To ask DD to make it up with her dad

[CreativeDaisy]

Feeling very sad about this situation in my family and hoping for some advice.

My adult daughter recently visited to help me and DH (her dad) babysit our grandson (her nephew) for the weekend to give his parents a break. Because she lives several hours away, DD came up a few days beforehand to spend some more time with us whilst remote working.

On the day my grandson was due to arrive, DD was on a work call when a man arrived to connect up our smart meter. We'd forgotten he was coming so didn't have a chance to warn DD that the power/internet would need to go off for a few minutes. My husband tried several times to get DD's attention to let her know about the power outage, but she carried on with her meeting, avoided eye contact and even gestured at him to stop talking which he thought was very rude. When she finished her call 5-10 minutes later, she went to speak to DH and I heard them having a huge, shouting row before DH came storming upstairs (I don't know who started shouting first).

I gave it a while for DD to calm down before going downstairs, only to find her desperately upset with her bags packed by the front door preparing to leave. She told me DH had got in her face shouting about how her work wasn't life-or-death and then he grabbed her and pushed her out of his way. I asked her to stay as she was too upset to drive safely, and she said she really wanted to see her nephew but she would only stay if DH apologised unreservedly.

Ultimately he did apologise for grabbing/pushing her and she said she forgave him. There were hugs and then little grandson arrived so big distractions. I thought we were all OK, but then DD cut her weekend short and went home the next day. Since then she's been polite and answered messages but she's still distant and isn't really initiating contact any more.

I've mostly been staying out of it, but lately I've been considering speaking to DD more directly and trying to encourage her to move on from this incident. I know it was upsetting but she loves her dad, he is sorry and he would do anything for her. He's been so kind helping her move house this year and supporting her through her recent divorce, I would hope that would count for something. I also think she should apologise about being rude to DH when he was trying to communicate with her on the call. However, when I said this in passing to a friend she looked at me like I had two heads and said I was 'condoning violence' which I absolutely am not! DH is not remotely violent, he just lost his temper once, and he has apologised.

So, am I being unreasonable? I just want things to go back to how they were before, and I think DH has done all he can to fix things. I am willing to be told I am wrong if it can help.

If my father had ever done that to me, I would never have spoken to him again.

My mother wouldn’t have, either.

There is never an excuse for violence.

Does DD say the same thing as DH regarding what happened which made him push her out of the way?

I didn't mean it like that, I'm sorry. I just thought it might help mend bridges but the replies on here have been very clear that this is not helpful. I've never dealt with this situation before and I'm just trying to work out what I should do, if I can do anything.

As none of us saw the push, I don't think we can assume stuff like this;

You need to tell your other dc what their dad did to their sister and you should be prepared for them to refuse to allow your husband to be around your grandson as he is a dangerous violent man who could lose his temper at anytime and attack your grandson too.

People are clearly picturing different things, and for an we know he 'just'* moved her out of the way mid-argument

• And yes, he shouldn't have done it, but that, as a one off, is not a 'he's violent and he might attack his grandson' moment

I also think she should apologise about being rude to DH when he was trying to communicate with her on the call

I don’t see anything in your description where she was being rude - if anything, it was your DH being rude trying to persist in getting her to talk to him when on a work call. He could / should have just passed her a note. It may be stating the obvious, but a work call is not the same as a social chat.

Honestly, I think the best thing you can do now is just to dial everything down. Keep the lines of communication between you and her open, but don’t push her into doing anything.

Its your husband who should be reaching out with an olive branch, not her. I'm inclined to wonder how he tried to get her attention and if perhaps we was rude/aggressive when doing so?

That's the sort of behaviour that would have me ignoring someone and telling them to wait. He could have passed her a note...

This is mad. Why haven't you had it out with your husband?!

Agree!!

I did, I insisted he apologise to her initially and have made it very clear to him how bad his behaviour was. I understand his feelings aren't what matters here, but he's told me he feels extremely guilty and regretful, and I am seeing him trying very hard to do better. I appreciate all the feedback on this thread and I'm not trying to justify his behaviour, just to explain my understanding of what happened and explore ways forward.

He's been so kind helping her move house this year and supporting her through her recent divorce, I would hope that would count for something.

This is something I found weird in your OP and I can't quite put my finger on why. It might be that you are calling his actions as kind whilst I would consider it normal behaviour for a parent. Neither kind nor unkind, it's just what parents do. It's like saying he was kind to cook her dinner or was kind to help with her homework as a young child. Unless he's her stepdad?

