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.

Two things, would he walk into her office, walk into the meeting room and demand she speak to him? This is essentially what he was doing trying to get her attention. I wfh, have done for 10+ years and it never ceases to amaze me how people think it's ok to interrupt you when you're on a call. They wouldn't do it in an office setting, so don't do it just because you're at home.

Secondly a grown adult man getting in your face and using his physical size to push past a woman is never ok. Regardless of what was going on.

I think you'd be very unreasonable to ask your dd to 'get past it'. Sounds like she have very healthy boundaries in place and you should examine your boundaries as they may need work.

Where did you get "moved her to one side"? You have coloured the situation completely differently to how it was described in the OP in an attempt to minimise what happened. You don't even know this woman and yet you are falling over yourself trying to excuse the way she was treated by her father. That says so much about the way that we excuse VAWG in society.

This is what was actually said:

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

Not quite as reasonable and calm as you've tried to portray it.

It's was you and your husbands fault that you forgot your smart meter was being done. Of course she couldn't just stop her meeting to have a little chat with her dad - she wasn't rude, he was for interrupting her meeting! She's trying to be professional and do her job! Why didn't he wait until she'd finished?

Then they have a row - I'm not surprised she was furious and he belittles her job and shoves her out the way.

If i was you I'd be livid with him, he's not remotely violent you say - except he was wasn't he?

@CreativeDaisy Has your H behaved like a bull in a china shop before? Have you spent most of your marriage treading on eggshells in case he goes off in a temper?

This ^

Excellent post

There is something very very off about the way you describe your DH, OP

An adult man gets so angry with a woman because she's working and in a meeting and can't give him attention, that he assaults her and then has to be ASKED to apologise and has to have his appalling behaviour explained to him (did you make him sit on the naughty step?)

And NOW the woman he assaulted is expected to apologise and make it all OK?

Jesus 🙄😬🤪

Reading this thread,I'm reminded to be very grateful that I have a Dad like mine.Wtf!

It’s on him to sort, not you

Maybe accept that it can’t be made better, and that your husband has irreparably damaged this. Because his sense of entitlement and temper drive him to behave in a way that demonstrates he has no respect for his adult daughter. Compounded with being so entitled and oblivious that he thinks he’s owed an apology.
What happened the last time someone treated him like that- did he apologize to them for making them do it to him?

It’s not up to you to make it better, it’s up to your husband. I’d have a hard time forgiving my dad if he’d done this to me.

Your h was in the wrong here. He acted terribly and then shouted at her and pushed her?? I'm not surprised she doesn't want anything to do with him.

He needs to see her, apologise unreservedly to her, reassure her that it won't happen again, then the ball is in her court.

This is just all awful. Work meetings can't just be interrupted by someone - if I'm chairing an important meeting and someone tries to get my attention by waving bet you I'll be ignoring them too. A subtle note put in front of you that you can read when you have a minute of attention is completely different. What your DH was trying to communicate was NOT an emergency and the way it escalated into him pushing her is disgraceful. The fact that you had to tell him to apologise and how bad his behaviour was suggests that he was being aggressive and unreasonable towards her for 'ignoring' him and that's why she reacted that way?

I won't focus on the assault as PP have done so thoroughly.

Does your DH see her as an adult? Does he view her job as a proper one of she's working remotely. Or does he view it more as her being a teenager chatting to her friends?

My dad didn't view my OU degree as a proper one. Couldn't really comprehend how it was the same qualification as going to a brick uni.
I work from home now, he thinks nothing of dropping in on me for a cup of tea, as "you're alone all day not doing anything or seeing anyone - oh and could you just run me to X shop to pick Y up".
He just doesn't get that I'm a fully formed adult, and despite doing things from home it is exactly the same as being in the office where he would never show up.

As for the electrics going off he should have passed her a note, or even just let the power go out - that happens in offices too although she'd be annoyed, she could have rejoined on another device like her phone if she had one.

