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Contact the school IEP team that works with your daughter. Someone needs to explain to your wife what she is doing and how it has potential harm for your child. Your daughter has special needs, and requires support to be successful in her school career.
You as her parent have to take the first line in protecting her, even if it is from your wife's inability to make the right choices where your daughter is concerned. As a co-parent you have to be the solution to this to protect your child.
This saddens me so much. I have an adult son that has learning disabilities and thank goodness he had the help that was in place to help meet his needs as a school aged child.
Right now imo what your wife is doing is called neglect.....she is neglecting your child's needs for sleep and proper parenting especially critical for a special needs child.
I feel my wife is destroying our daughter's education and health, while she thinks she is helping our daughter.
My daughter is in 8th grade, has a learning disability (poor reading comprehension). She has special tutoring and special school programs to assist as much as possible.
Despite this issue, my wife puts my daughter into tons of extra-curricular activities - dance, piano, soccer, tennist, etc. I feel that is way too much.
And that's not the worst of it. My wife routinely keeps our daughter up well past midnight, to 2am, even 3am at times, to do homework. I told our daughter that if she can't finish homework by 11pm, forget about homework and just go to bed and get a good night's rest.
My wife is so obsessed with our daughter finishing her homework that she keeps her up to crazy hours to do it. And she'll even try to do our daughter's homework for her, just so she can "finish" the homework.
I told my wife if our daughter should fall behind a grade, we should do so and let her learn at her own pace. My wife won't hear any of it, nor will she reduce the extra-curricular activities.
I had a huge argument with my wife tonight, when I was hugely upset that my daughter was still up at 2:30am doing homework. We got into a major fight.
I told my daughter she should forget about going to school in the morning if she is up past 1am. There's no point to going to school and being half-asleep. I told my wife she is destroying our daughter's confidence and education, forcing her up so late to do some homework. I told my wife she should cancel all extra-curricular activity if our daughter can't finish her homework without staying past 11pm.
My wife of course was completely indignant to my pleas. We have had fights about this before and she won't listen.
I am beyond frustrated and upset here. What can you all suggest to help??
This is very worrisome. It's not healthy to stay up to the wee hours; it causes the body to produce stress hormones, which is not healthy as a chronic regimen. It completely disturbs her natural sleep cycle. Furthermore, in women, night-shift work, which basically is what your wife is imposing on your daughter, has been proven to cause breast cancer. An unnatural sleep regimen can also cause weight gain. This is setting your daughter up for hell in her teen years.
Tell your wife that if completed homework is so important to her, she must back off on the extracurricular activities. It's a matter of priorities. I thought extracurriculars were something kids requested, not something parents imposed. When did it come to be something parents forced on their kids? It's a good way to raise kids who hate music lessons and soccer.
Forcing your daughter to stay up late doing homework not only is hazardous to physical health, it's downright abusive. I'm sure your daughter now has a good deal of anxiety connected with homework, and may feel a lot of distress about her ability to do schoolwork in general. This will very likely all backfire, if not in HS, certainly in college. She needs to set up healthy, happy habits now, so that she'll be able to get along on her own steam, her own time-management practices, if she goes to college.
Good luck, dad. Maybe you could discuss it with the pediatrician, and get his support for a more humane schedule, so it doesn't come down to a big fight between you and your wife? If your daughter hears you fighting over her schedule, she'll think she's the "bad" one. She could internalize even more negative messages, blaming herself.
Couple counseling, perhaps? Family counseling? Could the daughter's special-needs instructors at school offer a professional opinion on the matter? Your family's in trouble, and you need all the help you can get. Please keep us posted.
In addition to counseling and parenting classes, your wife needs a job. She won't have the energy for all of that nonsense if she's on someone else's time clock. Load HER schedule up, LOL!
Instead of fighting with your wife everyday on staying up vs. finishing homework. Why don't you put your foot down and tell her your daughter will not be involved in any extracurricular activity or maybe limit it to 1 per semester. That is what most parents do is limit to 1 activity per kid. This way your having one major fight per season & not every night
Also she is your daughter, speak up & take control
If you choose to follow the advice of these two, skip the counselors and just go start to a divorce lawyer, because that is where it will end up. If that is your plan anyway well then don't beat around the bush.
If your choice is to eventually work past this, then ultimatums and taking control are the wrong avenues.
