Horrible row with dh :-(

[littlepigshavebigears]

I know I am at least partially in the wrong here

basically I feel that dh shouts at the kids too much and for the wrong things

he shouts at them for what I consider quite routine and normal brotherly joshing, because he thinks it will escalate and they will upset each other, or they will do it to other children and go too far and get into trouble

ds2 HAS gone too far with teasing and upset another child (he's 6) and we took it very seriously, made him apologise and he was very contrite

but I just think dh i9s overzealous - for example he bawled at them this morning because ds1 was gently tugging ds2's pony tail, he was sat on the sofa with ds2 leaning back into his lap sitting on the floor and they were gently teasing each other, ds1 was saying "this is your handle, ding dong" and they were both giggling

dh shrieked at them to stop it. I sent the boys to get their coats and then told dh I thought he was wrong to stop them from gentle play-acting (which I should NOT have done, I should have left it until later so the boys were unaware )

his view is that all behaviour of this sort needs stamping out because they will go too far and get into trouble (apparently they were told off at afterschool club the other day because ds2 hit ds1 on the arm after he pushed in front of him in the snack queue)

my view is that a certain amount of play fighting and joshing is inevitable between two brothers close in age, it is healthy, and what we should be doing is teaching them the difference between that and actual unkindness (which I think they know the difference anyway). Surely sometimes as brothers they WILL go too far and upset each other, but we don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water and stop them from doing what all brothers do? DH shouts at them for low-level "ner ner" type behaviour when they beat each other on the Wii as well because he thinks if we stamp it all out, then they will not go too far and upset somebody

it all ended very unpleasantly with me saying "maybe we should just have a three foot rule then fgs" and him stomping out - he is quite rightly upset in part because I tackled him while the boys were still in earshot but also he deeply disagrees with me, and I foresee more conflict over it

who is right? I can take it if you all say I am an arsehole

[pointythings]

OP, I so know where you are coming from - my DH used to be like this. He had a very strict authoritarian upbringing where no discord was tolerated and he used to jump down the DDs' throats at the slightest little thing. I did make the mistake of undermining him by interfering when things were kicking off - that didn't help. Talking about it was the only thing that did.

DH expressed the fear that if he tolerated any less than perfect behaviour, the DDs would go off the rails, be expelled from school, get into crime and so on. This was at a time when they were beautifully behaved at school, had been told off just once at after school club for not staying neatly in line and had learnt from that - there just wasn't a problem, just some sibling rivalry turning into squabbles.

So we agreed that we would 1) stand back a bit more and let them work things out, 2) not get angry when we did interfere but try to stay calm and speak calmly, and separate them before things got out of hand, and 3) if one of us raelly felt that the other was being excessive and unreasonable, we were allowed to step in, but had to then accept the other being upset about it and talk it out later.

This has been pretty successful so far, DH is a more laid back parent, I mostly let him get on with it and actually he often does recognise it when he has gone OTT and apologises to the DDs, and we've had maybe 3 or 4 occasions, evenly distributed, when one of us has felt the need to 'undermine' the other.

I agree with the poster who said that aggression is an inborn trait and needs to be handled, not stamped out at all times. The drink incident is definitely a step too far, the OP and her DH need to thrash this out.

[cumfy]

Are DH's parents strict ?

Seems like he is acting out his childhood experiences.