’s feelings. So I brought up that this wasn’t the first time she’s done this and asked her how it would make her feel if one of the kids were crying for her but weren’t allowed to call her.
She again said I wasn’t considering her feelings. So I asked her why she doesn’t let them call me if they’ve been “bad”.
And she replied “I’m hanging up now. I don’t appreciated being told I gate keep my kids phone time with their dad as a form of punishment or that your not respecting that I didn’t let her call because I was overstimulated.
Call her in the morning.” And she hung up.
I never once downplayed the fact she was overstimulated. I just pointed out that I don’t want my kids to EVER feel like they can’t call me, when they need me to talk to them after a bad day, because it might cause someone else to be upset.
So AITA?
TL;DR my wife didn’t let my daughter call me when my daughter was upset and is now mad that I implied she gate keeps their phone time with when she’s overstimulated or trying to punish them.
Edit: I call my wife and kids every morning and FaceTime them for about two hours each night.