AIBU about expecting DH to be less stressed on weekend outings with kids?

Unfortunately you can't really change someone's response to stimuli like this. He can't cope with it. If he was doing something bad, like shouting or refusing to come or storming off you could change that, but you can't change 'his face looks stressed'. His face is stressed because he is stressed, because he finds small children stressful. That's unfortunately just his experience of small children.

If his agitation annoys you all you can do is divide and conquer. Let him take the older one out alone. Once the baby doesn't need to feed as much he can be left with the baby too. What I wouldn't do is let him walk away from his responsibilities. It's ok that he finds it stressful, it's not ok to therefore just not do it. That's not how it works when you've made two babies!

Hopefully, once they're older he will come into his own a bit more.

Why are his feelings more important than her reality of being the one who has to do all the active parenting? His ‘feelings’ mean that he should be able to go for a nap while she deals with yet another meltdown / spilled drink / dirty nappy? I don’t think so.

It sounds very annoying but you can’t really demand he changes how he feels. He didn’t become aggressive or nasty he just went quiet and felt worried. Hardly a crime just irritating. I DO see why it’s annoying - he’s a grown man and father and incompetency is unattractive. But it’s how he feels…

@mothersdayq was he like this when your eldest was a baby?

Is he like this with other things, work etc if someone doesn’t quite go to plan?

I was the one that did everything with my baby and toddler for EBF babies, but I would have found those things very stressful too.

There's no way I would have put myself in a Costa with a baby and small child. I would have remained out in the park in that situation and sat under a tree if there were no benches.

So I think while there may be an element of DH not knowing how to cope, I think there is also an element of him not being able to do things his way, due to you being the primary carer.

The situation you describe sounds very difficult to cope with (to me), not because of the DC's needs, but because of the social situation. It's partly a privacy thing and partly a judgement thing. Finding myself in that kind of situation in a very enclosed public space, it feels very performative.

I think maybe your assumption about DH is wrong and I think if you want to have more enjoyable weekends, you could try following his lead. I don't think you have done anything wrong though @mothersdayq .

Yep me too. Op sounds like your Dh just doesn’t enjoy the small kids phase and so he knows that you will take over and sort it out if he gets stroppy.

It doesn’t matter if he comes home complaining, he should still be sent out on regular short trips with the 4 year old. He needs to learn to care for his own kids in public or it’ll be a nightmare for you.

I suspect your DH’s mum or dad must have been a panicker and he is repeating a pattern. He may have been taught very young that young children are stressful and panic inducing

Ok, so that’s a problem. He’s only willing to interact with his own children under specific circumstances? And he wants family life to be organised around that?

why does he need to rest / nap so much? Is he in good health? Does he have a very stressful / tiring job?

what did you say when he told you this? I’m afraid I would have laughed in DHs face if he said this when I was spending my entire day dealing with all these situations, on repeat. As parents do.

What are his parents like?

Have you spoken honestly with him about this? Told him how his behaviour impacts you and the family? What you are describing is absolutely normal child behaviour but he’s acting like the sky is falling in.

My SIL is a bit like this. She does have diagnosed anxiety disorder, and she found it very hard to stay calm when anything unexpected happened - even if it was totally normal child behaviour. Drinks getting spilled / food getting dropped on clothes / meltdowns and tears / late for a nap / nappy needs changing somewhere inconvenient - you could see her tensing up, stressed look and worry lines, just getting in a panic about how to cope with it. She actually didn’t have a second child because of how stressful she finds the humdrum of parenting.

This reminds me of how I was at one point when my dc were small. I had gone back to work full time in a stressful job, long commute, undiagnosed depression and anxiety. DH was mostly at home doing a great job. I felt I was failing at everything.

I found myself getting very stressed at home over small things like a spilt drink etc. I eventually had a nervous breakdown when youngest dc was 18 months old.

Talk to him. This will not improve on its own because the childhood tantrums will stop but other stressors will replace them.

I get this my dh also flaps. I have 2 dd from previous marriage who he met at 5 and 7 and he was fine . But they were easygoing kids and I likely did the majority plus when they are not yours there’s a feeling of being able to hand them back.
Even so I was quite surprised at how much he struggled with ds. I’d ask him to have him for half hour so I could rest/bath and within ten minutes he would come ‘find’ me and say the baby missed me. He never did solo trips out until DS was around 6 and even then it would be a quick hour at soft play or similar no lunch or adding on a trip to park. And yes if we go out for day the instant DS cried or struggled with something or fell over it was like a black cloud came over him and the day was ruined (due to his mood rather than ds) He use to try and make trips out as short as possible by ‘needing’ to do jobs in the morning then might as well have lunch. So it would be 1pm before we got out the house and at 230 he would be making noises that he needs to get back and start tea !!
it’s got better as DS has got older (now 10 but autistic so still some struggles with regulation) I struggle with chronic pain and that now impacts on my mood. What I have weirdly found is that if I go into a funk too dh immediately tries to get me out of it and drops his own funk. Because it upsets him to see me struggling he now tries to be more upbeat.

