To have gone to ds when he was upset? Dh thinks so....

[Tory79]

To the extent that he's not speaking to me!

So dh took ds (2.8) up for his bath and bed last night. Ds was overtired I think, and for whatever reason, bath time quickly descended in to a hysterical screaming fit on the part of ds, typical toddler issues of want to get in bath/dont want to get in bath etc etc but from downstairs I could ds doing those horrible chokey sobs, despite dhs best efforts to calm him. So I went upstairs, poked my head round the bathroom door and dh asked me to go away and let him handle it - I went back downstairs.

A few minutes later ds could be heard wailing for me at the top of the stairs, clearly no calmer and really wanting mummy. So I went back up, ave him a cuddle and stayed up there for about 5m until he was calmer, then I went back downstairs and dh finished putting him to bed. When he came down he was clearly annoyed and we spent the rest of the evening in silence. The same thing happened about 4 weeks ago as well.

So, I think I was not being unreasonable to have gone to ds, on the basis that Ds has no problem with dh putting him to bed, they normally have a whale of a time. It's not like we have a problem to fix iykwim. Ds was just overtired, and to be frank I'm better at calming him down than dh is - if I'd not gone up dh would probably have ended up getting cross and putting ds to bed still upset.
Or was I being unreasonable because dh wanted me to let him deal with it?

If you are usually primary care giver then it is little wonder that ds when extremely upset wanted you and calmed quicker when you appeared.

Yes dh can do it. But, all small things want their mum. (Or primary person) it's just not something you can get away from.

You obviously feel that you weren't being unreasonable, despite what a lot of people here are saying. But your DH does. How are you going to resolve that?

Wow, some of these responses really put the boot into OP!
YANBU, you simply acted on instinct, unfortunately DH has had his toes stepped on. Hopefully you have a nice strong relationship where you can sit down over a cup of tea (or a nice glass of wine!) and talk it through before it becomes a bigger issue. IMO if all you did was give him a cuddle then leave DH to finish bedtime, you have not really undermined DH, but perhaps he's feeling a little insecure about your strong relationship with DS and needs a cuddle and a little reassurance himself? I mean he could just be a pig.. but I'm hoping that's not the case!

Comparing giving sweets with giving a cuddle is stupid.

I do

I don't think this is undermining at all. I have a ds of a similar age (2.10) and if he was screaming and sobbing for me , no matter what the circumstances, I would go to him. Two is still so very little. Yanbu.

By your reasoning when my 4 year old is crying for sweets because he really, really wants them...I should let him?

Sweets = not necessary, not good. Cuddles and comfort from both parents = absolutely fundamental.

I do think it is a tough one. Your DH felt he could handle the situation. If I heard one of mine working themselves up I know it was instinctive to go and pitch in. It sounds such a rarity I don't think DH was right to be huffy for ages after. You weren't knocking his ability you were calming DS.

The warnings about making a rod for your own back when DC2 comes along are probably valid up to a point.But in this instance I don't think you did wrong.

Comparing a 4 year old to 2 year old is equally ridiculous

You did what I would (and have) done. Some times they have been crying hysterically for their dad, if he is about and available and didn't come to help, I would be cross with him. It's his child too and I would think it only fair for him to help. This works vice verse to. Why should one of us battle for half an hour to get dd to put her nightie on when the other could do it in 10 seconds. There are so many battles that we have to have with our children, it's about picking the ones that need to be had and ones like this that can just be dropped and sorted instantly, changing it from a tiring battle to a pleasant bedtime. Does that make sense?

Hi all,

new to this so dont bite... Partner left laptop on with mumsnet open so i clicked this thread as it looked interesting. Then as a male thought i'd sign up to just drop some male perspective.

For me if my dp did this i would be a little annoyed. If i needed the help i would have asked for it. In a society where as a male i'm already made to feel like a lesser parent a lot of the time through media or anything else, I strive to help in whatever way I can. I know the maternal side of things would in someways say step in but for me if you did that my head would say whats the point in me bothering, I clearly dont do it right and you dont trust me to do it. However, the not speaking to you part all evening is a bit pathetic...

Daily walks, welcome! Not bad for a first post either ;)

See you on the other boards

DailyWalks, I'm going to make an assumption about yours & DP's respective skills. Substitute if I've guessed wrongly.

