I feel so guilty and ashamed

[Mumto1boyo]

Ds is in the terrible 2s and I ha e to wrestle him into his pram. Today was awful, it was raining and he wasn't cooperative. I lost my temper and called him a little cunt and to shut the fuck up.
Im so stressed. I do all the housework,cleaning and cooking and shopping so my dh doesn't have to worry about that as he is the breadwinner. I'm just a sahm. I feel terrible that I said those things to my sweet little boy and I love him so much.
I worry that if my husband wants another baby I will be too old as he is younger than me.
Not sure what my aibu is as I know ibu for being nasty to my darling boy.

Could he go to nursery a couple of mornings a week. You would get a little break and he would get to try some new things. It also lets him build up his immune system ready for nursery next year!

Not calling your child a cunt is not an impossible standard.

Please release a book on how perfect you are then so I can get more advice.

We all lose it sometimes. A bad parent swears at their kids without remorse. A good parent feels guilty for any bad behaviour towards their kids. Cut yourself some slack. If you’re regularly having end of tether moments, do what you can to resolve that, but on this occasion, I think you’ve beaten yourself up enough over it!

Exactly. Some posters on this thread are in the gutter.

I’ve definitely muttered “little shit” in my head at DD. You need to learn how to manage your reactions here, toddlers are awful in many ways but they are only toddlers, they don’t really understand the rules yet. The world is still new to them. They can be fucking awful but you know it’s not ok to swear at your child.

Your husband doesn’t get to skip out on family/household because he’s the breadwinner. My DH has a stressful job and he still came home and took over for me so I could have a break. You need to see it in terms of how many hours at your jobs you are both doing. It’s no good you doing 24/7 and him doing 9/15.

Thank you to those who understood.
I am not a scumbag but trying to be the mum my ds deserves. I will step away from this thread now and look forward to my rest day tomorrow and starting a fresh.

Maybe start by not using abusive name calling when you're talking to your toddler?
It's not the preserve of the "perfect" parent at all. How depressing that you think it is.

@TrishM80 Look, no one is saying this is great, right? It’s not what any of us aspire to when we’re pregnant. But sometimes, after a really shit day of being over whelmed, over worked, touched out and just absolutely to the point of breaking saying ‘for fuck sake kids just give me a break! Shut up for 5 minutes!’

Does that really make them a scum bag? Or just a human being (parent) at the end of their own personal limit!?

It’s nice to imagine we’d have the gentle parenting down 24/7 ‘mummy is feeling quite agitated right now so I’m going to take 5 minutes.’ We all know that’s the BETTER way to dealing with it, but sometimes, in the moment our emotions get the better of us.

Do you have multiple children? Just genuinely curious. Because I think when I only had 1 I probably would of looked down on this too being honest, until I lived it and realised the absolute frustration of multiple children demanding every ounce of you from 6am-7pm.

My one year old for the last week or so just swipes his entire dinner on the floor. They definitely are sometimes! 🤣

Look, I totally understand what you're saying. However, this incident has obviously rattled her enough to post about it on here. I highly doubt she's a child abuser because she's sworn at her child once. Smacking is worse imo but is perfectly legal 🤷 so not technically child abuse. She is looking for some sort of advice on how to go on from here, don't kick someone while they're down and trying to get themselves back up again.

Op I think you just need to learn from this, you clearly feel terrible about it and I think that will probably stop you from doing it again. But you do need to take the pressure off yourself, lower your cleaning standards and lean on your DH more. He may have a stressful job but my god being a SAHM is extremely stressful too

I mean, it is a tiny bit funny.

I think it’s also usually very easy to tell when a parent is just at the end of their tether and something like that just slips out, as opposed to someone who is being deliberately verbally abusive to their child. I’ve heard people speak to their small children in ways that have really horrified me because it’s been so aggressive and targeted. Someone accidentally saying “dickhead” on a bus when their toddler has upended a bottle of water on them does not sound at all like one of those occasions.

I have a colleague who speaks English as a second language and we were at a work event once when he received a call from his wife to say she had to take their five-year-old to A&E because he had apparently wedged something up his nose and it wouldn’t come out. I’ll never forget him telling me that, pausing and then adding “What a fucking idiot.” It made me properly laugh because it was so incongruous.