Yes, if mine did this I’d tell him to stop doing it. I don’t have much tolerance for pathetic behaviour.

Mine does occasionally flap over cooking but it is usually left something too late to start, his parents have turned up, and he’s getting stressed. I then step in and take over something but not without making it clear that this could have been avoided if he’d started it an hour earlier and why didn’t he? I think it’s for him to acknowledge his poor time management and learn from it. So in your case I’d spell it out that he’s got to stop flapping and deal with inevitable small things like a sensible person.

He goes not get to opt out of day trips. We took our 8 year old and 6 month old baby on holiday as many people do. I was not prepared to stay home or only go on a one hour park visit!

So your dh has suggested taking bottles rather than breastfeeding. I can understand that to be fair.
Other than that he sounds like he finds patenting hard, well yes, it is!
I also think he has a point about travelling long distances with small children. Who is it benefitting here? Could you go more locally so the journey is not as horrendous?
Are you travelling to these places for the benefit of the children, or is it for your benefit op? Are you bored as a sham.
Im not suggesting you stay at home every weekend, just alter the location, remove some if the stress.
I think your dh needs to engage with his children more. Do you ever go out and leave him with the dcs? How does he cope then?
All the examples you gave are normal behaviour for children and babies.
Would your dh consider parenting courses?

Mine was a bit like this
resulted in me doing everything whilst he did nothing. Nearly broke me.

we separated and he doesn’t have good relationships with the kids: they knew from a young age he actively chose not to spend time with them.

Everytime a scenario arises talk through it afterwards. Discuss ways in which to handle it next time. Get him to agree if the toddler starts arguing next time he will... and give reasons why it's OK. Such as this will teach him to be patient, its ok for him to have a tantrum, we are teaching him that....
You dont need to tell him, and you can frame it in a way that you want to make sure you are both being consistent with boundaries so it's important you both stick to what you agree.

It sounds like he needs to experience “worst case scenario” to realise the world won’t end.

For example, the baby cries and people look. The four year old gets covered in mud no clothes to change and has to walk home dirty.

Do you think BFing meant he has never solo parented so completely relies on you? I’d arrange it so he had sole charge for 48 hours to learn how to cope, at least with the 4 year old.

It is interesting/not tenable that “learning to manage these stressors” seems off the table.

Why are muddy shoes so catastrophic for him?
Obviously his reaction is completely out of proportion, but you may make better progress with why he reacts like this. It seems like a fear mechanism - what are his parents like?

Sorry op, in my experience this sort of ginger gets worse as they get older not better. My dh cant deal at all with teenage behaviors, just freezes whenever there is the slightest sass from them, so they run rings around him. It makes me very sad.

Lean in. It'll cause rows initially but may help him see that the children aren't actually doing wrong.
If the baby cries during a nappy change sing 'you don't like having your nappy changed'- it let's DH know you know there's a problem but nothing you can do about it.
If DD runs across a field ask her to run faster or can you run like a gruffalo or something.
I say this because as an anxious flapper myself I'm never sure what I need to deal with, and you 'validating' the behaviours will let him know this is an ok thing to happen and he doesn't need to do discipline or a rescue mission etc.

I think have a talk when he's calm. I'd be asking him to brainstorm some solutions.

My husband is a flapper, particularly around food/choking etc and also the patience when walking with a 2 year old. I think he also used to panic more as he didn’t realise the toddler was like that all day with me as well, he thought she just had these moments when it was the weekend. I would send him some pics during the week of what we were up to, and now I make sure to include a couple messages/pics when things aren’t going perfectly as well, which he said helps normalise it! We also find we make sure we both have half an hour atleast on the weekend to ourselves to recharge a bit. He does have a very stressful job which doesn’t help, as sometimes feel he’s used all his battery up with that some weeks, so we will usually have a more chilled weekend if that’s happened

Well that’s sub par parenting isn’t it. Not at all reflective of real life.

So, does he have a low capacity overall? Is he ill? Depressed?

Or does he use up his capacity on other things, eg stressful job, aging parents etc?

Does he go out with friends? Manage traffic jams, lost keys and other minor every day stresses?

do you think he is just choosing to be an arsehole? To make you do the drudge work?