DP has spent an hour trying to collect 5 yr old from a play date

[Eastie77]

I'm at a loss. DD is 5 years old and went to a play date at a friends house today. DP went to pick her up at 6:30pm. Her friend only lives 5 minutes away so I've been wondering where he got too. He just turned up, his voice shaking saying he "cannot remove her" from her friends house, she is running around their sofa laughing, refusing to put her shoes on and will not come home. He left the house without her as he "couldn't take it anymore" after spending nearly an hour chasing around after her

I am in bed ill with DS who is also ill and he expected me to get dressed and go and get her! I have sent him back to fetch her and he has angrily left the house. I reminded him that he is a GROWN man surely capable of picking up a 5 year old child, putting her over his shoulder and walking out of the house?!! I feel like I'm in some kind of parallel universe here.

I'm friends with the play dates mother but god knows what she must be thinking..

So what will he do if she ignores him when he tells her to stop doing something dangerous rather than just naughty ? Will he walk off and hope it all goes away or will he have the gumption to pick her up and remove her ?
He really needs to sort out a way of making her listen to him and take him seriously - and that's consistency - the '10 minutes more' nonsense was sending out all sorts of mixed messages.

I sympathise because my DH is exactly the same! My DS is relatively well behaved because he knows even if he pulls one over on dad mum will punish him later but DD is 6 and she has him wrapped around his finger. I showed this to DH the other day when she started crying because our iPad had no battery so I said she couldn’t watch it and she wanted it plugged in immediately so that she could watch it while it was plugged in and I said no. So anyway she was crying over it and my husband kept telling her to stop crying and I pointed out to him that there was a reason she was stood right next to him instead of me. Because she knows he will firstly interact with her drama whereas I ignore it and she stops. Secondly he will more than likely give in or find some way of placating her. When he then began to ignore the crying she sure enough stopped and left the room to go play with something else. I also made her apologise for being rude and making a huge fuss when she next came back to the kitchen.

Don’t get me wrong my children still misbehave sometimes when I’m with them but just no where even close to they do with their father. To them dad is a total pushover.

Why the fuck is he running around the sofa?

What did he think you could do that he couldn't?

I can say my kids have never done this.Not because they are perfect or some other nonsense but bc they are 18,16 and 14.And blatant disrespect,even at 5 years old,would not have been tolerated. "Joking " or not.

So you still took DD out with them today for lunch ?

Her dd obviously has respect for her mother and hopefully DP's now realised that he needs to do something as this should have given him a wakeup call. Is he open to learning some strategies now op? If this hasn't made him realise that this is necessary, then you are in for tricky times ahead.

So he chose to lie to you as well

I wouldn't be having any more dc with this pathetic 'man' until he grew up and learnt how to parent effectively and not lie about it.

I’m a childcarer and this reminds of when I was looking after a 3 year old. The Dad came to collect him but his son had a tantrum and refused to move. Dad stayed by front door. I tried to gently reason with the boy. Dad stayed where he was. I tried to pick him up but he turned into a dead weight and screamed he didn’t want to go. Dad shuffling his feet by door. After all this I said “you’re welcome to try”. He sighed and said “Okay, I’ll be the bad guy then” 🙄

I did my best The Voice at DD1 (9) earlier this year, it wasn't a shout but there might have been a hint of a growl. It was probably 0829 on a school day. Apparently it made her tummy go all funny and wobbly.

Agree with others that he needs to find a way to be more effective right now. They don't get easier as they get older, or to lift over a shoulder. Children look for boundaries and rules and will push and push until they find a limit. It's easier in the long run to give them a hard and fast boundary straight away. Easier for them, and a heck of a lot easier for wear-and-tear on parents' nerves.

What have you said to your dp today? Has he acknowledged he needs to grow a pair?

I think a previous poster asked - why did the childminder say he needed parenting classes?

Am I the only one who thinks this is cute?

Everyone knows little girls wrap their Dad's around their little fingers.

I could get away with anything with my Dad as a child. My mother was a whole other book, not just an issue. In fact she was an encyclopedia of books. But my Dad? He just did what I wanted lol.

Am I the only one who thinks this is cute?

Everyone knows little girls wrap their Dad's around their little fingers.

My daughter does it and I don't think it is cute at all (though admittedly it is funny when she puts on that 'please Daddy' voice).

I can't be doing with bad behaviour or the children trying to get around one parent by going to the other. I think it's better to just have clear, firm boundaries and stick to them. 99.9% of the time that is, I'm not perfect either!

Am I the only one who thinks this is cute?

Um - yes. My teenage dd is the absolute apple of dh’s eye and always has been but he would stand absolutely NO nonsense. Fortunately we could both summon up The Voice when necessary. If he’d acted like the OP’s dp I would have been livid.

It's curious as why men are like that with little girls. They're stricter with boys. I often wonder if they see the mother in the little girl and are petrified haha.

I've seen dd act like this with exDP. She just knew he would let her away with anything.

”Am I the only one who thinks this is cute?”

Will it be cute when she refuses to listen to him and stop when she is dashing towards a busy road, or running around in a car park?

Frankly it is never cute for one parent to leave all the responsibility of parenting to the other.

Used to have a kid who invited herself over after school regularly (worked her way through the possible adults). When her mum came to collect her, said child would make it as difficult as possible to leave, to the extent of hanging on to the doorframe. The mum was completely wet about it EVERY time leaving the host parent effectively trying to boot the pair of them out of the house. Utterly hopeless. The child didn't improve much until maybe late teenagehood.

I saw a dad with his son like this once. The little boy - about 4 - was doing exactly what he wanted and totally ignoring his father who was trying to get him to leave. I did think he was going to find it harder as his son got older.

”Am I the only one who thinks this is cute?”

Bad behaviour is easy to minimise as cute when kids are very young. Different as they get older and the bad behaviour has more serious consequences.

Definitely not cute. He is basically abdicating responsibility.

One of mine tried this with me once. It was a good few months before I agreed to let her play with someone after school again, and she learned her lesson the hard way.

I'd be absolutely furious that he'd given up and expected you to sort it. You need to sort this out now and find him some ways of effective parenting.... if he can't parent a 5 year old, you don't stand a prayer with a hormonal teenager.

My parents were like good cop, bad cop. We only had to see bad cop arrive to know that we were in big trouble. Good cop? We danced rings around him.