S@“t has hit the fan. What would you do?

[Whotsithitthefan]

NC as outing. Long time poster.

I can’t sleep. DH had left. Sleeping in the car somewhere I think. DM here staying. DC being bullied at school and so is being a nightmare at home. Once he’s talked about what’s going on he’s fine but while he’s holding it all in, quite frankly, he’s a grumpy thug.

DH approach is long lectures. Reminding DC of past difficult behaviour. Criticising. Telling off. He takes it very personally when DC insults him or is rude to him. Won’t let it go.

I tend to try and listen first as there is always a context and then discuss the difficult behaviour once things are calm and I think DC can reflect.

Tonight DC was acting up. I stayed out of it as DH doesn’t like me taking over and finds it undermining if I offer a different approach. He wants me to back him up but I can’t because I feel like DC would then feel the whole world was against him/her and I don’t want to join in the critical lecture and when I do try and back DH up things just escalate anyway.

So I focused tonight on clearing up and left DH and DC to it. Meanwhile I don’t realise that DM is finding the way DH is talking to DC unbearable. She had told me earlier and I had a bit of a moan as I’m finding it hard.

I then hear really raised voices. DM shouting at DH that he is abusing DC with his criticism and domineering. She’s very upset. He’s really angry with her. DC joining in.

I stood between them and just repeated ‘time out’ over and over. DH kept going and going. When I kept saying time out DC would join in and told DH he’s a psycho. DH finally left and I managed to get DC calm and to sleep.

I’m in bed but can’t sleep as I can see it from all angles and have no clue what to do.

DC ‘full up’ emotionally and feeling particularly got at by DH. Deliberately pushes him because he knows he loses the plot and is testing him. The behaviours need addressing but also DC is a child and is overwhelmed at the moment.

DH is feeling blamed by me and unsupported by me. Feels like I get in the way of their relationship and turn DC against him because I’ll stick up for DC if I feel DH is out of order. I have been trying to stay out of it but it’s hard when it’s a child getting it in the neck. Tonight I stayed out of it apart from ‘time out’ when it was getting too heated. DH is sleeping in his car somewhere refusing to ever talk to my DM ever again. Wants us out of the house tomorrow at one point so he can change for work. Telling me I’m toxic and causing him MH issues (I can be quite critical to be fair) but I feel he’s the one whose being toxic to DC who should be the priority.

DM now in bits because she thinks she’s ‘ruined my life’.

Have today tried to be calm and have supported both DC and DM with their stuff. Feeling too cross with DH to support him much but am worried about him.

Feel like no one is supporting me. I hold the emotional stuff for them all but what about me? AIBU to wish there was someone in my life that was calm and steady to ‘hold’ things together.

How do I handle things tomorrow? I’ll have to do the school run so ‘brave face’ on. Then I know DM will be distraught. God knows if DH will get in touch.

Just needed to get this out and hope someone is awake and had some advice. I need to get some sleep.

So your DS is bullied at school - and at home by your DH?! Name calling, long lectures etc is far too much for mid primary, how is your son meant to feel emotionally secure with that behaviour from his father. Your husband is an egotistical bully that needs to be put out like a bad dog. Your DM has it completely right and did what needed to be done so I don't know why you're choosing to direct anger at her. From your son's perspective, he has a father that punishes him for being bullied and a mother who stays silent because she doesn't want to upset her husband. Both of you need parenting classes and your son needs counselling to handle how to cope with school bullies and your husband.

@Secret12345

Your latest post just sounds like a list of excuses.

It does.

I’m really disturbed that the op considered making her mother apologise so she could get him home again.

It’s so disturbing when you read of abuse like this, and no one protecting the child. And the one person who did, was nearly made to apologise for it.

Was moving your child to a new school/area to facilitate DH's career?

I have no advice to give but these are my thoughts:

Your mother behaved like a tigress to protect her grandson and should be praised not exiled.

Your husband feels embarrassed that she witnessed the scene which is why he wants her gone.

Your DC is having a shit time at school and an even more shit time at home - the one place he's entitled to feel safe.

I hope you can come up with a solution but your child is the only one who matters here as you're all the adults in this mess.

Good luck 💐

I have also been exactly where you are.

There was a lot of pain and hurt to deal with after our crisis point was reached. However, almost a decade on and life is better than ever. DH & DC have a good relationship. DM now has so much respect for DH as he has worked hard to make things better, their relationship is stronger than ever and so is ours.

DH took some time to turn things around. It was a process over years, that we both worked on, but the turning point was him recognising that his way of handling things wasn’t actually getting the result he wanted and accepting that we needed to try something different. I also had to be willing to learn, undermining him in front of the kids definitely didn’t help anything.

We started by watching the ‘Lives in the balance’ walking tour (on YouTube) and reading (audiobook worked better for DH) The Explosive Child, and trying to change the way we viewed our children’s behaviour in line with Dr Ross Greene’s ‘Lens change’. It is not always easy, DH still struggles with it on occasion, but when that happens we have tools to go back to that he knows work, rather than me criticising.

