Spoon feeding DH?

Let him parent her in his own way, but he deals with the consequences, if any. If she's late to bed and goes nuts from over-tiredness, he deals. If she throws a meltdown because dinner is late and she's hungry, he deals with the screaming while making her dinner.

I'm just relieved you're not spoon feeding your husband!

There’s a line between incompetence and neglect.

Leaving a child with a dirty nappy on to sleep in is neglectful.

I think it’s most men tbh. You literally have to leave instructions and make it clear what you want them to do. Mine are nearly 3 and 6 and if I don’t tell him what to do he doesn’t follow the routine 🙄🥲

Was with you until you got on your high horse about 'screen kids'. Ugh, god forbid your pfb be one of them.

I did find I had to be very specific and say, "I'm just heading out for an hour. Are you going to be ok to get dinner done and X through the bathroom and ready for bed while I'm out?".

People don't know things until they've had to learn them. Parenting is never exactly like I expect it day to day, and I'm at the coal face while he's sitting in an office. It's not stupidity the first few times. After that, well...

My exh used to do this. He wouldn’t move things forward at all whilst I was out, he’d literally sort of mark time until I got back, which meant I’d have to do everything I’d have had to do if I hadn’t gone out anyway. I used to call this behaviour “babysitting” in an ironic way.

Also was very fond of letting ds fall asleep on him right before his bedtime when he was a baby, but before he’d had his bed time feed. So I’d have to wake him to feed and of course he wouldn’t go back down again.

He’s an exh for a reason! (And many more reasons than this)

But OP doesn’t have to do everything, she said she was gone barely an hour and after she got back, he was making the dinner and would get DD ready for bed.

I just don’t see an issue with letting a sleeping baby sleep for one hour? I personally think that waking up a baby that has fallen asleep because it’s not a scheduled time for sleep is kind of controlling. You have a 1 yr old, being up at 11pm can’t be a foreign concept to you. Certainly not worth having a meltdown over. Baby fell asleep and woke up one hour later- so what- give them dinner, clean nappy, PJs and so on then.

On the breakfasts, you said he does get her breakfast and so on while you have a lie in. And why are you expecting a 1yr old not to cry at all ever on a morning? Babies are noisy. And if the baby wants you and not her dad, nothing he does is going to stop her from screaming at the stair gate for you.

And then OP turns up and has to pick everything up he hasn't done while she's been out? He lets the baby nap when she should be put down for the night so OP has a bigger stress to deal with than if she's just stayed at home. Having cuddles with a sleeping baby is totally precious but he's also taking that from OP!

Why the assumption that OP has to pick everything up when she’s home? This way of thinking in itself is an issue, leave him to do it, don’t assume that any stress is hers, it’s his responsibility.

She can still let him deal with it even though she’s home? Why the expectation that the minute she walks back through he door the baby is her responsibility, I’d leave him to figure it out or he never will.

Maybe before you go out get him to tell you what he’s planning routine wise.
I completely get where you are coming from and have to stop myself from texting my husband to feed the kids.
have you seen the ‘make a list’ song? If not Google it- I’ve never related so much to something in my life.

@AsYouWiiiiiiiiiiiiish Yes. My stbexH, who does NO 1:1 with our Autistic YP has just texted me. He plans to take them to the cinema tomorrow (I take it he's back in the country then?) They are high needs enough I'm officially 24/7 their Carer. He is Cinema Dad (maybe 1 of them, once a month max). It started with him 'forgetting' to change/ feed them & progressed from there. Just. No.

And then OP turns up and has to pick everything up he hasn't done while she's been out? He lets the baby nap when she should be put down for the night so OP has a bigger stress to deal with than if she's just stayed at home. Having cuddles with a sleeping baby is totally precious but he's also taking that from OP!

God it's infuriating and giving me flashbacks to when mine were babies!

Op it's a fine line to walk, letting Dp find his own rhythm with parenting and not making yourself the default parent who knows it all. Commenting too much will take his autonomy away and leave him feeling like second fiddle. But he does need to actually do the parenting ie give her food at meal times and follow her bedtime routine. It's not fair on you or DD otherwise.

