It was an ideal arrangement. The two families would get together for the holiday, have dinner, watch football, make a day of it. Then Ellen and Tom would go off for a couple of days, leaving the boys behind with the Stephensons. The parents would have some privacy, the boys could play with their friends, and the Stephensons would get the prize for “best anniversary present.” It was, after all, their Vermont chalet that Ellen and Tom would be using, their offer of babysitting that was so hard to resist.

The morning of their getaway, Ellen was anxious about leaving. As usual, the boys were busy entertaining themselves, impervious to anything else. They were constructing the Eiffel Tower out of Legos.

Then, too, there was the alleged premise of the weekend: A grown-up getaway, minus children, was a fine idea in theory. In practice, though, it meant being with Tom.

They arrived at the chalet Friday afternoon, early enough to take in the quirky magnificence of the site. The chalet was built into the mountain, as if the entire back wall were formed of mountainous rock.

Despite the dramatic setting, that first day of vacation was anything but. Ellen missed the drama of her daily life. There was no commotion in the next room, no mock-battle to break up. The raucous sounds of her little warriors had been plucked out of the day. In their place was a silence filled by tiny keyboard strokes ”“ the digital whisperings of Tom at work.

For Tom, the chalet was merely a form of displacement. In his world, vacation meant work with a scenic view.

They called the Stephensons that first night to check on the boys. Ellen wanted to know every detail of their day; Tom just wanted to know that they weren’t too much of a bother.

The next morning, Ellen woke up in a changed mood. What had seemed like a deafening silence only the day before started to feel almost restful. The absence of the boys romping in the next room was no longer a hole in her day. Their noise was a distraction she was glad to be without. Caught off guard by her own response, she began to think about something Tom had been saying for years.

Ever since the boys started school, Tom had complained about their behavior. He would call them “a nuisance” and “a pain in the neck” ”“ not to their faces, but to his wife. Ellen would listen to his insults, unable to fathom how a father could say such things. She, of course, defended the boys ”“ their right to play, to make noise, to act like kids.

What Tom failed to realize was that every time he went off on this theme, he was insulting Ellen. Sure, these were his kids, too, but it was her style of parenting that seemed so footloose, so undisciplined. The deliberate freedoms she gave their boys ”“ the chance to be full-fledged, unabashed kids ”“ were not to his liking. In Tom’s view, Ellen was not the good parent with a plan; she was the lax mother whose free-range kids were constantly invading his turf.

None of this made any dent on Ellen until the peacefulness of that weekend set in. Of course she could never accept Tom’s epithets about their sons, but the unobstructed quiet was, admittedly, new. She could see, for the first time, that maybe the boys really were too rambunctious at times; that perhaps they didn’t respect their father’s privacy or his need for a quiet place where he could work at home ”“ that they weren’t, alas, perfect. She was always so busy defending them against Tom’s insults that she never really heard what he was saying.

By day three, the boys were ready to go home. They had recycled their Legos all weekend, razing the Eiffel Tower and putting up other landmarks in its place. Tom and Ellen, meanwhile, had spent their quietest weekend in years. As a result, Ellen returned home with an unsettling question: What if Tom were actually right about their boys?

— Joan Silverman writes op-eds, essays, and book reviews. This article originally appeared in The American Reporter.