I don’t know your DH, and how open to trying something different he might be, but I know that I felt like change was impossible and life would be better and easier on my own. I found it very hard to talk to people about, as I didn’t want them to think DH was a horrible person, so I lacked support in the beginning. In the end, DH and I supported each other through changes that made things better for all of us. Just wanted to give you some hope.

OP your own mum, his mum, and a counsellor have all picked up on how bad his behaviour is.

Think about that.

If dc is mid primary it is not appropriate to go over past issues , they need to have been dealt with at the time. Your h sounds very controlling, lecturing is not going to get the result he wants, bullying even less so. Why is he sleeping elsewhere if you have recently moved. Were you allowed any say in the decision? I sense an atmosphere which is not responding to counselling and your ds caught in the middle. Do you have any other dc?

If he still wants us to be out do it to keep the peace if DM can. She’s not on the best of health.

Just don't. It's ridiculous that you and your mother should be driven out of the house because your husband is sulking. Tell him to come back and discuss this like an adult, and focus your discussions on what has been discussed in counselling and the courses he has been on.

But I do think you need to get back to the school about the bullying. We're well into the second half of the term, they should have got a grip on this by now. Get hold of the bullying, discipline and complaints policies (they should be on their website) and ask for a meeting when you go through the bullying policy in particular and ask them exactly what they are doing to implement it and to keep your child safe. Insist on a plan being in place that every staff member he deals with knows about and which includes effective measures against the bullies.

Your DH calls him names? Like what? That sounds totally unacceptable. He is already being bullied at school and home should be his safe space, not somewhere where he is further bullied.

It sounds to me like you need to tell you DH in private that he is obviously struggling to handle your son's difficult behaviour and he needs to allow you to deal with it or risk completely alienating your son and having him grow up resenting him.

You cannot be at the other end of the scale with no boundaries though (if that's where you are) - that is just going to cause more problems/confusion for your son caught between a permissive parent and an authoritarian one. You can't just let your son be a complete brat. If he is rude he needs pulling up on it and reminding of it. 'Please don't speak to me like that it's rude' is fine IMO - but it does need saying.

Your husband sounds like a problem tbh, he sounds extremely controlling. He wants to control you by not allowing you to 'interfere' in the way he handles ds and by telling you you're toxic, he wants to control ds with his lectures, he wants to control DM by never speaking to her again and making sure she is not welcome at your house.

His behaviour is abusive through and through and the scariest thing is he believes he is the victim in all this and so is completely unwilling to listen to reason.

@Billandben444

I have no advice to give but these are my thoughts:

Your mother behaved like a tigress to protect her grandson and should be praised not exiled.

Your husband feels embarrassed that she witnessed the scene which is why he wants her gone.

Your DC is having a shit time at school and an even more shit time at home - the one place he's entitled to feel safe.

I hope you can come up with a solution but your child is the only one who matters here as you're all the adults in this mess.

Good luck 💐

I agree.

If I were OPs mum I would do it all over again.

There is no overstepping the mark when you can see a child is being emotionally abused.

Child safeguarding is every ones responsibility.

And as for being "disrespected" being the husband's Achilles heel. Come off of it OP.

What he means is he doesn't like it when people disagree with him, and needing to be right all the time is controlling and coercive.

Stop feeling sorry for your marriage and feel sorry for your child.

Also OP my best friend in school was in a situation like your child's and they ended up committing suicide in high school.

One other thing.

You have different approaches to parenting. Why can he ignore yours? He says that if you dont follow his way, then you are disrespecting, shaming, overriding him etc. Why dont those same things apply to the way he reacts to your parenting style?

Oh, I know why. He's the man. Billy big balls, he's in charge. The little wife and the helpless child must fall in line because dick swinging man is there with his caveman club and his way is the right way. Any stupid woman ideas are of course, to be thrown aside.

You've married a misogynist, bully, arsehole. And now the man is going after your mum. He's already screwed your son up. Why do you think your son has so many problems with aggression? Bullied at school and bullied at home. Obvisouly you drank the cool aid a long time ago because you cannot recognise abuse for what it is, but your mum could... so now he is trying to get her out of your lives. He cant have anyone around who might stand up to him.
I wonder why his own mum only spoke to you and not him? Because she knows who he is. She didnt want to risk being shut out of your family by her bullying manchild son.

[quote PiersPlowman]@WarriorN

There isn’t a training course in the world that can instil a sense of empathy. Anyone who repeatedly rants at a young child is, frankly speaking, off his or her rocker. That person should be removed from the child’s environment for as long as it is necessary for them to extract their head from their rrse.[/quote]

That may be the case and is a conclusion the op should consider; it's always hard to make ultimate judgments through social media posts.

How far away is his old school?

@Librariesmakeshhhhappen

One other thing.

You have different approaches to parenting. Why can he ignore yours? He says that if you dont follow his way, then you are disrespecting, shaming, overriding him etc. Why dont those same things apply to the way he reacts to your parenting style?

