Worried Dh is too aggressive around Dd

[Justwantsomepeaceforchristmas]

and that it’s making her more aggressive

This morning as an example..Dd, 4 was downstairs whilst Dh was making her breakfast, all was happy & fine.
Dd is very strong willed and doesn’t listen to No at the moment. She started to say she wanted to wash up and got her step, Dh was saying no and that the water was too hot etc. The next thing I hear is Dd crying and saying that he hurt her and Dh telling her not to be silly. He said he’d picked her up off the step and moved her as the water was hot, but I can imagine he must’ve yanked her off judging by the said way she was crying?
Next, she’s getting dressed and he says she needs fresh knickers, she did as she’d got the same ones she wore yesterday out of the laundry basket, she started arguing that she didn’t. He went up to her wardrobe to get new knickers, the next thing I hear is Dh shouting at her to *Get out right now and her screaming and crying, apparently she’d tried to slam her wardrobe door on her hand as he was getting the knickers out.
Dh adores her, but can be quite aggressive in his mannerisms when angry, he’ll stomp around etc, the other week she came to me and said that daddy had slammed the door so that she was on the landing with no light on. She’d been trying to push the door open when he was on the toilet.
Admittedly, Dd is *V difficult at the moment, she just seems so angry all
the time and can be very hard work, it is hard to stay patient with her, but i’m so worried his way of being is making her worse or causing it

So what now op?

4 yos can be extremely bendy with the truth. Have you seen any aggression with your own eyes OP or is DD telling you and maybe embellishing (DH "yanked" her away vs "took her quickly off the stool")?

Doesn't sound like you parent her, she never hears no from a parent unless it's Daddy and when she kicks off you come swooping in and undermine him and she knows how to get her own way with you.

You need to parent her

The screaming and crying reminds me of a little girl who wasn't getting her own way screaming at her mum (in the middle of a shopping precinct) "you're not my mum!"

Just sounds like he’s a firmer parent.

@UnpackThisMess I am proud to never be pro-aggressive male. There is zero excuse for the man to do what he’s been doing to the child. Kids are annoying and do stupid stuff by default. Aggression, yanking, intimidating are not parenting techniques.

The examples you have given seem to have happened when you aren't there, or when you were in earshot but didn't see what actually happened. So what you really appear to be saying is that you do not believe your husband's version of events. That in itself is worrying. But it's impossible for posters to say whether you or your husband are the unreasonable one, because we don't know which is correct- your assumptions or his account of what happened and why he did what he did.

“daddy had slammed the door so that she was on the landing with no light on. She’d been trying to push the door open when he was on the toilet.”

oh poor diddums on the landing with no light.

Absolutely playing you there!

She’s 4. She can close wardrobe doors on people’s hands, fetch steps for washing up, fish around in laundry baskets for dirty pants, follow people to the toilet and try to force their way in… but she can’t turn a landing light on or go whence she came where there was light? What a load of bullshit. She must have chosen to go onto the dark landing to try to follow him into the loo. Now fine, following a parent to the loo is regular 4yo stuff… but you are a fool to buy into this, “daddy left me in the dark” nonsense.

I do think you have a problem with him too - but it’s not one or the other.

If he has actually yanked, or been intimidating or aggressive, fine. But OP “imagines” he “must have been” aggressive because her daughter is kicking off when he tells her “no”.

DS also kicks off massively when told “no”, because he doesn’t hear it all that often. Nobody is abusing him, he just doesn’t like hearing it.

Lots of 3 and 4 year olds get very over the top screaming and crying when told no especially if anyone gives in or bribes ....have you seen him be rough, how do you tell her no? Maybe suggest he tries your way if it works

The fact that you assume that he physically hurt her rather than she's crying because she can't get what she wants speaks volumes. My kids didn't always cry proportional to their injury- sometimes minor incidents would end up acting like they have been stabbed.

Your h isn't unreasonable to close the toilet door on her and prevent the hand injury/scalding. The fact that she ended up in a dark hallway is not your h's fault. Not going into the toilet is something that she should know by 4 and is a school rule too. Your dd isn't going to be damaged by knowing that it angers people if you try and enter the toilet when they are using it. She was repeatedly trying to enter so there was no way of treating this incident gently.

I suspect that you are too lenient because you think he's too strict and he's too strict because he thinks you're too lenient. (Good cop/bad cop)

It sounds like you’ve let her get away with things for far too long and that’s caused this behaviour, not him.

It’s off that all your examples are of times you weren’t there. Have you actually seen him be aggressive?

I do think parents (often fathers) can underestimate how frightening roughness and shouting can be. Maybe ask him to imagine how scared he’d be if a giant twice the size of him was doing the stuff he does- that’s how it is for DD. Maybe try to make it clearer to him that it’s not what he’s doing but how he’s doing it- obviously it’s fine to be firm and have boundaries but that shouldn’t involve physical roughness and shouting.

What are your discipline strategies especially if it's dangerous or hurting others?

4 year old reports daddy hurt her. MN says she must be lying and it’s the mothers fault. Ok then …

She hears no off me all the time, i’m having to be v strict with her at the moment as she’s so strong and will try to override me, but doesn’t. I think acting aggressively towards her will surely make her more aggressive

Both OP's examples are the sort where more decisive action is needed (removing a child away from danger; reacting to prevent himself being hurt). I think many parents would perhaps react more aggressively than usual (e.g. thread the other day where a mother shouted angrily at her child in response to similar. Most people told her she'd reacted involuntarily and to give herself some slack).

If she'd come up with a bunch of examples where the 4 year old was being normal 4 year old annoying but not causing danger to herself or others (she was repeatedly playing with a noisy toy, for example) and he'd reacted in this way, I'd agree it was a massive overreaction.
If you think he is too aggressive with her - why don't you have a bunch of examples like this, rather than ones where you weren't actually there and there was an element of risk?

Most 4 year olds have come out of tempers.....what do you mean by strong? Physically or determined? Is she being aggressive? If so what do you do?

So what's your solution?

And when you say "No" (presumably in a firm but non shouty way) does she immediately stop doing the thing?

@sheepdogdelight Not always immediately anymore, she argues against me, as I say she has become v strong

Your description of the incidents is very dramatic. Perhaps your daughter has inherited this trait?

@TheLittlestLightOnTheXmasTree I don’t have a solution, or I wouldn’t be posting on here. Nothing seems to work with her at present, but I’m sure healing more aggression onto the situation will only make it worse?

You shouldn’t have to be saying “no” all the time. That means your parenting isn’t working.

Saying no and still carrying on behaving poorly means she isn’t learning anything. It means she hasn’t had suitable boundaries up to this point and that you have instilled appropriate parenting techniques in her.

By age 4, this shouldn’t be a problem. Your critical window is 0-4 and you’ve missed it.

*haven’t instilled