How much parenting do you allow your partner do?

[Klunt]

My husband isn’t the biological father of my eldest and I can’t help myself from getting so defensive when he disciplines her. He’s been in her life since she’s was 4, she’s now 9 and calls him daddy. He is every bit her dad as her real dad isn’t involved.

He is a lot more strict than I am, due to how he was parented. I’ve told him I don’t want our kids to be parented the way he was parented and he agrees but he sometimes slips back into what he knows and we end up arguing. We’ve had a huge argument this morning. I’ve had a lovely surprise planned for my daughter today and now she’s upstairs crying because he’s told her off for not tidying her room exactly when he asked her to. I think he’s being an arse called him out on it and he’s stormed off to work.

Aibu to think that actually I do get the final day in how my child is parented and that I’ve asked him plenty of times to leave things like discipline to me. I would rather them focus on just having a nice relationship.

What about your daughters upset and stress. What about the fact that his reaction was over the top. That his children are going to get older and less easy to bring into line.

yes you love him but he needs to see how he reacted isn’t on either. Why is he upset because he realises he was wrong or because you questioned him

My daughter is fine, she’s already forgotten about it. My husband is not fine so he is my focus today. The kids get to spend the afternoon painting which is a bonus for them.

Please don’t feel too horrendous OP. Your reaction was natural. It’s a complicated situation where you both need to compromise. Lots of parents have this when both kids are the bio kids too, it’s not uncommon. Sounds like he’s lucky to have you, as is your DD.

I'm really confused. Why does your husband feel horrendous?

Why is he not though. And why does a grown man need to be your focus

Because he’s a fucking human being? He’s got other stuff going on that I wasn’t aware of and my bollocking has tipped him over the edge.

Ok so his other stuff caused him to react badly and shout at your daughter - has he apologised for that.

yes he is a human being but he did over react and his behaviour causes your daughter to get stressed (and I suspect she does remember it).

by all means be sympathetic and listen and help with his other stuff but the discipline issues and the fact that he reacted to your daughter yesterday does still need to be addressed

Was his reaction over the top though? Because from what I can make out-OP correct me if I’m wrong- all the man did is tell the the kid off for not getting on with tidying her room. If he shouted and screamed at the kid that would be different, but he didn’t as far as we know.

Wow, lovely reaction OP. Yesterday he was the evil stepdad, your daughter was distraught, you were considering leaving him and now we're all being shouted at because he's got all your focus and attention by crying like a child and now all his kids are being manipulated into trying to make him feel better. Sounds like a very confused, if not toxic, environment for everyone involved. Poor kids

It's strange how a thread where your dd and you were upset has turned into let's cheer up the person who did the upsetting.

It sounds like your h would benefit from some sort of parenting course.

It’s all very emotional. Your previous update suggested you were considering splitting up with him but following a difficult conversation he’s upset, you feel bad and are getting the children to make him cards. Is this unusually dramatic for your family?

This all sounds very stressful.

You say that he doesn't deal well with emotions, and he won't talk to you about anything (specifically parenting, but you did say anything) and when you have tried more forcefully to bring it up now, he has turned this around and made you feel guilty for upsetting him.

Stand back a little and try to see this with some distance - you are both adults and need to be able to discuss things, even if they are upsetting. I don't think that one adult should be "bollocking" another but I can see why frustration at a lack of discussion (plus some of the extremely rigid attitudes in this thread!) would have led you to do that.

However, I would be wary of falling back into an oh shit, I've done something terribly awful and upset him. Maybe he's upset, maybe he has other stuff going on - but that is OK and you are not responsible for everything in his life.

Maybe he/you both would benefit from some kind of therapy?

I suspect the situation wasn’t quite as upsetting for the child as the Op made out. The incident happened, Op felt very defensive of her child and defaulted to ‘not your daughter’ position and wanted people here to back her up. It’s probably something that happens in every family. One parent asks child to do something, child goes to other parent to ask for something that will avoid doing the task for a bit longer, first parent gets annoyed.

Now she has escalated the situation and causes some chaos in the household and realised she is asking for a lot, when she expects her husband to be her daughters dad in every way, but also wants to keep the power to have the final say over things.

Either that, or Op has decided she would prefer to stay in the relationship so is doing a huge back track.

I would book the pair of you onto a parenting course and THEN find a joint agreement on how to parent.

You keep saying you disagree with HIS way of parenting. So I suspect when you have these conversation it's you pushing your views forward and he agrees? If you jointly do a parenting course and then have the discussion it becomes about how the PAIR of you want to parent.

Be a team not 2 singles.

I’ve calmed down and realised what an arsehole I’ve been is all. We all make mistakes. I’ve spoken to my daughter about going between parents and asking for things when the other had said something different. My husband is really unwell so I need to be there for him as his wife. My kids are happy and healthy.

But we do come to an agreement. That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. I’m well aware of the damage certain parenting causes (I work in mental health). He also agrees that the way he was parented isn’t the way he wants to be with his kids so I do pull him u on it when he slips as I know he doesn’t want to be that way. We’ve both had a really stressful few months with various things going on and we both have our mental health conditions that we try to manage. It just came to head yesterday and blew up. It happens to everyone I know occasionally.

That’s what I said. Not a huge incident. You made it into one. Posted here to be validated so exaggerated. Caused some upset in your own home and now calmed down.

You certainly don’t give the impression your daughter is happy in your original posts. Posting your child was fine, wouldn’t have really been much of a thread.

Well no she wasn’t happy she was crying in her room. Buts she’s fine now because she’s gotten over it and I need to learn to be less weak when it comes to her. Mixture of guilt and over compensation makes me very defensive of her. Especially currently when my step mum is down visiting I’m especially on edge.

This all sounds so toxic. He shouts at the kids, then because he’s upset you all present him pictures and cards to display your love? You should be able to come to a normal conclusion that it isn’t acceptable to shout at kids in the home.

Like why does it make someone an ‘arsehole’ to say they don’t want an adult man shouting at their young kids?

Hit the nail on the head with this one

I am confused. I would hope she is fine a day later.

But surely your point about a difference is the long term impacts his parenting has on her. You seemed convinced it wasn’t good for her. and that it had already been going on years.

So this isn’t something that’s just happened once in a time of stress. If all what you said was true, it’s likely to have a long term impact.

You insist you overreacted, in which case, I was right. You over reacted and exaggerated to try and get support here, causes some drama at home and now regret it.

I’m going to leave this now. Thanks for twisting everything I’ve said and purposely mis representing what I’ve meant. Really helpful and supportive of you all to someone having a horrible time and struggling. Hope it makes you all feel better about yourselves.

But OP, you kept contradicting yourself and then you only drip fed the bits about both parents suffering from MH and having struggled for months and about having family over to visit to stay etc. I'm not sure what you expected, but no-one was twisting anything, just trying to react to the ever changing story