Oh, I know why. He's the man. Billy big balls, he's in charge. The little wife and the helpless child must fall in line because dick swinging man is there with his caveman club and his way is the right way. Any stupid woman ideas are of course, to be thrown aside.

You've married a misogynist, bully, arsehole. And now the man is going after your mum. He's already screwed your son up. Why do you think your son has so many problems with aggression? Bullied at school and bullied at home. Obvisouly you drank the cool aid a long time ago because you cannot recognise abuse for what it is, but your mum could... so now he is trying to get her out of your lives. He cant have anyone around who might stand up to him.
I wonder why his own mum only spoke to you and not him? Because she knows who he is. She didnt want to risk being shut out of your family by her bullying manchild son.

THIS!!!!

You sound like piggy I’m the middle as your dh cannot control his emotions like your son. Your din is too young for lectures, he needs calm talking and understanding as he’s been bullied. Your dh is being a bully. How he thinks you’re undermining him when he can’t control himself.
Your dm was trying to help. She has nothing to apologise for.
You have a dh problem.

Sorry, OP, but it sounds to me like you have a husband problem.

is giving a long but respectful lecture that the DC can’t get out of abuse?

Yes. My mother used to back us into corners and do this, and we all hated it and remember it to this day, decades later. And it was utterly pointless, because they tended to be lectures about things that she thought important and we didn't. In my case it was about my weight - I wasn't overweight, but she used the technique of both lecturing and making snidey comments if she thought I'd taken one biscuit too many, the direct result of which was to drive me to eat more. And she'd never temper it with praise over things I was achieving, because she didn't value those.

So I ended up with zero respect for her, which is exactly what will happen with your husband, OP. If he goes on about respect again, point out to him that children don't forget and that it is his own behaviour which will forfeit his child's respect if he doesn't sort himself out.

@Couchbettato

Also OP my best friend in school was in a situation like your child's and they ended up committing suicide in high school.

This is an extremely unhelpful and unpleasant post.

As my mother's method was yelling/slapping, I tried to avoid going down that path by using other techniques, including lectures. But not forced lectures, as I remember the feeling of not being able to escape my mother's yelling. And none of this: " Reminding DC of past difficult behaviour. Criticising. Telling off." - This is not "a long but respectful lecture". A respectful lecture might involve discussing why the behaviour is not OK, saying why you think your dc is better than that and discussing what they can do instead, so that they have the tools to improve. Criticising just makes them feel like a bad person, and bad people do bad things, right? Bringing up past bad behaviour means they are never going to be allowed to forget it so it makes no difference if they stop. Telling off is unnecessary if you've explained why the behaviour is bad. It just puts the child in a horrible tense situation in which he can't think straight.

No parent is great from the beginning, and it sounds as if your dh is at least theoretically willing to learn. But he needs proper help with that. Maybe you could try giving him an actual respectful lecture! And get him on a 1-1 parenting course, as he will need the skills all the more if he's going to be doing it alone.

“Whotsithitthefan

Mid primary.“

From your first post I had somehow thought
your DC was a teenager- maybe 15 or 16. I just didn’t know what to think about your approach vs. your DH’s. I thought maybe you might somehow be undermining your DH.

But a mid primary school child! No wonder your DM was distraught and defended DC.
I do sympathise so much with you all as your DH evidently doesn’t know how to deal with DC, but all this must stop.

Then I’ll text DH later in a kind but assertive way to let him know that this isn’t all me and that his behaviour is not ok

Text him?
Phone him. Have an actual conversation about it.

Don't rush into getting your husband back home. I suspect that your poor child will enjoy a calmer, less intimidating home while he's gone

Your mum deserves a massive thank you for standing up for your son and pointing out to you what a nasty bully your husband is

Your husband will want her gone because he's been busted and she knows exactly what he's like. He will want to isolate you from her.

The thing that struck me was this sentence about your dc I agree with DH that DC needs to learn less aggressive ways of expressing overwhelming emotions but his approach isn’t working yet your dh approaches his discussions with you, hour dc and now your dm in an aggressive manner. How can you expect your dc to behave in a calm manner when his df doesn't (monkey see, no key do. Especially at mid primary age)

I think you all need to get some family counselling to unpick this

However I also don't think your dm should apologise to your dh. She's seen this from an outsiders position and can see how he's a bully and verbally abusing your dc, so she stepped in (and rightly so), you've been ground down to accept his behaviour as normal so don't consider it that bad.

I feel so sorry for your mother! You said her health is bad? And you do not see her much? And in stead of thanking her, u want her to to apologize, and maybe getting her to leave?? I feel so sorry for your 8/9 yr old, when your mum goes he will feel like his only ally has left. I sadly do not think you can or will protect him, your idea of texting him to say he is welcome back in the house actually shocked me! Why would you appease this man? I actually am worried for your little boy and hope grandma takes him home with her!!