To think this isn't a 'lazy day'?

[jamoncrumpet]

'Let's have a lazy day', says DH, 'We've had such a busy week'.

DH's Lazy Day:
Drinking beer
Watching cricket
Doing the crossword in his cricket magazine
Reading a book
Half blowing up a paddling pool

My Lazy Day:
Finishing blowing up the paddling pool
Going out to get lunch
Preparing lunch for DH and DCs
Cleaning out the chicken coop
Doing two loads of laundry
Cleaning up lunch things and loading dishwasher
Supervising DCs in paddling pool while DH watches cricket

AIBU to tell DH that his concept of a family 'lazy day' is actually just him getting to be a lazy bastard all day long while I carry on as usual?

Op, do you really think loading a dishwasher and washing machine is a big deal ? Making lunch is only as much work as you let it be.

Unfortunately lazy days with small children are never going to feel that lazy. I actually find the busier days easier as they’re occupied. Lazy days only really work for us if the older one is poorly and just wants to watch tv.

You’re not alone though. I was utterly fucked off with my husband yesterday. He needed to ‘recharge’ from his stressful week and was as useful as a chocolate teapot. I woke up at 6 with the kids and let him lie in until 7:45. I then took the older one out between 8.30 coming back at 10.30 before taking her out again between 11 and 2.30. He just had the baby who has two naps in that time. In the half hour I was back, I just asked him to put suncream on my daughter while I got changed. He didn’t even do that without fucking it up and saying he was too stressed so I had to do it. When we got back she wanted to play with him but he was too busy on his phone (playing star wars). I was so angry.

YANBU OP. People on this thread are smug and lack empathy. DH is not doing his share.

. I must have the 2.0 DH. That has basic decency installed

MrsTerryPratchett 🥴

Oops that was meant to be a 🤣

The whole it's your fault brigade don't seem to understand you cannot change a person's behaviour.

If someone isn't doing the very basics of parenting (feeding, watering and enough supervision to ensure they stay alive) because they are 'relaxing' they aren't going to do it. No amount of 'telling' them or 'speaking to' them makes a hint of difference to that belief of theres. They don't care enough to think to do it when it's unspoken, they still won't care when it's spoken.

If you have to constantly ask someone to do the basics it's just as exhausting as doing it yourself. Lazy, uncaring/unthinking people are extremely unlikely to become active and thoughtful because you 'spoke' to them. It's usually labelled as nagging. A relationship where one is lazy and the other is a 'nag' are never happy. It either takes the lazy person changing or the other to either put up and shut up or leave.

No, I doubt the OP thinks l loading the dishwasher and making lunch is a 'big deal'. But the point spectacularly missed there is the big deal is actual is them the husband isn't doing them despite not being a big deal.

RedForShort

No you probably can't change them, but that doesn;t mean to say you have to accept the behaviour.

Having a parent in the family who neglects to a child's basic needs is a neglectful parent- and not one that is worth having around.

Wouldn't disagree.

I'm referring to all the it's your fault/you're a martyr just speak to him responders. The OP is in a awful position. She can't make him a different person and ending a marriage with children isn't as simple as switching phone providers.

How does the OP stop being a martyr? Does she cut out doing anything for him? It'll because frustrating in another way, he might get abusive or just not care (no change then). Does she not feed or supervise the children either?

The only solution is him changing. Unlikely to happen. Lots of posters on this thread (and all threads like these) don't seem to grasp that it is isn't solved by stopping being a martyr or talking.

OP, my stbex would not help even if I asked him to so I did it all myself. Like you one if my dc has asd. It is hard and you can not leave them unattended.

Unlike most people on here I see where you are coming from. Bc if you have a husband like mine was he would simply refuse to do anything and if I asked him to help I was stonewalled or verbally abused . So in the end I didnt bother and just got on with things, but it meant his lazy day and mine were totally different. As in I didnt have one.

I hope you will have a better day today. 🤗

So other than disagreeing with pp, do you actually have any advice for the OP Red?

Well no one forced you to do all that OP.

Seemed like DH had a lazy day, like he suggested you both have. You can't do all that and then be mad at your DH just because he didn't.

If we'd agreed to have a lazy day and then DP decided to clean the coop and do two loads of laundry I'd let him crack on.

As for the other stuff, I'd ask him, "what are we doing for dinner?". Why let him get away with sitting watching cricket all day?

Hello @Northernparent68 - do you have an autistic child and a baby?!

Let me tell you about this morning. Baby wakes crying at 5. Obviously I hear her and DH sleeps through. I wake him and say 'Can you sort baby out pls?' then I wake him again five minutes later because he's fallen back to sleep. In the meantime baby is now apoplectic with rage.

He eventually goes to baby, gives her a drink and settles her.

DS is now up for the day. DS is autistic btw. DS says 'Smoothie?' 900 times into my ear. I get him a smoothie and give him his iPad.

It's now 8.40. I've been downstairs with the kids, let chickens out etc. DH is snoring in bed. He thinks he's allowed to do this because 'I got up with the baby'

Actually it was me that got up with the baby. I then woke him up.

So it's my fault that he's asleep now because I haven't woken him up?! BULLSHIT. I have had enough to do this morning.

