Our son, 15, can be quite difficult.  He wanted to go over a friend's house and play videogames after school today BUT he has not caught up on school work and cleaned his room.  He also stayed up late.  My wife got into an argument with him about it this morning.  (He claims he is going to support his friend's father, who will commit suicide if he does not go.)  At one point, my wife says he hurt her by grabbing her wrist.  I did not see what happened.

My wife usually leaves first and then I take our son and our daughter (9) to school on my way to work.  Just as she was leaving, she says that she is going to call the police on our son because our son assaulted her.

I tried to get the kids to get ready to leave.  Our son announced that he was not going to school because he did not want his mother to know where he would be.  I called her up and told her she should not drop a bomb like that right before she leaves and I need to get them to school.  If I left without him, I would not know where he went.  So I could not leave--even to take our 9-year-old to school!  After a long time of arguing with him on the phone, she finally decided she was too late for work and came back home.  I was then able to take our daughter to school.  She later called and said that she had gotten him to school.

The positive part of this is that I did get her to clean up the mess she created and she acknowleged that she needs to think before she says things like this.  But it is still very, very frustrating.  There have been many times where she gets one of the kids extremely upset and then leaves me to get them school.  Yes, part of it is the kids' fault.  But as an adult, she has to think about the consequences of her words and actions, including how those consequences fall on other people (such as me.)

I also pointed out that if you are going to call the police, it is probably not a good idea to announce it to the person you plan to call about.