Husband on phone the whole fucking time he’s with the children

You can't train tiny children to stay in their rooms. They get up early, and you have to deal with it.

Yeah, it's pathetic basically

Very poor parenting and deeply unattractive really

Can he not be bothered to engage with them? Wtf

I can honestly see both sides.

As parents you need to communicate, I dont think this should be a "i'll just get up with them then" situation. You can't just pick up the pieces every time you feel your husband isn't doing it right- you will make it easy for him to 'be lazy' and parenting is a long road and you will exhaust yourself. This is a communication issue and you need to talk with him about how you feel. On the other hand just because you think you are right doesnt mean you are. When parents arent on the same page its stressful but equally he may think he is ok in what he is doing. If you gatekeep your husbands parenting then you are in a way undermining him. You may need to accept he is more relaxed about it. Parents arent always perfect, dont always do the right thing and parenting is hard. If this is really important to you, you need to communicate your viewpoint to your husband and tell him that this really matters to you and he needs to listen- but then you must also be willing to hear and take on board his viewpoint even if you dont agree. I dont believe any parent should gatekeep the other parents parenting style... that will always end in conflict eventually. Ultimately it should either be agreement or compromise....and that may mean you compromising too. If he can't follow through on what you BOTH agree then that is a whole other communication/marrriage issue.

Why did you ask AIBU when you obviously dont think you are? Why put your name as hormonal or justified when you clearly feel justified? Wake up yourself at 5am and problem solved.

My son woke at 4.40 after 7/8 wakes a night until he was 6 years old. Sometimes i did scroll my phone at 4.50am with an eye on him to make sure he was ok, shock horror sometimes i even dozed off as i was juat surviving. If you can do so much better, then just do it.. and stop checking a grown mans phone, its weird and controlling.

Some might say that getting a 1 year old out of their cot at 5am as oppose to settling them back to sleep is lazy parenting. One persons idea of lazy is another's survival approach.

You may see it as an opportunity for quality time with his children, but sounds like he sees it more like time they should be asleep. It's not family time he's ducking out of.

Furthermore, I don't believe that all posters who disagree with OPs view are raging screen addicts!

Yabu based on the time tbh. 5-7am? If my kids were up at 5am they would be watching tv while I drunk coffee and doom scrolled and if my partner tried to tell me off for that I would be telling him to get up with them instead. Honestly stop trying to dictate how your partner parents at 5am. 😐

Love it when parents try to parent the other parent because they are superior. At 5am you just survive. Stop being so highly strung.

Do you also think he would rather be on his phone than with you, too?

Or does he already do that?

Is there any intimacy in this relationship?

I thought the same. I brought mine up on ‘benign neglect’ and they were all high flyers, independent and have done well. We are all close now they’re young adults and they reminisce about their ‘idyllic childhood’.

I’m not saying parenting constantly stuck to a phone is desirable - it’s clearly not - but equally at 5am no small child needs the Mary Poppins boot camp - they need quiet self-directed play and minimal parent interactive because ideally they should still be asleep.

What time does he get in from work if he doesn’t see them in the evening?

I would be doing vey low contact with DC at 5am in the morning to dissuade them from waking up at that time

Hear what you've said.

My rule.

He has different rules. He's their parent too. Why does your rule trump his?

And train your children to stay in their rooms. Children need to be parenting through early rising, not left to maybe grow out of it. You're taking the easy route too by doing nothing.

Just as an aside, I'm pretty sure YouTube autoplays videos so he's not necessarily watching them all that time. I've been completely baffled by some of the stuff in our YouTube history (not snooping, just trying to find a previously-watched video)- stuff that neither of us would be remotely interested in. Can only assume one of us has forgotten to close the app/stop the video and it's played a series of vaguely related videos to the last one, meandering through some very random topics like a game of word association.

I'm in the middle here opinion-wise. I don't think him watching YouTube for two hours straight is great parenting (if he really has been doing that) but, on the other hand, I don't really see what you can do about it other than discuss your viewpoint with him. And I do have sympathy with the fact that getting up at 5am with small children is miserable and can understand wanting the escape, even though I wouldn't do it myself.

My DH probably spends a bit more time on his phone when alone with DS than I would ideally like (just a guess from how much he likes to use it generally), I probably allow more treats than he would think is ideal. But we don't try and micromanage how the other parents, we're both equally in charge.

