Am I soft or is DH living in fantasy land?

[Playduh]

DS - three, been told by both parents that we can have the paddling pool out.

He's been waiting relatively patiently as I unpack shopping and DH makes coffee.

DH takes his coffee into garden, enthusiastically followed by DS.

DH sits down. DS starts asking for paddling pool. DS has waited about fifteen minutes now (he's three). DH says no, starts drinking coffee and reading paper.

I'm now making food for a party we are having this afternoon. DS now crying hard and comes in to ask me to put up pool.

I suggest DH put pool (five minute job with the hose and electric pump) up now and relax after when DS is happily playing in the thing.

Massive tantrums now coming from DH and DS, party food not making itself.

Apparently I am bossy, indulgent, a martyr and constantly undermine DH's parenting.

AIBU to go to into town and hide, leaving the two of them to it?

Agree Pearlman. In Op's shoes I would have clarified with dh what he had said and what he was planning to do. And then explained to DS "daddy is just finishing his drink and then he will do it for you. Go play with something else for a little while"

I would have been annoyed if my dh had just said no, with no explaination to my child, just because I do think that's very unfair to a 3 year old. But after I have finished my drink is a very reasonable thing to say.

I think both of you could have avoided the situation by not saying yes when neither seemed to have any intention of doing it.

I think tantrums should get sympathy. Not their own way - not a change of approach about the thing that upset them - but sympathy yes.

Small children have no concept of time and "not now" feels like forever. They also have not yet learned to contain their frustration. So I think your child has done really well in waiting while shopping is unpacked and coffee is made. At 3 years old, that's about a reasonable limit. Beyond that - totally unreasonable. DH is being a selfish arse.

Also I agree with the previous poster who said after a set time is reasonable, after I've finished my drink/chatting/watching this program rarely is. Either it's a power play or there's too much risk the adult will enjoy 'their' thing and drag it on and on which is unfair.

We're not going to agree Pearlman

It sounds as though it's the DH who needs "a decent lesson in patience" if he can't wait for the five minutes it would take to put up the paddling pool before he has his coffee.

He just has a different view to hers in how long he should let the child wait while he finishes what he is doing

But isn't the overriding issue here the fact that he didn't seem to want to handle the consequence of making the wait longer?

That is if he had originally said 'no, I'm having my coffee' and the child got upset because he had waited and now daddy said no, the the consequence is explaining he was still getting the paddling pool.

Also because 'what he was doing' has no obvious time scale (finished coffee or big weekend paper?) it would need clarification, otherwise there not really a 'lesson' in waiting.

On top of that from the OP's point of veiw the thing the husband was doing was a self indulgent act; the one she got interrupted from doing wasn't. So the dad should have taken over the handling of the fall out (of his actions) but he didn't, it seems he was more bothered about how terrible everything was for him.

Sadly there is little you can really do about it because if I've learnt anything in life it's that you can't change someone's behaviour. Only your dh can change the way he behaves.

I'm not telling you to put up with it, just that if you expect changes you will be banging your head against a brick wall.

Appeal to his selfish side and he might then see how it benefits him to do things rather than expect you to do it. What you can do is maybe have a discussion about efficiency. That when you think of something it's better to just do it there and then, rather than shelving it for later because stopping and starting again is less efficient than just doing it there and then. And that it's easier if you just do something straight away than shelving it for later.

Basically you can explain how it benefits him if he is more hands on (but don't tell him it's for your benefit because he won't do it then).

All the other stuff he came up with about the toddler needing to wait longer, going back on his word to the child, blaming you for 'undermining' his authority etc is just hot air to basically get his way and to benefit himself. If you can somehow make him see it benefits him to just do things then you might have chance of him changing his behaviour. But I doubt he'll change his attitude.

Pearlman, are you sure 4yos have to wait a lot longer than 15 minutes for the toilet? iirc in Reception they can go during lessons and don't have to wait until breaktime. Makes sense as some of them won't be reliably able to hold on for very long at that age.

As for the OP, I am kind of torn here. Otoh I do think it is important not to jump at every whim of a child, otoh I also think it is important to give clear messages to children and then let them see that you stick to your undertaking. It is modelling behaviour that you are going to want to see in them over the years to come. Nothing is more irritating than a 9yo who's promised to lend mum a hand skulking in his bedroom keeping her waiting indefinitely.

