Husband on phone the whole fucking time he’s with the children

[Hormonalorjustified]

I’m heavily pregnant and extremely hormonal so want to check I’m not overreacting…

DH has been getting up early with our small children throughout my pregnancy. Amazing - what a great dad. So helpful for me to have an extra 1-2 hours in bed. Right?

except that I’ve just learnt that day in, day out, he is, from 5am-7am, just watching YouTube videos on his phone. And they are short videos, 2-3 mins long (eg about football or tv shows or films). So it’s not something he has on in the background (which tbh I also wouldn’t find ideal as 1 and 3 year old need supervision and attention and it isn’t setting the best example/they aren’t allowed screen time in the morning). He has just been actively doomscrolling and watching stuff for hours on end. For months.

I am a SAHM and I have to say this just isn’t parenting for me. I found out he was doing this for a window at the beginning of my pregnancy, explained I didn’t think this was alright and if he didn’t feel up to getting up I would rather do it myself/not do this. He said he understood/agreed. So I trusted him
not to do it. And I find out he has all along!

I totally get some people have different bars for what they do/let their children do and I am not judging for that but AIBU to think I should be able to trust my husband to do what we fucking agreed with our children?! I feel like an idiot I would have rather been up at 5am myself. It explains a lot of things too - DS having a bump etc and him not knowing how it happened, or me sometimes waking up to hear DS communicating but not able to hear my husband responding for several minutes.

Yes I've looked up a video on YT , played it then put phone down to go and make a cuppa or something. Return to find it's playing through random videos by itself

Won't she go back to sleep if you put her in bed with you?

Just get up with them then. Do you both a favour.

YABU and sound overbearing and controlling. How did you even discover what he was doing during this time? Checking his phone?

Exactly what I did when my youngest ones used to wake at a ridiculous time every morning, take them downstairs to avoid waking the older ones, put Frozen on (yes, every morning 🙄😂) and then I’d doze on the sofa!

He’s their dad.

Why do you get to decide how he wants to “parent” at 5am?

He probably thinks he’s doing you a big favour because you’re exhausted and wrung out (just a hunch) and here you are criticising the poor guy.

I think if he is on his phone for those couple of hours that early but is tending to their needs in a 'good enough' way- fine.

If he is not tending to their needs properly during those hours due to being on his phone, or is also spending most of his time generally around them on his phone rather than giving them any attention- not OK.

Why do you get to dictate to him how you each parent the children? He clearly doesn’t care about your no tv rule. You don’t sound terribly approachable if he doesn’t agree either. No wonder he’s been doing it and not saying anything.

OP will have something to say im sure. But why ask if you don't like replies that disagree with your opinion.
YABU.
He's their father leave him to parent as he sees fit why should you dictate what he does?! You must be a nightmare to live with!

You’re clearly on your gadgets all the time. He’s neglecting the kids she should care.

You are missing the point when posters say if you continue like this you will cause your marriage to end and you say you dont mind having them 100% of the time. The thing is, your husband will have court mandated access to his children and can spend that time with them as he wishes, once they are safe and fed. And then you won't be able to monitor what he does or dictate how he entertains them, would the thought of that not make you despair more?

If you separate you may have to get work outside the home and your children may need a minder or creche. You won't be able to dictate to that caregiver to spend 100% of their time interacting with your children.

BTW, you said they are "playing unsupervised". Unless you live in a mansion an adult in a downstairs open plan area or next room would be able to supervise children playing, even if also scrolling on a phone.

Are you all missing the point 5-7 is the ONLY time he spends with the kids.

court mandated?
weekends with dad

yeah right not happening as his 2 hour slot he has he’s barely there anyways. Accidents are happening because he isn’t parenting he’s aimlessly scrolling on his phone.

oh and he’s doing her favour please he’s a parent to not the bloody hired help

Asking him how one DC bumped his head and her DH didn't know

Hearing the DC talking to him and him not responding.

I think yabu. Would you have the same issue if he were reading a newspaper? If you don't like it then get up yourself - you say you don't mind so why don't you? If I want a lie in, DH can parent as he sees fit. Otherwise why did I have kids with him if I can't trust his judgement?

OP, just wanted to stand in solidarity with you. I'm honestly shocked (and a little disturbed) by some of these responses. I work in a field that researches the effect of screen use, particularly by children and also the effect of (to put it bluntly) lazy and addicted parents who spend large amounts of time engaged in screens rather than their extremely impressionable children.

The results are catastrophic and devastating, and you are correct regarding the behaviour difficulties we are seeing in both Primary and Secondary aged children. Please do not let previous posters convince you otherwise. As a collective, we are heading down a very dark and damaging path that seems to be irreversible at this point.
It's people like you who give me a teeny bit of hope for our future generation.

