It depends.

Are there any negative effects to her having her tea an hour later, or her bath closer to her bedtime than you do it?

If she gets terrifically hangry if she doesn’t eat tea til 6pm, leading to a meltdown and knock-on effects, then sticking strictly to the routine is necessary.

But if she’ll happily go to sleep at 7pm after a quicker bath (or no bath at all!) then don’t sweat the small stuff.

she still needs her tea on time. It can't just be the fun stuff he does.

No. She still needs her tea. But does the timing of it matter?

In terms of does the loss of routine seem to impact DD - not in any obvious way as far as I can tell. She still wakes through the night at times and can be difficult to settle at bedtime but that happens at other times too when she's in my care, so it's not particularly linked to the loss of routine if that makes sense.

I think you know you are being a bit unreasonable. But it’s understandable.

I actually have a similar home set up @justsobloodytired. DH works 3 weeks away then is home for 3 weeks. When he’s away, thankfully we have family that look after DS while I work, and while he’s home he looks after DS.

I got myself so worked up and stressed over DS routine going out the window whenever DH was home. I’d spend the first 7-10 days while he was away fighting to get DSs sleep back on schedule. We argued about it constantly. It’s not that it messes with his sleep necessarily, but if he went to bed at 9pm then he wouldnt wake until 8am, which is when we need to leave the house when DH isn’t here. When I actually sat down and thought about it, it’s myself that needs the routine more than DS does. When DH is away I need our days and nights to run like a military operation to allow me to do everything that I need to do for DS, myself and my work while DH is away.

So we now follow 2 rules - if DH pisses about during the day (eg, letting our 2 year old nap at 4pm 🙄🤣) then he’s 100% responsible for bed time that night. Usually when he’s home we take turns doing it but it automatically falls to him if he’s caused it to be chaos 😁 And, for the week before DH goes back to work, he follows my routine so that DS is back in the swing of things for our 3 weeks alone together.

DH is an amazing dad and absolutely dotes on DS - but because whenever he’s home with DS he doesn’t have to take work etc into account, times don’t really mean much to him.

As long as it’s not the norm for him to give her chips in the car on the way home I couldn’t get too worked up about this.

If he literally can’t prepare a meal for her and is letting her miss naps then that’s pretty shit but it sounds like minor deviations from plan as opposed to consistent sloppiness.

If you seek to micromanage every element of what he does with her you will make him resentful.

@justsobloodytired I do think I need to let it go a bit and not stress about the routine. But I think part of me does feel annoyed that I work hard to establish it when I'm on my own and then he comes in and does his own thing.

But don’t you see the contradiction here? You do things your way but then think it’s unacceptable for him to do things his own way! Your way is not right or the only way, it’s just your way of doing things.

I disagree with the majority. I think it's unacceptable for him to be doing that if it's a regular occurrence. But I am speaking from the perspective of a parent of a child who thrives on sameness and routine. Why should he get to do whatever and do chippy tea and mess up routine when you work hard at providing nutrition/boundaries and stability.

But OP had already said a slightly different routine doesn’t affect her, she’s hard to settle and doesn’t sleep well with routine either.
And the chips was because OP told dad he has to give DD dinner while they were out in the car. His plan was to make dinner when they got home.
He is also the parent and he gets a say in how he wants his day to day go with DD too. It’s not all down to OP to dictate.

But you’ve said that him doing things in his way don’t actually impact you or DD. So calling him up to check if DD has had dinner “on time” is just controlling with no real benefit.
I think you really just need to step back. Does it really if she didn’t have dinner at the exact same time?

Flexibility is as important as routine.

If you stick rigidly to a routine then when you need to do something different children find it difficult.

I don't think what dads doing is wrong as long as it's not chips every day.

I certainly wouldn't get upset or fall out over it.

If there was an actual outcome that caused issues maybe it needs to be changed

If not does it really matter?

I would find this hard too as I'm a worrier (and probably a bit of a control freak).
I know it's not what you asked and I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but eating in a car seat is apparently a choking risk.

I’m the biggest routine fan ever, even did Gina Ford with mine as babies! But once they’re toddlers you have to be a bit more flexible or else it just gets a bit miserable and things like holidays, days out, family dinners, parties etc. become impossible. Dinner altogether after collecting her sister sounds like it would have been lovely. What a shame she either had to eat on her own at 4 or have chips in the car. If there would have been consequences like getting fussy on the drive, being a terror at bedtime, then it’s on him to deal with it, but it doesn’t even sound like that would have been the case.

