Selfish DH preventing DD getting ready for school

[Spelunk]

I get up at 6.30am and get ready, then wake DD at 7.15am. She has 15 mins to get up and dressed, 15 mins to eat breakfast, and 15 mins to have a quick wash and brush teeth. So DD bathroom time is 7.45am-8.00am, then we put shoes on and walk out the door at 8.10am.

DH is repeatedly using the bathroom during that time and making it difficult for DD to get ready for school. I’ve told him repeatedly that he can use the bathroom any other time but not during that 15 minute slot.

Today he was bending over brushing his teeth in the sink while I was trying to get DD toothbrush out of the cupboard above the sink, and bonked him on the back of the head with the corner of the door. DH was furious, and I was equally furious because he shouldn’t be fucking getting in the way during those 15 minutes.

He’s a grown adult, he’s capable of getting up 15 minutes earlier to use the bathroom. He’s just fucking lazy and lying in bed as late as possible. Then he ends up needing the bathroom right before he leaves for work at 8am. It’s selfish and I’m absolutely sick of it.

I don't have any advise. However, it seems like your daughter needs are not a priority to husband. I don't think I could be with someone who cannot put my child first. It would give me the ICK.

Seems you have already decided he's a selfish twat and need other people to agree.

FWIW, I agree.

Debates about whether you need a strict timetable (clearly you do, for your own sake as well as your daughter's) are beside the point. You have a timetable and he knows this and disregards it. That's twattish (if there's been no discussion).

Taking a dump in front of other members of the family is also twattish and extraordinarily entitled. Especially if there is another loo if he's taken short!

Debates about best time to clean teeth are also beside the point. He KNOWS when your daughter needs to clean her teeth.

Why are you even still with him? What joy is he bringing to you or your daughter?

Resentment will only grow. Time to be making plans, I'm afraid...

@amiahoarder we have a strict routine, fir years I didn't, but I fund its actually calming for everyone if we all know our times! I'm in loo room 7.10-7.20, loo and teeth. Shower in bathroom 7.20 - 7.30 whilst daughter is in loo room. She showers at night
Son in loo 7.30 - 7.40, shower room 7.45 - 8am. All downstairs by 8.05 at latest for breakfast, out the door by 8.15am. Husband waits and uses bathroom once we have all gone.
It works like clockwork, means no arguments, we all have our own space and peace in morning until breakfast. I've found the more I put structure into the daily things, the more free Time I have.

YANBU @Spelunk The posts from people saying they couldn’t live like this miss the point that you are a parent managing a ND child and it’s working for her to the point that the school has the same approach. Actually, it shows that you are a really hardworking and conscientious parent. It’s great we live in an age where setting alarms and reminders is so easy.

I am sorry your DH is not supporting this approach. I am a relaxed, messy parent but I am also similarly disgusted by your DH going to toilet in the bathroom in front of your DD.

While I agree entirely that your DH is being a dick- and unhelpful, and selfish, and it sounds like he is like this generally , not just in the mornings….

Your adherence to strict timetables and running your life by alarms does seem quite unusually rigid, both to myself and to others. Have you considered you might also have autism, as your daughter does?

fwiw I’m an adhd woman married to a man with autism and… it can be very challenging for both of us

If you brush while your enamel is still soft, you brush away the enamel with the food fragments. You're supposed to wait until your teeth have rehardened, and then brush.

💯 this. Please read the below extracts. This is not about OPs DD. It is all about OP. She is almost definitely ND herself and has the potential to do some real harm to her DD here:

Oh no, I couldn’t cope with that! My morning routine has always been timed, even before I had DD. Now it’s even more complex because I have two people to get ready, so the timed routine is even more important.

No I can’t do that. Things happen in a set order at a set time, using objects that are in set places. The alarm goes off then I do the thing. This is a constant source of arguments anyway, because DH doesn’t understand why I can’t do the thing right now - I tell him the alarm isn’t due to go off for another three minutes but he’s just like “so?”

Read that again

Lock the door!

@slore

"I'm sick of late diagnosed mildly affected people preaching from their ivory towers and denying the needs of people with more impacting forms of autism."

Thanks for this love. Nicely put if you're going for some cringeworthy neurodivergent too trumps. Take a chill pill you muppet.

I work as a 121 with 2 autistic kids. Have my own ASD kids and have worked with them for years so maybe just back off with your nasty little assumptions.

My point was that there are clearly a lot of unmet needs going on in this family's morning routine - not least because they have 2 toilets. I'm not the first poster to say that this routine seems more or as much to do with the mum's process not the child's.

