Our 18 month old DS is a menace. He’s into everything, climbing, switches, buttons, dirt, mud, toothpaste, keys... you get the idea. I’ve had to nail everything down and toddler-proof as much of the house as I can. Turn the oven and the dishwasher off at the mains switch on the wall every time, to stop him fiddling with them, that kind of thing.
I’m a SAHM and have other children at home too. Toddler DS is by no means allowed to just roam freely around the house, but there are small windows of opportunity when I’m in the loo, or making lunch, or hanging out the washing, when I don’t have eyes on him the whole time.
He’s done minor damage to some of our furniture in the past and the other day, he scratched the shiny surface of a particular bit of furniture that DH especially likes and was quite expensive.
DH is blaming me for not being able to ‘control’ DS. DH maintains that the children never misbehave with him and that DS would never do something like that on ‘his watch’ because DS is scared of the bollocking he’d get from DH. I’ve argued with DH in the past about how harsh I think he is with the DCs. Wrenching their arms by frog marching them and smacking hands away too hard imo.
He thinks if I was as much of a disciplinarian as he is then DS wouldn’t fuck up furniture.
I think that the damage wasn’t that bad and that his sort of thing is par for the course when you have a boisterous 18 month old. Everyone knows you don’t have lovely, expensive things when you have small DCs for exactly this reason.
Now DH is all in a huff with me because he thinks I ‘let’ DS damage the furniture. I think he’s being an arse. AIBU?