Yes. Time with patent worth more

@justsobloodytired Talk to him about it and explain it to him. My DH didn’t understand why 9pm bedtimes were an issue if my DS managed fine with them - which I actually do agree with him about BUT, when there’s consistent 9pm bedtimes and then that’s what DS is used to when DH goes back to work, it’s then a nightmare for me. My evenings are spent doing all the meal/snack prep for the following day, packing nappy bags etc, getting myself ready for work, trying to keep on top of house work etc, which I don’t really want to be starting at 9pm. Then I have multiple night wakes with DS, then have to have us both up, ready and out the door in the morning. Whereas all his days with DS are completely free and unstructured and they just wake up and see what kind of trouble they can get into that day 😅
Despite living together and being a family unit, DH and I both live completely different lifestyles because of the nature of his job so it’s bound to throw up a few challenges here and there! On the plus side, he gets far more quality time with DS than most dads that are working a standard 9-5 would get, which is amazing!

I think you have to let him manage things his way, however, if there are particular things that are going to cause a problem that you will have to deal with, then explain to him about those particular things.
With my children they can be pretty flexible about morning and lunchtime and naptime, as long as they get enough food that they aren't hungry. However if they don't get their evening meal at the right time, followed by a reasonably calm hour before bed at the right time, we tend to get problems with bedtime and waking up hungry etc. Because it's me that has to deal with a toddler screaming half the night or waking up at 4 am wanting breakfast and refusing to go back to sleep, I'm fairly militant about that part of the routine.

Routine is helpful but I think it's wrong to be too regimental about it. You should also remember that kids develop quicker and what works now, won't necessarily work in a few months.

Let her dad look after her how he wants. Only comment on something if it is dangerous!

Can I just add - I do sympathise as DH does one day a week with my little one, and I swear all she eats is snacks and watches way more tv than I would allow! I just think that she'll grow up and know that she can get away with more under his watch 😂

That's exactly what happened here. If DH had DD for a day he'd always take her to a coffee shop and buy her a huge cake. I kept saying that he was setting a precedent and now guess what? He's got a teen that either wants him to take her out to a coffee shop or wants money to go to a coffee shop. He's a dumbo

Since it's not having a noticeable negative effect, I think you should let him parent in his own way. Better for her to have two parents who feel confident and relaxed in their parenting style, even if the two are different.

Sounds like the chips were because you insisted he feed her en route? And he would have cooked for her later? Let him make his own mistakes, if she gets hungry and tantrummy, he'll learn for next time. Or you might discover she's more flexible than you realised.

The answer I got to that was that he was enjoying playing with her as he had missed her. When he said that I felt guilty for feeling annoyed as I know he does miss her, but at the same time she still needs her tea on time

Why does she need her tea on time? Who is this routine important to - you or your toddler? They were having a nice time, she was safe and cared for. Toddlers are rarely slow to mention if they're hungry.

It's unfair to call him lazy for the McDonald's too. You didn't leave him many options on that.

My husband works away a lot and I'm the default parent. When he's home, I think they watch too much TV and eat too many biscuits together. But it's not my business to manage his parenting.

If it's not, for example, leading to her being awake for 4 hours every night, you need to let it go.

I don't think his lack of routine will ruin your hard-earned routine, she'll just see "dad days" and "mum days" as things that work slighlty differently.

I didn't call to check if she'd had tea on time. I called to say I was on my way home and to ask how she was.

Come on. There's no way you weren't gently checking up on them.

Firstly I agree with a pp that a tea/dinner time of 4-4.30 is too early and you need to be eating a family meal together around 5.30-6. Especially if she is not having a bath until 6-6.30, what’s she doing between dinner and bed and isn’t she hungry? If she’s having a lot of milk before bed to keep her full then you need to be working on reducing that soon as over 2s don’t need more than the equivalent of one cup of milk per day.

But in general I think it’s nice to have a rhythm to the day and tend to do the same things in the same order eg for bedtime routine but otherwise you need to be more flexible. It’s not helpful to anyone for your lives to be structured around a two year olds routine. What if you go to a cafe at a time that she’s not normally eating lunch, would you not shift things round to enable her to join in? I think what he’s doing is fine and you need to not micromanage him. Let him crack on.