Leave the bastard.

1. It will be a lot easier to get your DD ready when he doesn't live in the same house.
2. He can spend as much time as he likes in there without getting in anyone else's way when he's divorced.

Exactly, it sounds like a most uncomfortable regimental way of life to me waiting for an alarm to go off before starting the next task. I think it’s you who needs to rethink the structure in your household OP it sounds unbearable and not at all normal!

For many ND people, alarms going off at task start times is the only way we manage not to be late for everything.

It seems uncomfortable to you. For us, it's the only way to cope in a world where buses and trains and shift starts happen at fixed times. Given the choice of losing my job for lateness or having a series of alarms governing my mornings, I'll take continued employment every time.

Why do people find it so hard to comprehend that not everyone is like them?

This works for OP and her neurodivergent daughter. Her DH doesn't seem to understand, nor, it seems do a lot of 'normal' people, who are more focused on attacking OP for managing her life differently.
Whatever you think about neurodivergency, this is how it ideally works for OP.

But it's clearly not working if her DH doesn't understand neurodivergency and how to manage it - moreover, to make matters much worse, whether or not he understands it, he seems intent on sabotaging efforts to manage it.

Nah, he's horrible! He's doing the Dominator act, isn't he - this is MY house, I do what I want when I want, get out of my way, serfs!

"Why are you so horrible?" - Does he think you owe him obeisance? Or is this an actual, real-life DARVO in the flesh: "Why am I so horrible?"

With your other updates, OP, I think you're a paragon of patience (and organisation!) Stupid fucker doesn't know how lucky he is.

It's like everyone wants us to pretend to be "normal".

No. We will manage our lives as works best for us.

This is all about respect. He doesn't respect either of you enough to free up the bathroom for a 15min slot.

My daughter generally uses the bathroom from 6:40-6:50am. I therefore avoid that time (or am very quick) because I know she's heading to school (and also that I would have to drop her).

Maybe your husband doesn't t care because he has no respect for you nor has to fix her being late for school

Do you actually like your 'D'H?

This works for the OP. We have no idea if it works for her ND daughter. I say that as a woman with ADHD with a husband with OCD and a DDs with autism and ADHD. I'm not for a minute suggesting that everyone needs to be 'normal'. I am suggesting that the OP have a look at herself and consider whether her behaviours stem from trying to create order in her world, not her daughters. In which case OP could be doing far more harm than good by imposing such a rigid timetable - with alarms - on everyone in the house.

What?? 😂 We have every idea it works for her daughter. Kid gets fed, brushed and ready for school on time, without meltdowns. It works so well for her that the school has adopted OP's precisely timetabled approach for DD.

Ok, mebbes...
Nevertheless, this is addressing OP's behaviour, not DH's. Encouraging her to be more flexible and accommodating might be relevant if her DH were otherwise pressed for time and reasonable.

There is no excuse I can see for him acting the way he does.

I love how some people's suggestion is that the OP puts herself even more last than she already is in the household priorities

The OP has a method that works for her. Her daughter gets up, washed, dressed and to school on time and fed which is more than some households are managing. Most of this whilst her lazy husband hasn't even gotten out of bed. And all without a meltdown from her child.

But hey if they alarms don't work for her husband she should definitely stop using then. Even if they work for her.

There is this underlying current that if the OP has autism, then the alarms are for her and therefore she should give them up for the good of everybody else. I'm sometimes in a wheelchair, we have narrow rooms, I'm sometimes in the way. I better remind myself not to use it when my DH and child are around in case it disrupts them. For the good of the household of course.

That's the wrong way round - you're not supposed to brush right after eating, you need to let your saliva do it's job.

Sorry. Not relevant really but just thought I'd say!

Woman make yourself even more flexible and accommodating whilst you carry the parenting load in order to better facilitate your lazy husband being able to jump out of bed at the last minute, only see to himself, just in case he can't shit at the exact time he wants.

I love how some people's suggestion is that the OP puts herself even more last than she already is in the household priorities

Not only that, but put her disabled DD lower in the household priorities too.

There is this underlying current that if the OP has autism, then the alarms are for her and therefore she should give them up for the good of everybody else. I'm sometimes in a wheelchair, we have narrow rooms, I'm sometimes in the way. I better remind myself not to use it when my DH and child are around in case it disrupts them. For the good of the household of course.

You've nailed it. The ablism from many posters on this thread is, as so often the case on MN, awful.