Let's say you & DP go to buy a new boiler. DP wants to do all the talking. The salesman patronises her a bit and tells her some outright lies about the device's flow capacity, fuel efficiency and control responsiveness. It's not what your system needs & is overpriced.

In your opinion, is it better to let DP be deceived into buying the wrong thing, or would you step in and sort it out?

Agree with most other posters (nice to hear a male pov on a thread like this). I did this kind of thing with my DS when he was small, felt I was the one who could deal with him better than anyone else. The result was a clingy baby/toddler followed by a clingy 4/5 yr old who hated school as everyone 'picked' on him. Now DS is in a school for naughty difficult boys and living with XH

My case is probably extreme but I know now what I did wrong, no rewind button unfortunately, DS is 16 now and wonderfully loving but very very difficult to cope with.

daily always interesting to have a male take on things! But are you saying you would feel like that if it was something that had happened just a couple of times in many months? I love dh doing bedtime with ds (as I don't particularly enjoy it myself as I'm so tired by the end if the day) and he knows that, so he can't possibly be thinking that I'm somehow trying to get one over on him or discourage him from doing bedtime.

We do have some other disagreements over parenting, mainly that dh is too reliant on the TV (in my view) and also over what he feeds ds when he is looking after him, and I do make my views known on these things although don't actively try and stop dh from doing them....

Garlic,

TBH I understand the point your making, but i think in this case its a completely different scenario, the one you are pointing out is based pretty much on pure factual knowledge where as the scenario that is outlined in the OP is much more of, in reality, an emotion based scenario so i dont see how you can in any sense of rationality compare the two. You yourself in your post have in many ways insinuated and i dont mean to offend you here that pretty much the old gender stereo types are correct, which to be quite honest is to me just ridiculous. E.G im better at cleaning than my partner but she in reality could probably bench press more than me.

jayne I absolutely wouldn't describe ds as clingy to me unless he is poorly or overtired. He is quite happy without me, loves going out just him and dh, he spends a couple of afternoons a week with mil. He's not bothered by me going away or going out.

"4 year old is crying for sweets because he really, really wants them...I should let him?"

Depends. If you were going to say yes to the sweets anyway then sure, if you'd said no, then no, crying doesn't/shouldn't change your mind. You've said no for a reason whether it's because it will spoil his dinner, it will cost too much, he had some yesterday,

But in this case he's not crying because he's trying to change anybody's mind, he's just tired and overwhelmed by the tiniest thing. So the best course of action is to get him to sleep ASAP. It's easier to sleep when calm than when worked up, upset and crying so it's logical, and kind, to calm him down. Letting him get more and more worked up over little/stupid issues isn't helpful either to the situation, or to him - it's not teaching him not to care about whatever was upsetting him, it's just teaching him that he's not worth listening to (to take it to a hysterical conclusion - of course as a one off when you're bloody exhausted and cannot expend energy either trying to console or engaging with the argument, it's not the end of the world).

Tory,
tbh yes, it could make me feel that way it just happening once. I understand that its difficult, i myself with DS1 (3) when he was little and started on proper food would be all over the situation with wipes after every mouthful, the reality is I have caused my partner and I more issues by doing this as he now hates getting dirty in any way, I take full responsibilty for this and with DS2 have had to learn to take a step back from this sort of situation.

I know it sounds bizarre but parenting to me is a learning experience for everyone involved including yourselves, if you don't let partner try and diffuse the situation (im assuming you only have 1 DC atm) he may not ever learn the skills to do so, increasing your workload.

How funny daily, dh used to do the exact same thing and wipe ds all the time - ds is also not a fan of being messy!

And I absolutely agree that parenting is a learning curve for everyone, I just don't think that should be at the expense of ds if that makes sense.

Sounds like your dh is jealous of the bond between mother and child. If the child wanted their favourite teddy would you force them to have their bunny?

Might be controversial but when hurt, tired, poorly.... Little ones want their main care giver!!!

daily a good way to create a more equal partnership is not to regard what you do as "help" but just doing childcare or whatever. You are not helping your wife/partner, you are meant to be sharing it (within the confines of how long you are both out of the home/away from the child).

YABBU at all. He's still little and wanted his mum on that occasion. No
big deal. Your DP is acting like a child.