EDIT - I insisted he apologise to her initially and have made it very clear to him how bad his behaviour was.
^ That is weird too. Didn't he automatically apologise for shoving her? Why are you explaining to him that his behaviour was totally unacceptable? Surely he would already know that

So he has zero respect for her work, shoved her and shouted at her. But because she's a girl, she should comply and apologise because it's easier than convincing your abusive misogynistic husband to grovel and fix things.

Nice.

I know you just want your family back in harmony again, and none of this is in any way your fault, but you need to accept that this is a lot more serious than you seem to realise. He assaulted her. That is not something that should ever happen, so however many times that you plead that it only happened once, it's still appalling. I have a lot of sympathy for you, you didn't cause this and having a rift in the family is so painful - but you can't expect your daughter to move past this for the sake of your feelings. She needs you to support her and stand up for her, not guilt-trip her into papering over what has happened.

Your DH should be deeply ashamed of himself. Not only was it incredibly rude to interrupt her work call without warning, but he physically dominated her and assaulted her. I think you need to prepare yourself for this not blowing over.

Has he ever physically pushed her, or anyone else in the family before? Has he lost his temper like this in the past? Why did he lose his temper so quickly? Were they getting on okay before this? I would be really upset if my dad pushed me.

I say: good on your DD for asserting her boundaries.

Your DH wouldn’t go in her workplace and start waving about at her so he shouldn’t have rudely done it when she was WFH.

He grabbed and shouted at his own actual daughter and you’re putting the onus on her to make amends?! I’m now wondering what life was like for her growing up with an aggressive father and a fence sitting mother TBH. Do yourself and your DD a favour - be on her side with this.

He's been so kind helping her move house this year and supporting her through her recent divorce

Sorry but you don’t get cookies for doing normal basic parenting. You certainly don’t get the right to be violent just because you were nice once.

I also find the whole thing of him thinking it’s acceptable to interrupt her work call to be really dismissive of the importance of her job (I wonder if he’d have done it to a man) and even more concerning his irrational fury at the belief a woman was rude to him.

They've both been dickheads. She was rude in the first place and making drama out of nothing. As you didn't witness the rest of it it's hard to say, whether she was being the bigger dickhead and not moving and if he's just pushed past, or if he's actually laid hands on her and pushed her. There's no excuse. They need to sort this, not you.

Why do you feel it is your responsibility to make this better? Is that your role in your family dynamic? Does your husband still think of his adult daughter as a child? It can be difficult sometimes for parents to put their adult children on an equal footing and accept they are people in their own right.

I would also be concerned about your daughter. Did anything happen in her marriage/divorce such that she may have found her father's behaviour triggering (being asked to move out of the way and not doing so, and his physical response)?

If your daughter was sitting in a conference room in an office building, would your husband just walk in and expect to talk to her? That is what he did. That is what wfh entails. If she is in a meeting, she essentially in a virtual conference room and he waltzed right in like her job didn’t matter at all.

my child knows not to enter the room if I am on a call or to interrupt me politely if it is an actual emergency.

then he laid hands on her when they got into an argument afterwards.

If apologies are on order, they don’t need to come from your daughter.

if He can’t make a sincere apology, then the least he can do is give her space.

Agreed, she need to grow up.

F

I would leave it alone to be honest. It sounds like space is needed and your daughter is deeply affected by the manhandling. I don’t think the daughter is being dramatic at all, as implied by other posters. Many workplaces frown on familial interruptions and she was most like trying to be professional.

Op what planet are you on?

I wouldn’t be talking to you either with your attitude.

DD should not be apologising for anything. Do you not understand the concept of not being disturbed during a work call? Especially if she was on camera, she could have been pulled up if it looked like she was talking to someone else rather than giving her full attention. She was there to help you out and shouldn’t expect to be disrupted.

Your DH was WAY out of line. Really really concerning he resorted to grabbing her because it’s unprofessional to have disruptions during a work call. This is what you should be focusing on - encouraging your DH to look into therapy or anger management.

Apologising after doing something like that doesn’t cut it, sorry. Your attitude is a disgrace.

What's he doing to repair the relationship? It's not for you to smooth things over when your daughter is upset about what happened. He should be doing everything he can to resolve this.

Other posters are right about not expecting your daughter to accept shitty behaviour from any man.

He was a dick from the start, he was distracting her during a meeting so of course she waved him away. She can't interrupt a meeting to speak to her dad ffs. Sounds like he needs to grow up.