Having screen time is absolutely fine.

Not giving her her dinner is not fine.

Dinner time doesn’t have to strictly be at 6pm every evening and there needs to be some flexibility but they still need to have a rough routine and pushing dinner back, also pushes everything else back.

I would be really annoyed that I had to do everything.
You go out and you still have it all to do when you get back.

I don’t believe men are that incompetent that they don’t know their own child needs feeding.

I wouldn't be too fussed about most of this, cuddling up watching TV and having a late night isn't the end of the world, but not giving her dinner until after 8pm would annoy me, that's rubbish parenting on his part.

Ah OP you shouldn't have apologised!

Letting things slide once in a while is fine, but why does that get to be on his watch not yours? An hour of screens is no big deal because you do the hard yards of entertaining her day in day out without.

Likewise, he has eyes in his head, he lives in the house. It can't have escaped him that she eats dinner and goes to bed early in the evening.

Yes, yabu

The child is happy and if she had gotten hungry she would have fussed and he would have figured out to feed her.

You are too regimented and inflexible. Why are you having “meltdowns” and “rows” make him parent your way? That doesn’t sound pleasant for anyone in the house.

He is still fed her and got her ready for bed, so just chill. If you keep saying he is doing it wrong, he will start refusing to have her, you wont get any me time and then you’ll be back here wondering why everytime you need a minute, he’s in the toilet for an hour or has disappeared in the garden shed muttering about the lawnmower needing seeimg to.

My DN went through a phase of doing all imaginary play in an American accent. I was in the library the other day and a little girl was doing the same. I find it a bit freaky tbh.

Nothing against tv screen time in general. (better than phone or tablet at any rate)

If they are watching something like Paw Patrol they can watch the version dubbed into British on My5.

Next time get home later and let him deal with it

Oh and the cartoons I couldn't get het up about. I understand wanting her to only have a few minutes CBeebies time at the moment when it's ideal, but really this stuff isn't going to damage her. And sooner rather than later it'll be Peppa and Bluey and Frozen and those annoying American kids who open eggs on YouTube (are they still doing that?)

As long as you've got half an eye on this stuff she won't be unduly impacted developmentally or psychologically by TV.

This. Don't man manage it, just let him make her tea and put her to bed. If she is as over tired as you suspect, she will be a nightmare and he will learn a valuable lesson about bed timings. Or maybe she won't be and you'll realise you don't necessarily have to be as strict with these things as you think (this isn't a barbed side-swap at you btw- I was that soldier and letting DH just do things his way, even if it wasn't my way, actually was fine. Different, but fine).

My kids are pre teens now and, as I say, with my first I was a hardcore fiend for "my way or the highway" with her for the first year or so... but then I realised that DH (or my parents or his parents or my sister or his brother) did things differently, and that if they were in charge, it was up to them to do things their way and up to them to deal with the consequences of that, good or bad. A lot of my "my way or the highway" stuff was to do with breastfeeding tbh, it made me feel I had to do things for my daughter, because her routine was so entrenched in breastfeeding. Things got easier for me from a control POV once she was weaned.

But mental load is a different matter to routine and if your DH isn't taking on his share of mental load or is weaponising incompetence or something else that's making you feel things are unfairly weighted to his advantage from a labour point of view, then you need to sit and have an honest conversation with him because that's not fair and not what being a parent is.

YA (mostly) NBU

If you are her primarily carer right now, you get to decide if she has a routine. Your sister is probably right you need to write up a timetable, as you would for a nanny, as he appears not to be familiar with it. If he just ignores it - leave him to deal with the consequences

When / if you go back to work near FT, you will be joint carers (make sure of that) so how you raise her becomes more of a joint decision re free range vs routines.

One thing you shouldn’t do though is dictate how he spends time with her. The ‘we agreed she wouldn’t be a screen baby’ is fairly Mumzilla - people say all sorts before a baby arrives. If your husband wants to watch telly with her that is up to him - if he watches so much she gets wired, then that becomes a discussion- a bit less telly a few more bricks. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to control the details of his parenting because it will lead to him
backing off and you being angry - you want him leaning in, not out.