Trying to work out if I’m expecting too much here.
We live in a big city and have two children: baby and 4yo. I’m a SAHM (with a passive income to avoid a drip feed) and quite used to just getting on with things when we’re out (crying, tantrums, snacks, etc).
He finds our 4yo difficult to deal with due to normal 4yo things like tantruns, constantly changing their mind (“I want my banana peeled / no not peeled”), stopping every five minutes on a walk to point at a leaf or something interesting, spillages of drinks or just the endless talking. All fairly typical stuff but he finds it quite overwhelming.
Then with the baby he panics as soon as the baby cries. Yesterday for example we’d been out walking for about an hour and the baby started crying in the buggy. Instead of just calmly heading somewhere to sit, DH immediately started panicking about there being no benches and his mood immediately changed, no chatting, stressed expression. We ended up walking to a café which was always the obvious solution anyway.
He then suggested maybe we should bring bottles so we can just feed immediately anywhere the baby cries. But realistically the baby is quite big and I can’t just stand in the middle of a park feeding, I’d still need somewhere to sit like a bench or café. He also asked why we make it so difficult for ourselves by going on days out as opposed to mainly staying home or going out for short one hour bursts so we’re never too far from home.
He gets very stressed if the baby cries in public, scanning the room, worrying about people looking at us, wanting to leave immediately even if we’re somewhere casual like a Costa.
The overall effect is that within about 10 minutes of an outing I often feel like it would actually be calmer if I’d just taken the kids myself. But the flip side is that I don’t like the idea that he opts out and I’m always the one doing everything while he gets the relaxed role.
Yesterday it sort of illustrated the dynamic: we were in a café while I was feeding the baby and the 4yo had slightly spilled something. DH was getting increasingly stressed so I said “do you want to go on a little walk?” and he actually it became far less stressful.
So I’m stuck between two things: outings with him often feel more stressful than outings without him but i also don’t want him opting out completely and me doing everything alone
Am I being unreasonable expecting him to cope with this stage of parenting a bit more calmly? Or is this just a phase some people struggle with until the kids are older?
The kids thing aside, he’s loving, caring, does a lot at home. Just struggles with kids stuff.