Can't stand it on mn where the woman gets the blame. Aww op why didn't you hold your poor dhs hand and tell him what to do.....

He's an adult, with kids. He should know what to do rather then being told by his wife. He knows full dam well op would be dealing with them whilst he sat on his arse

@jamoncrumpet that seems to be the only answer you have! You seem to have a bit of a martyr complex and are losing my sympathy!
I do have at least one child on the spectrum, a good friend has 2. But neither of us would claim that out does everyone else. What about parents with a child with Cerebal palsy or ADHD? Can they comment?
ASD doesn't trump everything!
And to be honest if their impulse control is that bad then maybe a paddling pool with water is out of the question - could you use ball pit balls instead?

Of course they can comment @MollyButton - I'm not saying I have it harder than everybody else. I am saying that unless you have a child with a disability you would struggle to understand how much work is involved above and beyond the regular call of duty. And of course is more work, to suggest it isn't is frankly insulting. I receive mid rate DLA for my child for a reason - he is a LOT of work.

And LTB is thrown around as it is one extreme end of the options, and worth considering at least to gauge how bad things are. If he is not helping then it might be a lot less stressful to not have him there (and for him to have to do everything on occasion).
And if you want Chickens have chickens, but if not then get rid of them.

No I haven't given a solution (same as everyone else). Well there's your idea of reversing time and not marrying him due to being able to predict the future and know he'll be a lazy parent.

There's no easy solution OP. You tell him he has to change, realise he's a parent and things need doing without being told or your marriage ends. There's three outcomes:

He cares, makes an effort and changes and it's all good. (Most unlikely outcome, sadly.)

He doesn't care, doesn't change, you stay anyway and carry on doing all with lazy man in the house. Optional extra of repeated ultimatums not followed through (Outcome most women have.)

He doesn't care, doesn't change, you leave him. Go through the difficulties of divorce. With full custody you carry on doing it all, but without lazy man in house. Shared custody and you will probably stress about the fact when they're in his care he's not doing it right. Though he could pull the best dad in the world act during it all.

@jamoncrumpet - no it's not your fault, he's an adult but it is down to you whether you put up with it or not.

You started a thread asking whether this was a lazy day or not - what you describe in your OP IS a lazy day to most households with kids! And I say that as someone who has gone through the baby stage with an Autistic child and a not very intuitive DH who I needed to communicate with to get him to do x,y,z at times.

It's gone way deeper than that now though, this clearly isn't about one day. You need to take responsibility here if you're not happy tell HIM and make plans of what you will do if it doesn't improve.

No point dwelling on what he's doing but you don't have to put up with it if it bothers you.

OP your post says "to think this isn't a "lazy day".

It is a lazy day. Your DH had a lazy day. I'm assuming by the fact he suggested you both have a lazy day that you said, yes ok. A lazy day to me is a lazy day. I might put the laundry on and the dishwasher but if my DP started deep cleaning the bathroom and expecting me to do it I'd let him crack on.

I think you shouldn't have agreed to a lazy day and if you both have different ideas if what this entails you really need to agree on this first

I get the frustration with the feckless husband thing, I really do. Mine works really hard at his job, but when he's at home he reverts to being a "child" of the house as much as he can get away with. I've said it on here before, and I'll say it again on this thread - he thinks I should be his "thinking brain dog" (in Australia they call guide dogs "seeing eye dogs" so the allusion works here) and I bloody well don't agree.

But he'll try it on, so much. Like you, I get frustrated and pissed off and fed up when I have to ask him to do stuff - but that's what I married so I have the choice of either continuing to ask him or sucking it up and doing it myself if it absolutely has to be done.

I'm currently on a real frustration roll because shit has gone down at his work, and he's been away from home pretty much for 9 days now, with a couple of evening returns. So where he'd normally (grudgingly) share the drudgework in the kitchen (cooking and washing up), he's not BEEN here to do it so I'm doing it (with the help from the boys) - because it needs to be done - but while he was here all yesterday, he could have offered to do something about dinner but he didn't. I'm trying to be fair that he needed to wind down because he really is up against it at work, but it still pissed me off massively that he just lay on his bed watching shit tv while I just carried on doing everything as usual.

So I get it.

But he's not going to voluntarily change, not a hope - you have to either take a stand and say you're not doing it any more unless he helps out more, or tell him to fuck off because he's creating more work than he's contributing. Or - last option - just keep doing what you're doing and vent and rant on here because nothing changes.

There's no easy solution OP. You tell him he has to change, realise he's a parent and things need doing without being told or your marriage ends.

Yes, that’s what a lot of us have already said... but that’s not what you previously said. So now your giving the same advice as all the people you just disagreed with

FWIW - I "nag" mine (i.e. ask him to do shit because he's never going to work it out for himself - he doesn't want to!) because currently the balance is that he's more use to keep around than to ditch.

@jamoncrumpet

I have three children without sen and if my dh was a lazy entitled bastard like yours i would lose my shit.

He needs go pull his weight or he is essentially just another person for you to be running around after.

If that lazy day conversation had happened between me and dh it would have gone along the lines of ok but we need to do a shop and clean the chickens first, do you want to clean the chickens or go shopping?

Don't just suffer in silence op, tell him to step up or fuck off!