However, if the children have actually injured themselves during these early morning YouTube sessions and he hasn't noticed, that IS a big problem. I feel like some PPs have missed this part and if my kid was hurting themselves on DH's watch (tiny kids I mean, obviously you can't be watching older ones constantly) and he didn't know how it happened, that would be the point at which I would start involving myself.

You have three under four years old OP! Parts of the next few years will be lovely and magical, but a lot of it will likely be tough and knackering too. The children might end up with a lovely bond as they grow up with the same interests etc, but the flip side is that each child has less time / energy / resources allocated to them - how could it be any other way? So I think the standards might slide for a while. I'd focus on getting the things done which really, REALLY need it, and try to pull together with your husband. In the great scheme of things, they'll probably survive the 5am blue light, even if it's not ideal.

On a practical note, have you tried a Gro Clock for the 3 yo? Ours was an awful sleeper, but has now successfully been trained NOT TO WAKE MUMMY OR DADDY UP BEFORE MR SUN IS THERE!!

Honestly 5-7am with no tv sounds bloody awful and v unreasonable, but if they aren’t getting screen time i agree that the parent in charge shouldn’t either.

Still folks are missing the point it’s the whole 2 hours and the kids are having accidents and being ignored when they want to engage with dad

how about you actually read what has been written and see all the op posts we do have a see it all button after all

Even the increase in time-saving household appliances has increased the time that parents can give attention to their kids.

Nobody used to have dishwashers or tumble dryers a few decades ago. When my mum grew up she had 5 siblings and they had no fridge. You can bet my grandma had more to do than lean over her 1yo "oh wow what a lovely tower of blocks".

The oldest ones would be getting on with homework or helping with housework and the youngest ones would just mooch about finding things to play with.

So I call BS that kids aren't getting enough attention these days. Too much if anything.

He gets up with them at 5am and you're actually serious when you say he's out of order for being on his phone?! This can't be real surely

Kids were not getting more attention from their parents 30y ago, when I grew up. Nor 50y, nor 100y ago.

Parents used to send their kids to play outside, or parents simply got on with housework or work or read a magazine etc. There were more children per family in previous generations so less 1-1 attention too.

It is a totally recent thing that parents are expected to breathe down their children's necks while they play, chipping in with praise and supportive comments every few seconds. And frankly it's not conducive to their creativity or independence (or the sanity of the parent).

I think yanbu as he’s shown he’s not responding to them and not noticing accidents. So it’s really not working for him. It’s possible to glance at your phone every so often and still pay your kids attention. That’s what I did at that age. I had to watch mine v closely at that age but if I could sit down with a coffee, I’d read a book or similar. I did read my kindle though, not sure how much better that is.

I think screen addiction/lack of engagement and lazy parenting from Parents plays an enormous part in behavioural issues yes.

Come off it. Kids of this generation get more attention from their parents than ever before. Smaller family sizes, trend towards nuclear instead of extended family. No other generation has ever had so much parental attention as our kids do.

If you think "behavioural issues" are getting worse with this generation, it's not due to a lack of parental attention. Possibly too much, ie helicopter parenting, but that's not proved.

I can understand your principles OP but your DP works full time, supports his family and is getting up at 5am to let you rest in pregnancy.

From experience with 3 under 5, the early shift is just about bearable ( with coffee) . It is so must worse when you have to go into work and function as a capable, hardworking worker. If you mess up then it's on you. I do understand your concerns but i ll be bruatally honest not many men I know would do this with a SAHW

You sound controlling

OP, just wanted to stand in solidarity with you. I'm honestly shocked (and a little disturbed) by some of these responses. I work in a field that researches the effect of screen use, particularly by children and also the effect of (to put it bluntly) lazy and addicted parents who spend large amounts of time engaged in screens rather than their extremely impressionable children.

The results are catastrophic and devastating, and you are correct regarding the behaviour difficulties we are seeing in both Primary and Secondary aged children. Please do not let previous posters convince you otherwise. As a collective, we are heading down a very dark and damaging path that seems to be irreversible at this point.
It's people like you who give me a teeny bit of hope for our future generation.

I think yabu. Would you have the same issue if he were reading a newspaper? If you don't like it then get up yourself - you say you don't mind so why don't you? If I want a lie in, DH can parent as he sees fit. Otherwise why did I have kids with him if I can't trust his judgement?