You sound controlling

I can understand your principles OP but your DP works full time, supports his family and is getting up at 5am to let you rest in pregnancy.

From experience with 3 under 5, the early shift is just about bearable ( with coffee) . It is so must worse when you have to go into work and function as a capable, hardworking worker. If you mess up then it's on you. I do understand your concerns but i ll be bruatally honest not many men I know would do this with a SAHW

I think screen addiction/lack of engagement and lazy parenting from Parents plays an enormous part in behavioural issues yes.

Come off it. Kids of this generation get more attention from their parents than ever before. Smaller family sizes, trend towards nuclear instead of extended family. No other generation has ever had so much parental attention as our kids do.

If you think "behavioural issues" are getting worse with this generation, it's not due to a lack of parental attention. Possibly too much, ie helicopter parenting, but that's not proved.

I think yanbu as he’s shown he’s not responding to them and not noticing accidents. So it’s really not working for him. It’s possible to glance at your phone every so often and still pay your kids attention. That’s what I did at that age. I had to watch mine v closely at that age but if I could sit down with a coffee, I’d read a book or similar. I did read my kindle though, not sure how much better that is.

Kids were not getting more attention from their parents 30y ago, when I grew up. Nor 50y, nor 100y ago.

Parents used to send their kids to play outside, or parents simply got on with housework or work or read a magazine etc. There were more children per family in previous generations so less 1-1 attention too.

It is a totally recent thing that parents are expected to breathe down their children's necks while they play, chipping in with praise and supportive comments every few seconds. And frankly it's not conducive to their creativity or independence (or the sanity of the parent).

He gets up with them at 5am and you're actually serious when you say he's out of order for being on his phone?! This can't be real surely

Even the increase in time-saving household appliances has increased the time that parents can give attention to their kids.

Nobody used to have dishwashers or tumble dryers a few decades ago. When my mum grew up she had 5 siblings and they had no fridge. You can bet my grandma had more to do than lean over her 1yo "oh wow what a lovely tower of blocks".

The oldest ones would be getting on with homework or helping with housework and the youngest ones would just mooch about finding things to play with.

So I call BS that kids aren't getting enough attention these days. Too much if anything.

Still folks are missing the point it’s the whole 2 hours and the kids are having accidents and being ignored when they want to engage with dad

how about you actually read what has been written and see all the op posts we do have a see it all button after all

Honestly 5-7am with no tv sounds bloody awful and v unreasonable, but if they aren’t getting screen time i agree that the parent in charge shouldn’t either.

You have three under four years old OP! Parts of the next few years will be lovely and magical, but a lot of it will likely be tough and knackering too. The children might end up with a lovely bond as they grow up with the same interests etc, but the flip side is that each child has less time / energy / resources allocated to them - how could it be any other way? So I think the standards might slide for a while. I'd focus on getting the things done which really, REALLY need it, and try to pull together with your husband. In the great scheme of things, they'll probably survive the 5am blue light, even if it's not ideal.

On a practical note, have you tried a Gro Clock for the 3 yo? Ours was an awful sleeper, but has now successfully been trained NOT TO WAKE MUMMY OR DADDY UP BEFORE MR SUN IS THERE!!

Just as an aside, I'm pretty sure YouTube autoplays videos so he's not necessarily watching them all that time. I've been completely baffled by some of the stuff in our YouTube history (not snooping, just trying to find a previously-watched video)- stuff that neither of us would be remotely interested in. Can only assume one of us has forgotten to close the app/stop the video and it's played a series of vaguely related videos to the last one, meandering through some very random topics like a game of word association.

I'm in the middle here opinion-wise. I don't think him watching YouTube for two hours straight is great parenting (if he really has been doing that) but, on the other hand, I don't really see what you can do about it other than discuss your viewpoint with him. And I do have sympathy with the fact that getting up at 5am with small children is miserable and can understand wanting the escape, even though I wouldn't do it myself.

My DH probably spends a bit more time on his phone when alone with DS than I would ideally like (just a guess from how much he likes to use it generally), I probably allow more treats than he would think is ideal. But we don't try and micromanage how the other parents, we're both equally in charge.

However, if the children have actually injured themselves during these early morning YouTube sessions and he hasn't noticed, that IS a big problem. I feel like some PPs have missed this part and if my kid was hurting themselves on DH's watch (tiny kids I mean, obviously you can't be watching older ones constantly) and he didn't know how it happened, that would be the point at which I would start involving myself.