Abusive or snappy?

Absolutely. In this instance, he was 100% wrong. So the kids/child needed to see them being defended or spoken up for...not the behaviour being tacitly approved or or permitted by her silence.

I don't think speaking privately is enough. I would want my child to know that I was not ok with this. Otherwise, they may believe me to be condoning it. It is not ok and should not be tolerated from any member of the household.

I think she was very measured.

Dear OP, I am so sorry you are going through this. Please note you did not do anything wrong. All these people saying it is ok for your husband to call your ND son, "fucking idiot" and saying that you telling your husband “we don’t swear in this house so please apologize” is not, are wrong. You handled the situation as best as anybody else would. I do not think that the school will do much more then they already did, but I guess, you never know.

As for your husband, obviously, I do not know him well enough to "diagnose" him, but from little that I learned from you, he is an an asshole at the best, a narcissist at the worst, and I am almost 100% certain that he has a women on a side. This is what men often do, when they find someone else, they start placing faults at everything and everyone else around them to minimize the blame that is supposed to lay on themselves for cheating. I could never understand why they cannot man up and just confess.

Either way, as a mother of three, two of which are ND, my heart is aching for you. Please remember, you are a wonderful mother, you are doing your best, you did not do anything wrong. Whatever happens, it will not be your fault.

Hugs.❤️

Sometimes parenting needs 'undermining'. When it's awful then it's important the child sees the other adult in their lives will stand up for them and challenge it.

Depends on your norms I suppose. In our house no one swears in front of a child, certainly not at one, so it would be incredibly shocking and would read as aggressive, so yes, abusive. If you've a more lax attitude to swearing at children then not so much.

You haven't done anything wrong. I'm sorry but it reads to me like he has another woman. Is he even at his sisters? Could be with somebody else.

Shaking a ND child's head and calling them a fucking idiot is parenting?

Seperate issues here.
Yes he shouldn't have sworn at it. . he know that. He sounds super stressed. Is something horrible happening at work? Risk of redundancy etc?

You undermined his parenting that was a conversation to be had privately not telling him we don't swear in this house ..

Just take out £20 and stash it somewhere safe. And do the same on payday, for £50 if you can, and every month after that. Worst case scenario it’ll be enough to get you a sack of potatoes and some bread for a few days.

I’m sure his money will go in and it will all be fine. He’ll come back and apologise and it’ll all be smoothed over. Hopefully, this time next year, this will be a blip that you won’t even remember. But I strongly suspect he’s not finished with the nasty surprises and you don’t want to be blindsided over money on top of everything else.

Exactly @JMSA . Op couldn't do that.

Are you able to contact that group again @Frogstobutterflies ? Aren't there any friends from the past you could get back in touch with? There's nice people on SEN boards here too. Maybe someone local?

OP, I'm so sorry to hear this latest update. Family life can be hard and it sounds like he's at breaking point.
BUT:
Can you imagine if you said 'this is too hard - I'm fucking off to my sibling's house?!'
What would happen then? I hope he doesn't intend to leave you with all the work

Also lovely, please don't take this the wrong way, but check that he's actually staying at his sister's and not with another woman. I'll never forget how snappy and unkind my ex husband was to me, not long before I found out about his affair. It's textbook adulterer behaviour: making me out to be the bad guy as a way to justify his behaviour.
I really hope it's not that and just a temporary blip
Best of luck and keep us posted.

When you say ‘nothing left’ are you talking about literally zero, or do you have a couple of quid you can withdraw in cash and stash somewhere? Even if it’s only a fiver here and there?

You’re currently dealing with a brand new scenario and you have no idea what he’s going to do next. You need to protect yourself and the last thing you need is to be down to your last couple of slices of bread, only to find out his wages haven’t gone in to the joint account as normal. I’m absolutely sure they will, but when you’re dealing with the unknown, it’s always a good idea to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. If you’ve got some cash stashed away, you won’t be worrying about what you’re going to feed them until your payday, or how you’re going to get to work.

@Frogstobutterflies are there any parenting groups or support groups? Do you work?

Sorry OP, but my first thought on reading your OP was that there's another woman and he's seeking to blame you for what he's doing.

No, of course you won’t get into trouble! Firstly, it was him who said it, not you. You dealt with it absolutely perfectly and in a child appropriate way. And things are a bit up in the air at the moment. Your DC are perfectly safe and healthy. The school is just doing their job. They’d be negligent if they heard a parent was talking to their child like that and just ignored it. At most, you might get a phone call or a visit, just to check things are as you say. But you’ve got nothing to hide and nothing to worry about. They’ll see you’ve got it all under control, tick their boxes and you won’t hear from them again.

my DH has been…off lately. Can’t quite put finger on it. longer hours at work, later home, just a bit moody I guess Your DS is 12. I don’t know much about ADHD, but I’m guessing it doesn’t suddenly appear overnight. That’s a long time for your DS to have been the way he is. So what has changed recently to make DH decide it’s suddenly now all too much for him?

Hopefully it’s not another woman. Hopefully it’s just pressure at work and he’s struggling to cope and taking it out on the wrong people. But I think you’d be leaving yourself open to one shock after another if you don’t consider the possibility that this might not be connected to the situation at home at all, and that there is an underlying reason for this all. I don’t think you can rely on him to be honest with you. I think you’d be very foolish indeed to expect him to behave like the man you know.

At best, he’s behaving in a monumentally selfish way. It doesn’t matter how overwhelmed he feels. He’s a dad. He has responsibilities that he shouldn’t just be able to walk away from. Does he think you don’t struggle sometimes? Does he think you wouldn’t like peace? Or a break from it all? Can your marriage recover when you know that he has it in him to just walk out on his children when things get a bit difficult? And to not even answer the phone to you is fucking appalling. What if there was an emergency with the DC?

I’m so sorry that this has happened to you. I think you’d be best served by concentrating on the practical stuff. Are you ok for money? Do you need to move anything into your own account to make sure the bills are paid? Have you got someone you can tell? Someone you trust to support you? Even if over the phone. Can you take a few days off work? Just to get your head around what you need to do if this turns into a lengthy thing.

@Frogstobutterflies I'm so sorry you only have dh. Maybe now is the time find some support?

Sadly OP this sounds like classic other woman territory - late nights at work, moody at home, blaming you for the home/marriage failing. He's re-writing the reality to make himself look & feel better about his infidelity.

honestly, I'd leave a message and tell him not only have you have the school flagging potential abuse due to his outburst, but you know what he's up to and the very least he can do is be honest and not to think for one minute he can come swanning back in when it all goes to shit. And he can tell the kids. No need to elaborate and if it turns out he doesn't have OW (unlikely) worse case you say - well something was up and this seemed more palatable than realising you're just a shit husband and parent.