Whatever her reasoning, if your description of the situation is accurate ("Regularly keeping your daughter up until 2-3 a.m. to do homework), this has moved beyond motivation into the realm of emotional/physical child abuse, and must stop! Likewise, involvement in multiple extra-curricular activities (at the expense of homework and sleep) makes the choice of these activities a highly questionable decision.
-- It sounds like your wife is vicariously addicted to your daughter's performance ... and in denial that her abusive behavior is about herself, not your daughter. (You wife is likely compensating through your daughter, for some lack or deficiency she feels in her own life). Somehow, for the safety and security of your daughter, you are going to have to intervene as forcefully as necessary to change this situation.
Whatever her reasoning, if your description of the situation is accurate ("Regularly keeping your daughter up until 2-3 a.m. to do homework), this has moved beyond motivation into the realm of emotional/physical child abuse, and must stop! Likewise, involvement in multiple extra-curricular activities (at the expense of homework and sleep) makes the choice of these activities a highly questionable decision.
This. Your wife is teaching your daughter to make very bad choices for life going forward: a complete absence of setting priorities, no recognition of the consequences of over-scheduling and poor decision-making. How does your daughter feel about all this? My guess is that this is affecting her emotionally in creating stress and anxiety, plus it's setting her up to rebel big time in HS. Have you talked to your daughter, or noticed how she talks about her extra-curriculars, and the homework load? You must have observed that she's not the happiest of campers....?
You need participate as a parent, yesterday. Your wife needs a therapist. If she will not amend her plans for your daughter, you need to force her to. This may require getting a divorce and full custody if she persists.
What does your daughter want to do extracurricular-wise? It is important she get to find her gifts, but not fulfill your wife's image of perfect child. Her activities should be fun & rewarding for her....not an ordeal.
Doing homework until 2AM is crazy for anyone. What do the school professionals say she should be accomplishing in what timeframe? Get professional advice & follow it.
There is nothing wrong with being kept longer in one grade level until mastery can be accomplished. Absolutely nothing. It is more important to develop confidence and self worth than follow someone else's accomplishment schedule.
If you choose to follow the advice of these two, skip the counselors and just go start to a divorce lawyer, because that is where it will end up. If that is your plan anyway well then don't beat around the bush.
If your choice is to eventually work past this, then ultimatums and taking control are the wrong avenues.
Um ... what if the ultimatum was about seeing a counselor?
What if, instead of homework, the mother was allowing the daughter to gorge herself on everything she wanted whenever she wanted? Or take drugs till 2 am? Or talk to older guys online?
At some point, a parent has to put a foot down when their child is engaging in unhealthy behavior, especially when the one encouraging the behavior is the other parent.
A classmate of mine had a mother like your child's mother. She had to be the best at all she did - make straight As, be a cheerleader, be first chair in orchestra, have the lead in school plays, be best dressed, win beauty pageants...
Her mother fed her No-Doze to ensure those good grades, starting at around age 13. Like your wife, she often did projects and homework for my classmate - somehow the teachers never questioned all those clever poems and essays my classmate supposedly wrote at home, although she could not produce similar writing in the classroom.
My classmate also cheated when necessary, and was never caught. She had one boyfriend after another, attracted like moths to her flame but moving on after a few weeks, when they learned how little substance and how much insecurity there was behind the pretty face. By 14, she was chain-smoking to cope with stress. Her mother knew it and didn't care, as long as the façade was maintained.
My classmate graduated, and with her mother, made a Grand Tour of Europe, went to college, married early (of course it was a huge wedding, with 1,000 guests), and had two small children.
The youngest was a tiny baby when my classmate took her life in a extremely painful, not-immediate way. While she was hospitalized, she expressed regret and said she wanted to live -but it was too late. She never did really live free of her mother's influence and control, of course...
Please do whatever is necessary to save your daughter from a similar tragedy. If you must, turn off the breaker box at 11:00 p.m. Talk to your child, who probably feels completely exhausted and worn down by the pressure her mother is placing upon her. She is a slave to her mother's insanity at this point. Counseling is a good idea - but saving your daughter must come first.
Does your daughter have an IEP? What accommodations/modifications does she have?
If she does not have an IEP, you need to ask the school to see if she qualifies for Special Education. (You mentioned special programs, but that doesn't necessarily mean SpEd, especially in an RtI school.)
If she has an IEP and assignment modifications are not part of it, you need to request them at the next renewal. Talk to the SpEd teacher and they may be able to unofficially begin this immediately.
Your ex-wife definitely needs to get some kind of assistance/advice.
Does your daughter enjoy all of the extra curriculars? Is she willing to give some up?
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