Need people's views on what just happened in my home

I honestly think your situation is a horrendously stressful one and it probably was that your dh lost all control but at the same time him tipping the chair was nearly as bad as hitting. All of you are all fired up but when things calm, that’s when you talk as you’re all in this as a family and your dh and to a lesser extent your son need to learn what to do when everything gets super charged like that. Your dh went to blame you which was so wrong of him but like I said ye are all in a tough full time life situation.

Your post makes me feel slightly sick. You excuse the violent adult and totally blame the six year old child. OP has taken parenting courses for the parents of neurodivergent children and parents according to their advice. Her husband refuses to attend these courses because he knows best apparently.

Her husband lifted the chair to a significant height and dropped it and you chastise the OP for comforting her son?

My son had a diagnosed eating disorder as a child and the advice from medical professionals was to let him eat whatever he wanted to ensure that he had enough calories. None of this would have happened if OP's husband hadn't made a massive deal of his son not eating his chicken.

Poor little boy. Not just for the tipping out of the chair, but all the shouting and demeaning that went on before that and probably does every day. Your son probably has sensory sensitivities which it why he can't eat every type of meal out in front of him.
You're not being soft, you're being a good mum!

If you don’t mind me asking, what did you do to stop DS from hitting? A friend of mine seems to have tried everything with her young son and it just seems to be getting worse…

Maybe you all need to get examined for Autism and diagnosed.
It is not helpful to give pudding to a child who eats some cucumber. Your 6 year old has learnt no obedience to reasonable requests and keeps getting rewarded for half baked jobs.

It doesn't matter about diagnosis. He is six and will not be pleasant in any one's family home if he has not learnt to respect his parent's reasonable requests.

Some Daddy's do get over wrought by disobedient children continually testing a poor boundary.
Did you answer son - "Yes, and some boys never eat most of their dinner and cry and want pudding. They should not be at the dining room table for dinner unless they will eat some of every food."

Would it help to insist that the boys stop snacking an hour or two before meals? Including the boys in the cooking process is something your DH could try.

What will refresh your parenting energy?

Take some parenting of toddler classes together so you are both on the same page. Give each other a night off every few days.
Kids will push all the buttons. Parents need to read the room, the future, their own feelings so that they always react AS THE ADULT. Leave the room rather than resorting to violence.

That is easier to say than do - so taking classes and expanding the skill set is beneficial.

This is a tricky one. Your husband will see any attempt to make him change his ways as an attempt control him, and nobody likes that - even though his ways do need to change. His reaction will probably be to dig in his heels. Even if he decides to try it your way, he will jump on everything DS does "wrong" as proof that your way isn't working and his way is needed.

When he was young, was he often forced to do what other people wanted him to do?

I mean, the key to dealing with a child like your DS is to keep potential conflict points to a minimum, and then police those conflict points with firm fairness. Food should never be a battlefield. But you already know that. The thing on which I think you and your husband can agree is that the rules for unacceptable behavior should be crystal clear, firm, fair, and applied with absolutely consistency.

Your husband absolutely should not have done what he did, and probably he knows it, but won't admit it because admitting it would make his position weaker. But let's leave that aside for a moment.

DS, out of frustration, raised his hand to another person. What should be the consequence for that? Perhaps that is a starting place for a conversation with your husband.

I disagree. OP's DH may be neurodivergent himself (although undiagnosed) but he must have been in many stressful situations throughout his life, including in his workplace, and he hasn't resorted to the sort of violent and threatening behaviour that he has used towards his 6-year old son.

Thank god some people can look at these things rationally.

I'm autistic, diagnosed years after my DC were
So when they were little ISH ,and getting diagnosed,we needed help .
I phoned social services a couple of times asking for help .
Each time they just said we were doing really well and no help needed .
Although my ds was the one being violent not a parent
I think from my experience,and my DH as a police officer at the time the bar for social services to get involved is set quite high
I don't think imho that your ds being tipped on to the floor is going to reach that bar
My DD was a pcso and saw DC with autism and not in school ,living with mattress on the floor no sheets or bedding and cat /dog poo on floor in the house .. social did not want to get involved.
The issue you have ..the problem you have is your DH ..he's not flexible enough to cope with being a parent to a DC with ASD ..it's his way or the high way ..

Just out of interest
Why are you paying all the bills ,why is your DH only working part time .
You are clearly a financially responsible person,and clearly very good at assessing your DC needs ..you seem to have a good grasp of autism ,you are on here taking on advice and trying to do what is best for your DC.
Your DH is massively letting you down ,both financially,and parenting wise .
As the DC grow up ,he's going to be a boulder round your neck , dragging you down ,deflecting from the importance of raising your DC.
Personally in your shoes ,I'd be issuing an ultimatum
He goes on an autism parenting course asap ...he gets to the doctor's to get an aessment himself..and he understands that if he ever uses his strength against your DC again,the marriage is over .
But that's what I'd do ...you have to decide what you will do

Reasoning with a person who doesn’t want to see reason is just wasting time.

You do though have to report this incident to someone and let it be known that your dh is a danger to both of his dc if only to protect your dc from having to spend 1/2 the week being terrorised by their father.

At the same time you need to put in place a plan that will show you are trying to protect dc which will mean sending dc to wraparound care and not being alone with their df

i wonder what violence was inflicted on ds to get him to eat his food when you weren’t there. I don’t think you will actually know what went on until your DS’s think they are safe.
I do think that you have to look at the reality of the situation
You won’t be splitting the family. The family is broken already. How you proceed now is going to have a huge impact on your dc. Even doing nothing is.choosing a route through this and the consequences that come with it

You leave or he leaves

From what you have said your dh doesn’t work and is in sole charge of your dc which in itself is not good

Why isn’t your dh working?

