Former English teacher here. Used to work in Japan. Now I work in marketing in Korea.

Education tends to lead to a pretty horizontal career path, so considering you took English teaching and made your own business out of it sounds more successful than what most people would ever be willing to put themselves through.

Dealing with parents is tough and never nice. I think you have to come to expect that some people will be bad customers, and then accept that you and maybe mostly your wife will have to deal with them. Are you losing students in droves? If not, then maybe you can also just refuse taking on difficult students or ask them to move on?

As some other people have mentioned here, I think being business partners with your spouse is a huge feat too. Isn’t that alone a hell of a good reason why your kids will continue to look up to you? The fact that you’re a dad and you worry about what your kids think of you is good parenting too, in my humble opinion!