Also like some other posters, the impression I am getting is that of a man who is busily demonstrating how important it is for adults to have rest time, while the woman gets on with the jobs that can't actually wait: unpacking the shopping, preparing for the party. Before I comment on the situation I would like to know how often it is the other way round: mummy demonstrating the importance of adult relaxation time while daddy gets to juggle party organisation and disgruntled junior.

Otoh I agree with Notso: most sensible thing would have been not to have said yes to paddling pool when there were things to be organised.

This sounds like a very minor issue, OP. Only you will know if it isn't. It has rumblings of a disaffected, lazy and ultimately resentful dad to me. I know because I had one.

My dad used to cause delays in anything he was asked to do chid-related; putting Christmas presents together, he would fall asleep, ditto when we had bikes. When we were supposed to be taken out to give my mum a break we'd be sitting in the car waiting to go... for up to an hour. Control or laziness, you decide? I don't see my dad anymore and haven't for about 20 years. I have three brothers and you can see the damage that this permanently present, absent father did.

My advice to you would be to look at what you've posted and decide whether this is routine behaviour or whether it's one-off off day. If it's the former, get your qualifications up to date and plan for your future as a working mum - and don't have another child with this man. It would make your life so much harder to have multiple sad children trying to grow up in this atmosphere.

Find your equilibrium, your point of no return and what you expect in a partner - and then don't deviate from it. If your current setup is just the easy option, believe me, it will get harder and sadder if this man wasn't meant to be a parent. There are other men out there to have a family with.

Good post Lyingwitch.
I would just add that your Dh sounds like a great big over grown baby, OP.

Unless he sat down and explained to your son that he was going to put the pool up as he had finished his coffee, he sounds like a moody asshole.

Pearlman - there is every indication that the dad had no intention of moving his butt and sorting out the paddling pool. Well, maybe after 30 minutes... an hour... whatever. A child of 3 simply cannot handle this amount of uncertainty - except by being brutalised into giving up on having needs. Of course kids have to learn delayed gratification - and also the absence of gratification. But there are good ways of doing it and bad ways.

Seems there are plenty of people here who don't think it's a fuss about nothing. So in your house/relationships it's not a big deal but it seems it is for the OP and would be for a number of us. At the very least, that would suggest they need to have a good long chat about how they approach situations like this in the future.

Shutting people down by accusing them of making a fuss about nothing is usually pretty counterintuitive in my experience. It's also a contradiction, a 'fuss' cannot be equal to 'nothing' so really it means more along the lines of ' you are upset by something I do not consider important, so be quiet'. All that does is flag to people that you're only willing to think/talk about things that you feel they are justified in being upset about. A value judgement is made about their emotions. But why? Why not say it's ok for you to feel differently about things to me, we're all different people with different priorities.

Not only was he being a lazy selfish arse who couldn't be bothered to put the pool up (amazed that apparently 'no' now means 'yes, in a little while' - no wonder rape conviction rates are so low) but why the hell was he expecting to sit on his arse while his wife made a load of party food? I wouldn't do that to my DH, nor he to me.

You don't know how far from the coffee drinking DH the OP was, Pearlman. You can't assume the OP didn't hear 'No'.

You should go on what she reports, and not make up scenarios involving distance from the DH or words he might have said.

The child waited, and waited patiently. He waited until the task he was asked to wait for was accomplished. The adults moved on to their next activity. In the case of the OP it was preparing food for the party. In the case of the DH, it was sitting on his arse having a cup of coffee while engaging in a power play with his own child.
And YY to the comment that he was sitting on his arse while his wife prepared food for the afternoon party. Who does that?

An excellent post, LyingWitch.
A 'permanently present, absent father' (or mother) will inflict a lot of damage before he (she) is through.

Sometimes I make my children wait for stuff while i finish my coffee. They do so with relative patience and have done for some time. They are 4 and 6. I love them dearly and my life revolves around them but I hate drinking lukewarm coffee. These days they are quite reasonable little humans because they understand that their pleasure doesn't always come before that of everyone else's.

Maybe the OPs husband is a bit of a dick but I would have kept out of this one, he said yes to the pool, he said he would put it up after his coffee, I would have told the crying child to take it up with his father and continued to make the party food leaving the father to cope with the problem he created.

Brutalizing?!

LMAO! No wonder there are so many spoiled obnoxious brats out there.

Yeh, LilacInn, brutalizing. That is any parental behaviour that persistently forces the child to cope with emotions that are beyond his/her capacity to contain and process. Children are not mini-adults. They need careful tending to become healthy, whole adults.