Is this normal?

[grimbygunk]

I'm wondering if this is normal for most or laziness from my husband. I am a stay at home parent so obviously spend a lot of time with my ds. My husband goes to work just before me and ds get up in the morning and then he returns around 4:30/5pm at which point he will make a coffee and go out for a cigarette, be glued to his phone the entire time. He'll probably be out there a good 20mins. He then carries on looking at crap on his phone most of the evening and paying very little attention to our son. He rarely actually plays with him. Now I understand he wants to unwind a bit after work but it irritates me that he'd rather look at his phone than actually engage in something with ds. If ever I bring this up with him it usually ends up in an argument and that I'm apparently talking crap. He does put ds to bed a few times a week purely because I insisted he help out more but even then my son is upset that daddy is putting him to bed and not mummy. I am sure this is because he doesn't interact with him enough the rest of the time. Aibu to think he should be making more effort and taking more interest in his own child?

Do you know how to tell if what he does is normal/enough? You do the same. From the moment he walks through the door in the evenings you do exactly what he does. Don't say anything. Don't tell him what you're doing, just shadow what he does and it will be painfully obvious how little actually gets done with your son.

My husband was like this & we eventually banned phones until the kids were in bed.

Smart phones have caused more problems in our relationship than anything else.

YANBU. My DH is pretty involved with the DCs but is constantly glued to his fucking phone as well. Yesterday I went upstairs and he was drying DDs hair, in the other hand he was on his bloody phone! It really winds me up and if the DCs ever ask for anything, it always has to wait because his phone is in his hand. Him doing bedtimes is usually shouting instructions at the DCs from the hallway whilst being on his phone. I've mentioned it to him, told him not to get it out at the tea table, told him how can we enforce it to ours when they are older when this is the example they get, when we are on a family day out and his phone is in his hand, I point it out and ask him what he is doing. He tends to get huffy about it. Nothing changes. Fucks me right off.

I'd say it's pretty normal now a days everyone is glued to there phones it's pretty much the only thing that matters so it seems.
I hate having a conversation with someone & there busy messaging I mean what's the actual point spending time with people if all you do is message or listen to half a convoy. I'm half tempted to tell them to sod off & message me when they get home I'm sure we'd have a better Convo that way.

That's not normal OP. My DH works very long hours, and is usually not home until our DS is in bed. When he can get home before he plays with him endlessly, reads him a bedtime story and gives him loads of cuddles in bed before he goes to sleep. If he does work late he face times our DS before bed, and they have a little chat and 'virtual play' . However that being said if he has a day off work (rare), he tends to sit on his phone a lot of the day to 'relax'. Not sure how reading crap on the internet is relaxing, but as he's a great dad aside from that I can't complain. If I do ask him to come off, and take notice of our DS then he does without complaining.

Not normal.
I normally do give dh a half hour when he comes in to have a coffee, chill, and play on his phOne in peace.
Then I'll say 'do you want to do bedtime for dd1 or 2?' Or similar.

A friend of mine says to her dh to go out for a beer straight from work for an hour so that when he comes through the door he's 'ready' to be hands on.

The biggest thing that would worry me about all this is that he says you're talking crap when you try to talk to him about it. He doesn't respect your feelings. Something in his behaviour is making you unhappy and he's not even acknowledging that you feel that way, let alone that his behaviour might have to change.

At least he's conscious. Someone I know comes home and falls asleep.

My DP does this with his phone a lot :( In our case, he never means to ignore me but he just gets really engrossed in what he's reading. That said IMO you don't deserve for him to get angry about it when you bring it up with him and he shouldn't treat you like that. I'm not sure what to suggest other than what others have said, but I don't think it's normal and hopefully there's a solution.