All the goady menz activists have arrived @Spiderwoman123 . They're just here to cause trouble and undermine you. It happens on every thread when a man is abusive. They're not subtle.

Sounds like your son has ARFID - there are some supportive groups on fb .

It's an eating disorders comment in the neurodivergent community . I have it too and suffered mostly through childhood .

Sorry can't comment on husband as not sure what to say. Much better comments above

Reported

Also tired of this gender being excused. If a woman did the same thing they would be dragged over the coals.

the argument was because the OP knows it doesn’t matter if he eats his chicken. Her husband thinks it is unacceptable if he doesn’t eat the chicken and says the OP is being too soft. So how can the OP “stop getting into fights about food when it is her husband who is picking a fight with his 6 year old???

Having now read all the posts...can I ask, what do you seek as the result from involving social services? Do you hope that they will make your DH take a parenting course or change his behaviour? I think there is more to this story than we know and without a full family history and speaking to both your sons and your husband it's nearly impossible for anyone on here to give you advice on such a tricky situation.

For reference, I am a family social worker with over 20 years experience and my current job is early intervention in exactly the type of situations you describe. If this is generally a one off incident in a high stress household, you could self refer to early intervention parenting support, probably via your Council. The school will notify social services if you tell them as they would be mandatory reporters, who will note it, but in the absence of any other previous reports or issues it will be unlikely to meet their threshold for a substantiated notification for statutory intervention and they will refer down to voluntary parenting support anyway.

So before creating a social services history for your child, your husband and your family you could try to get a social worker involved for support on a voluntary basis after discussing with your husband about the seriousness of the incident. He must know on some level that SS could potentially get involved here.

If you or your children are genuinely in danger from your husband then contact your local DFV helpline to either get him out of the house or go to refuge.

Is he usually a pretty good parent? Does he spend time with the kids, contribute to family life, does he verbally or emotionally abuse you or the children? Is there a way to structure meal time so it's less stressful? Are there other points of conflict?

Social services are generally limited to prescribing interventions such as parenting courses, they can't tell your husband what to do. They will likely take the line that this is a stressed household due to ND child/ren and relationship dynamics that requires additional support, which depending on where you are located, may or may not be voluntary.

I can understand your frustration with his refusal to engage with professional help. He needs to, possibly for his own mental health as well.

A good first option in your situation might be to call a family line, family violence helpline or some such to talk to a professional counsellor who can assist you to walkthrough your decision making on this. Best of luck.

I don't think this is normal or acceptable behaviour. I really do understand the difficulty of a child who won't eat what you've prepared. One of my children is ASD. As a small child he ate about 4 things. The advice we got was to serve the four things and try to find other things he liked but not to force. These children will literally starve rather than eat food they dislike. It's often a texture thing. He was strictly vegetarian from about five. Now he's a final year medical student and a very adventurous vegetarian.

Your husband's behaviour did not convince your son to eat the chicken and it may in fact reinforce his decision. Throwing a child onto he floor has never cured a picky eater. I remember a very unpleasant scene with my own father involving overcooked slimey silverbeet and decades later I still won't eat siverbeet in any form and I'm not ASD. (My dad didnt throw me on the floor.) My husband is I am sure on the spectrum although he was never diagnosed as a child but he had enough self-awareness to realise who his son took after.

I suppose the issue is what your husband will do the next time your son doesn't eat his dinner.

Please read the thread. Her son is not violent and made a half arsed swipe towards a grown man who raised his hand, and then picked up a chair with a crying 6 year old on it who landed on their side onto a "fake concrete floor". And then apparently proceeded to "prove it's basically hollow".

This is not about ND. OP has been clear on her progress and her son's.

This is domestic abuse and needs help. This will be very hard for the family but the fact remains this is and could never be acceptable.

Edited to say that her husband refuses any sort of support/ therapy and she has been very specific about that.

how dare H try to blame you and your son rather than apologise and beg for forgiveness. Makes it 100 times worse

I feel for your little boy, he’s going to be so damaged if you don’t change this quickly. Never seen anything like this described so casually.

Whole thing sounds abnormal, autism or not

I can see where your child learnt violence to communicate because wtf even is this? You both need parenting classes.

Your husband pushed your child back on a chair on to a hard floor and you’re asking if it’s ok, normal even. Not normal at all, don’t leave your child with him alone.

Your husband assaulted your child.

I have an autistic child. He is the most severe at level 3. People with normal children don’t understand what we go through every day.

We just saw his paediatrician who asked if my child is violent. I said no. That night (without warning) he ran full force towards my face striking my face with his body. This came from absolutely nowhere. His brain is completely broken.

I don’t put up with being assaulted. I don’t ignore it when he lashes out and hurts me. The professionals ignore the assaults and redirect behaviour. I don’t. I’m very strict on certain things and lax on others. I’ve accepted that I need to ensure he has a happy childhood but I don’t accept being assaulted. I always react. But I don’t hit. I’ve never dropped him to the floor.

What your husband did was assault. Dropping him to the floor wasn’t proportional to what occurred. Dropping from height was designed to not only hurt your son but also humiliate him.

Please ignore all the 'leave' advice. Your husband reacted terribly and I think both of you would benefit from parenting counselling. I would recommend both Circle of Security and Triple P. They helped me enormously with my asd child. Your husband's behaviour is not ok and he needs help. Your child's behaviour is also not ok however.

That's not even close to what that poster was saying at all. What are you even talking about?

I honestly can't stand coming on mumsnet & reading posts like yours where people just make stuff up off the top of their head

That poster is saying that the OP has clearly been unhappy for a long time, clearly doesn't feel strong enough to say she wants to end the relationship so is now going to use SS getting involved as a reason why

The poster wasn't defending any sort of abuse. Grow up with your made up bullshit