Of course there’s something wrong with that. He wouldn’t walk into her office and wave his hands about at her, as PP have said a note would have been better or perhaps telling her in the first place the smart meter man is coming at 10am

If this was a team meeting I’d be fine to say what was happening. However I have many meetings with external people who it would be VERY unprofessional to do this.

Im guessing OP’s H thought she just had a nice little job where people wouldn’t mind if the unimportant lady stops her meeting.

Thank you for such a compassionate response. I do accept that what he did was serious, DD is still processing the shock and this is likely to permanently change their relationship.

I remember my dad lost the head with me over a year ago. It was very, very hurtful and uncalled for. I did forgive him but it was hard.
Looking back, I realised he was very hungover on the day he did it. He also takes a lot of medication, and has flipped at my brother when overly medicated.
Was your husbands tolerance levels down because of anything?

I do not condone violence. However

He grabbed her and pushed her out of the way.

That suggests she was blocking him while shouting at him when he was trying to remove himself from the situation.

If that’s what she was doing, was he supposed to quietly hang his head and await permission to leave?

If she’d been at her work place and a senior member of staff, any colleague, had tried to get her attention to interrupt a call, she would have asked the person she was speaking to to hold on a minute or let her call them back.

She certainly wouldn’t shout and block them in. So if her dad didn’t show sufficient respect for her being at work, neither did she.

Yes, her father could have left a note on the desk, but unless she was saving a life during her phone call, she overreacted and was an arsehole.

How do you or your DH know that the meeting she was in wasn't actually, at least for your adult daughter, dealing with a matter of life or death (or the equivalent in whatever field your daughter works in)?

Getting a smart meter installed can take up to an hour and if she wasn't prepared for the signal to drop, she wouldn't have been able to make alternative arrangements such as charging her laptop fully and getting her laptop to connect to the internet through her mobile phone hot spot. Also, having important appointments on a visible calendar in the kitchen would help a lot. Even if you hadn't mentioned anything you could have it on a calendar and she could have asked, but as you didn't, she couldn't.

As for your DH trying to get her attention while she was on a call, well, unless he was slipping her a piece of paper saying that "The electricity meter is being swapped out shortly - sorry forgot to tell you ahead of time", nothing, and I really mean nothing is more difficult than trying to hold two separate conversations at the same time when both people that you are trying to listen to are essentially talking over each other. Your DH hasn't covered himself in glory here by doing that, and then escalating the issue and shouting at his daughter and then (I don't use this term lightly) assaulting her by pushing her forcefully out of his way. I think he needs to accept that he was wrong, probably having a bad day but he was wrong and he is sorry (i.e. he won't do it again) for what he did.

Setting boundaries and refusing to fall into line just because daddy says so - sounds perfectly grown up to me.

Because when she didn’t do what he wanted, he pushed and shoved at her. Which bit are you struggling with?

It doesn't imply that at all, actually. The most you can know for certain is that she happened to be standing between him and the door and didn't immediately step out the way when he wanted to leave. You can’t even be sure he asked her politely to move before manhandling her.

Also, OP already says her husband had been shouting in his daughter's face. So even if she was blocking his exit and shouting at him, she was responding in kind to how he chose to discuss the matter. You are not the aggressor if you shout back at someone who has shouted at you first, and blocking the door to make sure they let you reply rather than merely screaming at you and leaving does not merit them physically shoving you around.

Well if the power/wifi cut what that imminent, what could OP’s daughter do about it anyway? Would she even have had time to explain? If the worst came to the worst, she’d just have to text someone else on the call or send an email from her phone, just as you would if your own connection died for some reason.

In the time he’d spent gesticulating and getting stroppy that his daughter wouldn’t just drop everything to listen to HIM, he could have typed “WiFi going off, sorry” on his phone and shown it to her if he didn’t have time to fetch a pen.

Don't erode your daughter's boundaries because it makes you uncomfortable FFS

Keep out of it and let them resolve it themselves.