You'll hate it when he copies words he hears (and being 2 it really is the ones that you don't want him to repeat) BUT words are just a combination of letters.

If you scream 'sweetheart darling' at your child in tones of anger or derision or sarcasm they will cause far more psychological harm than crooning 'you fucking little cunt' - at that age - well at any age really, the intention is heard above the combination of letters.
Being and showing anger isn't great but most of us do or have done it at some time. The overall feeling of love that you give him counts for much more long term. BUT if you don't want him repeating it - don't say it

OP I’m judging you. Hard. I simply could not defend this behaviour even if I tried.

I absolutely feel for you, I’ve got an almost 20 month old and he completely does my head in! Love him to bits but we have our limits!!

Don’t be so hard on yourself - mum guilt gets to us all!

The phrase ‘little cunt’ is abusive and the target is a child. What do you understand by the words child abuse?

the OP needs to be told that her behaviour is completely unacceptable, that it can never happen again. All the ‘aww hun we all lose it sometimes’ posts are sending completely the wrong message.

Oh, do get over yourself. The OP made a mistake when she was overwhelmed and at the end of her tether. Nobody’s saying it’s a good thing to swear at a baby, but she already feels terrible about it and clearly adores her child. It was a one-off triggered by being stressed, anxious and knackered, not a conscious decision. There’s no need to try to make her feel worse. She feels bad enough already. Ultimately her child will be affected in no way whatsoever because he won’t remember this and he doesn’t know what swear words are anyway. No harm was done. Cut her some slack instead of piling on.

In all seriousness I think you need to reach out for some help. This sounds like something more than normal frustration. Could you speak to your GP? Can you ask your partner to do a bit more, explain what happened? Are you planning to go back to work? I would take this as a bit of a red flag to mean than your not coping and something needs to change.

Do you think a two-year-old actually knows that “cunt” is an insult? I doubt it. As far as he’s concerned, he was just being told off for being naughty. He has come to no harm, mental or physical.

This is a ridiculous thought process. I used to have a very high paying stressful job, long hours and frequent travel (I’m female). I still parented my child and wasn’t infantilised by ‘doing as little as possible’ at home. The whole ‘big man job’ winds me up no end. Do you think he’s not multi-tasking at work? Bollocks to that.

Your DP needs to recognise what you do and you need to stop trying to be super parent and do everything around the house. We’ve all had shit days but having the energy to be patient as a parent is more important that doing the cleaning and his laundry.

Stop beating yourself up talk to your partner and tell him how you feel maybe you could all do with some proper quality time? It also wouldn’t harm him to cook for you one night if he could.

i would crumble being a stay at Home mum. The first year was bad enough and I now work which will be full time in September and I know this will balance us out. You may need to do something for you just you!!

hust because he works doesn’t mean he should get away with not having the children for you cooking etc.

@thedancingbear dont be patronising. I’m not an ‘oh Hun’ mum, at all. I still don’t think the OP is guilty of child abuse.

I agree. I detest it when I see those type of parents out in public swearing at small children. It’s disgusting.

Many, many of us have been stressed and pushed to the end of our tethers by small children. Having a 2yr old and baby was the absolute worst period of my life. And I have teenagers. But swearing ABOUT your kids is different to swearing AT your kids.

Maybe I have a different perspective, because I taught for years before having kids, so I understood more clearly the damage that can be done early on and I had more practice with having to keep my emotions in check.

Regardless. You can't justify calling a child a cunt to its face. Even if you apologise later.

I'm afraid I agree with @HarrietJet . While I wouldn't call op a "scumbag" as TrishM80 did, I won't ease her conscience by saying that we all lose our temper. Conscience exists for a reason and she should feel bad. It may mean that she won't do it again. Could it have happened to me? Absolutely. And if it did I would quite rightly feel horrified that I'd done it. (thankfully, it hasn't ever happened to me).

I am also concerned that she "wrestled" the two year old into the pram. That doesn't sound good either. I hate posts like this where we are all supposed to soothe the op because they feel bad about their actions.

Bring on the posts attacking me for being too harsh etc etc.