Should I have woken him up?

[StAlphonzospancakebreakfast]

My partner and I have 3 children, the youngest is 4 and gets up every night (often several times) and comes into our room to ask for water or various things. She always wakes me up and not her dad. He never gets up with her in the night. Last night I had just managed to fall asleep and I felt her tapping me. I asked her to go and wake her dad up instead and she wouldn’t (she never will) so I woke him and asked him to deal with her. He jumped up and said that was the most selfish and privileged behaviour he had ever seen and that if I am awake anyway I should just continue to get up with her every night.
for context we both work part time and I also get up in the mornings 90% of the time and take the kids to school.
was I unreasonable?

in the middle of the night isn't the time to be deciding who does what

sort this out before the 4 year old goes to bed. take them everything they need before bed, water, a night light etc etc

then decide who in an emergency is going to be woken and tell the dc who to wake - if she wakes the wrong person then explain they will go back to sleep as adults need to sleep for various reasons but majorly for safety and secondary as they will be grumpy as hell

If it were my DH, I would give him the choice of doing his share of getting up to put DD back to bed when she wakes in the night or, for the foreseeable, him sleeping in her room/bed while DD sleeps with me in our bed.

Really!?! 'Tell him to', is he a child? You don't know why he has a part-time job and the OP isn't asking how to get her OH to work more so probably best to keep an open mind 🙂

It’s ok, one of us will carry on getting up for her if she needs it.

Why would she need it unless it’s an emergency?

You need to have a chat with all 3 of you tonight about her waking up and that she’s a big girl now and that she shouldn’t be getting up so much in the nighttime but if she needs something she can ask both of you.

It’s ok for her to wake you up but you can find out what she wants and then send her back to bed without needing to get up with her.

Yes, as a man. Guess what? OP's husband will also be a man. He's shown that he thinks looking after the baby is a woman's job, and if all he sees is women backing up the OP, he will turn around and say that all the women are ganging up on the man so it's unfair, it's not representative, he's still perfectly correct, it's a men vs women thing etc. He'll still feel he's in the right even if the OP shows him the opinion of a billion women. He'll just see himself as a martyr to the cause.

If you want to change someone's opinion, you need to understand their psychology. In this case, you need to understand how the OP's husband is going to react. My comment "as a man" is directed to him, not to the women on this forum, and certainly not to the OP herself. It's for his consumption and viewing.

Before making sarcastic comments, please try to think beyond what you see.

Uncalled for to criticise OP in this exaggerated way then say she should play games with her kid to get her husband back. She is just trying to be a good mum whilst getting enough sleep. Really, why be mean about it.

Forget the husband, it the kids that needs sorting out!

Hmm. Now you're sounding a bit martyrish. If you know you could have 'trained' (horrible word) your child to sleep better, and you've chosen not to, then I am absolutely with your DH and would be cross about being woken up.

@BIWI Why does DH get a free pass for being cross about being woken for his non-'sleep trained' child when HE is also responsible for her lack of sleep training?

Lazy man. Selfish man. Kids must be scared of him so he’s probably not a nice man either. Show him this if you want. Wake him up.

Perhaps when he is woken he takes a firmer “back to bed appraoch” hence the daughter now going where she will get attention.