AIBU to be angry at DH over DS 8 on water slide?

I wonder if he’s actually annoyed that he carries the majority of the childcare responsibilities at home and he was secretly hoping to share this a bit on holiday rather then continue to be the primary carer (while the OP takes calls).

Wow! You're mighty pleased with yourself...

@LeroyJenkinssss does he complain when he has to parent

Yes. Unpaid labour. He is doing the same thing millions of women have done and sacrificed career progression for themselves to facilitate childcare and the wage of the other parent.

my DH is a stay at home parent, which facilitates my salary through his unpaid labour. It was a joint decision and I’d never throw it in his face that I earn all the money.

I am shocked at many of the replies. Hopefully your DS is fine but that’s pure luck…if he was badly injured or killed I assume the replies would be very different and it would all be from the same decision/scenario.

I also understand why you mentioned being the main earner, obviously if your DH is complaining about you not being there you are defending the importance of the call. Sometimes on holiday or when out you have to go off and deal with work issues, you need to keep your job. Ultimately though it isn’t really relevant because whatever the reason your DH has sole care he should be giving it 100%.

Unless your dh actually put him on the slide upside down @Fleetwoodmax or told him it wasn't dangerous I think YABU. Kids do dumb stuff whether either/both parents are watching or not.

So being on holiday means she has to take on all the child care and dad gets a free pass?

I think some of you have forgotten what it’s like to be a kid. He didn’t I hit himself badly. It’s just bad luck that it was on husbands watch. My kids have injured themselves who’s on my watch. Doesn’t make me incompetent as a parent. Mind you, I’m only a mid-earner so probably not as good at parenting as OP.

It seems maybe you are looking for a reason to blame your husband for.

I understand. I am a SAHP and if I leave my son with someone I expect them to have good judgement on safety. Getting a head injury under water wouldn't be a huge success in my book.

I think the OP is annoyed because it is a judgement thing, and she would hope her DH had good judgement when caring for a child.

In fairness though, child care is super hard and sometimes stuff happens. Only the OP can really judge if this was a failure on her DH's part.

Currently the problem seems to be communication. If she is talking to us instead of her DH then that is a sign that they have communication issues.

Yes unfortunately this is usually what happens… DC hurt his head and he has learned not to do it again.

In our pool, the lifeguards would be all over this. It's a big slide and one stands at the top and another at the bottom and no way would any kid be allowed to go down there backwards. If there is no guard near the slide, your husband should have been supervising his son properly. Could have ended very badly, he hit his head underwater ffs.

I get it OP. It sounds like for once you wanted your DH to be an equal parent because you're the one who makes sure the bills are paid, runs the house, mental load etc whilst he gets to be the fun parent. As an isolated incident it's very minor but if set in the context of you feeling almost burnt out from responsibility, you need to have a serious conversation with your DH.

His reaction was crap and not ok. That definitely warrants a discussion and you being pissed off. He's a parent. Being with/looking after his kid is the bare minimum.

That kind of accident? It happens, even when mums supervise.

It's a good thing you're on holiday - you need to relax. It often takes me 3 or 4 days to come down off work and home stress, and get into things. The DC are in the holiday zone on the way to the airport!

It's not a big deal. You can't wrap your child up in cottonwool. Terrible accidents can happen anywhere, any time. (And for all those people saying pools ban such things: that's to protect themselves from liability, not because they love children). This wasn't an egregious, heinous parenting disaster worth having an argument about. It really wasn't.

Just drop it and get on with the holiday.

Strategic incompetence to punish you for the call?

At 8 he should be going down water slides that have proper deep pools at the bottom, this one sounds like it’s more aimed at toddlers and non-swimmers.

Got four DC, and all at age of 8 have done silly stuff similar to that. Not unique to your DH, he just happened to be parenting and it happened on his watch this accident.

With the best will in the world, kids just do daft things sometimes and you can't stop them.

He's an idiot. Your DH that is, not your DS. Your DS is a child with limited appreciation of the long-term consequences of his actions. That's why the adults around him are meant to look out for him. Shame he got stuck with your DH.

Your husband was being an idiot and you are right to be cross. He should also be able to see that and accept a bit of criticism as an adult. If he’s pushing back on you it could be because he’s retrospectively frightened himself about what could have happened and is externalising that by blaming you for not being there. If it’s out of character, chalk it up as a bad day, make up and move on. If it’s in character, he’s a man baby and should know better.

Is going down a small waterslide headfirst a HUGE risk? Really?

Yup, this.

I've watched my 7 year old going backwards down the water slide at our favourite LC pool for years now. There's about two foot of water at the bottom.

Is it impossible he'd bang his head on the pool floor? No, but it's unlikely. Given the speed and incline of the slide and the depth of the water it's also extremely unlikely that any contact with the pool floor would be hard enough to injure him.

It's a judgement call in each situation. Clearly there will be some waterslides only a moron would go down backwards. There will also be plenty of waterslides where going down backwards would be a bit of a 'meh' affair imo.

Think op is probably bu and overreacting.

Lifeguard here. Your DS could have got a spinal cord injury and been paralysed from the neck down. Very very dangerous. Basically it is the same as diving into the shallow end.

To those who still think that water&head first is all fun and games, here's some facts:
Patients seen with serious, disabling, water acquired spine injuries are 97.5% young male.
The most common sites to get injured at are pools and kiddie pools.
The most common (the only) way to sustain those injuries is by entering the water head first.

I also still remember the one summer in my teens when the most common way to get paralysed from the neck down became diving head first - those numbers left all the car and motorbike accidents behind. I remember it because we had a special water safety lesson that year before breaking up for the holidays.

If fathers (and some mothers, clearly! ) count this sort of reckless behaviour as "fun for the boys" then no wonder they reach their teens lacking in common sense and oblivious to very real dangers.

Bumped head whilst under water, I wonder what could go wrong!

So from experience splash areas and small slide areas are aimed at young children. how big was this slide?

Your son prob saw another child do it and followed, that's what they do.

My DH took dd down a spiral slide at soft play and she broke her leg catching her foot on one of the joins..... I was the significant bread winner then but I didn't go apeshit.... It happens, it's hardly like he made him go down a vertical drop slide on his own.

The breadwinner bit is irrelevant and tells me you hold that over him a lot. If you weren’t the breadwinner that doesn’t mean a call might not be important.

As for the rest, he’s not “injured” are people have said, he’s bumped his head. Kids bump themselves all the time, mine are covered in bruises most of the time, neither of them seem to know where half of them come from. You can’t wrap them in cotton wool.

If you don’t believe he’s capable of looking after DS then don’t leave DH with him. Just don’t come whinging that you’ve spent all holiday looking after DS.