Has my husband crossed a line?

[Karibukiti]

My husband and I have 2 children ages 3 and 5 and differ in our parenting approach. If the children are in a good mood he can be an excellent dad, playing Lego / drawing / wresting / making dens with them - all the stuff they love.
However, if he is feeling stressed or they do something that displeases him, it’s as if a switch flips and he is a different person. His expression changes, he shouts at / ignores them, and it’s like treading on eggshells around him. A few times he has done things I feel have crossed a line:

• Aggressively told them to shut up
• Thrown a toy at our 3 year old’s back after he threw it at him
• Flicked our 3 year old’s face after our 3 year old hit him
• Dragged our crying 5 year old into the bathroom after he lost patience with him for not getting dressed
• Called them disgusting / babies / told them they stink (in an aggressive tone) when they have accidents

I always comfort the boys when I see this kind of behaviour, stick up for them, tell them it’s not right, and ask my husband to take a moment to calm down. I don’t want to undermine his parenting but equally I don’t want to tolerate any kind of shaming or aggression towards them.

When we talk about it afterwards, he is very reluctant to do so, makes jokes about it / places the blame entirely on the kids. He also says all parents lose their temper sometimes and I’m being over the top. I’ve asked him to access counselling/offered to attend couples counselling with him (he can get this free and confidentially through work) but he always says “yes yes when I’m ready” but is never ready/it’s never the right time to talk about it.

I said I need to talk to someone (a friend, my sister, my mum) about this (he’s always lovely in front of them) but he said if I do this, he’ll leave.

I just don’t know what to do. Things are fine now, but I’m worried about the next time.

Its all very well saying leave but I'm sure another solution can be found without the entire family being uprooted. Even if OP does leave he could still get 50% custody of the children and then she won't be around to intervene if anything happens.
Divorce is a huge upheaval.

A few times he has done things I feel have crossed a line:

How many more times does he have to "cross a line" before you do something to protect your children?
Tell your friends and your mum, let them support you.
Good, let him leave, what a ridiculous set up, him threatening to leave you merely for talking to someone, when he's done all that.

He knows it's wrong and you're protecting him.

Your H is abusing your DC whilst you wonder about his parenting style.

Please tell your family so you can get some help to get away from this monstrous man

There was a lot of abuse about in previous generations. I'm a child of the 60/70's and by today's standards good parents were few and far between, which I do put down by lack of choices and education on emotional needs etc.
@Karibukiti as said tell people and let him leave. It's a question I often ask when women have doubted an incident, "would you be willing to tell your children's teacher?" If not, why not? Usually because it's severe neglect or abuse. He's causing emotional harm and on occasion, physical harm. If they throw things/flick faces at children in nursery/school are you going to be willing to tell the truth about were they learnt it?

She can fight that due to his abuse, but she needs to involved the professionals, health visitors etc., even social services, to help make sure he doesn't get custody and only supervised contact. She needs advice ASAP. Please don't even suggest that she shouldn't divorce him, I had an abusive father and my childhood was hell.

The advice is not to get Counseling with an abuser .
I sure as hell wouldn’t get Counseling with one that abused my children ‘

You are describing abuse. And your children are learning that abuse can be part of a loving relationship.

I think a lot of people have an impression that abusive people are always abusive but that's not the case. Abusive people can also be kind sometimes, funny sometimes, loving sometimes. The fact remains that the only acceptable amount of abuse in a relationship (whether romantic, friendship, parent/child etc) is ZERO.

If you were my sister I'd be advising you to speak urgently with Women's Aid to discuss options and what happens going forward RE contact and keeping your children safe.

He's crossed a line multiple times, he's abusive to your children. Please leave him.

You need to ask him to leave the home for a while and don't let him back in unless and until he takes full responsibility for his behaviour and agrees to go to parenting classes to learn how to be a better parent. If he won't change you could try couple counselling with a tough and experienced counsellor who won't accept his excuses. But you need to make it much clearer that you won't put up with this any longer.

He’s solved your problem for you. Have his bags packed ready for him when he comes home. Tell him you’re just about to call your parents to tell them what he’s been doing and as he said he would leave if you did he may as well go ahead

Absolutely this. I don't care how good he is on a good day OP, he is abusive and you need to get your kids away from this.

He is abusive. I think the fact he has this jekyll and hyde character is even worse for the kids than a consistently nasty dad, its the uncertainty, and the waiting for his temper.They must feel so incredibly anxious. And shaming them for accidents is appalling.

The fact he doesnt want his behaviour discussed outside of the household tells you what you need to know.

By staying you are allowing the violence to continue and showing them (and your husband) that it’s okay to be treated like this.

He is a bully. A violent thug.

Do not allow these boys to grow into that type of ‘man’.

Oh my God. Nobody is going to say this is even vaguely okay. What an arsehole, and what a difficult situation to navigate. You do need to get your sh*t together and leave/kick him out. Good luck.

Oh my god this is triggering, this is our house hold too.
please don’t misjudge me, I’m asking out of ignorance due to the home I grew up in and my current set up, is it not normal for parents to loose their cool and get things wrong?. I apologise to my kids all the time cos I see how I could have done better. I yell and blow my top, and have even swore… my partner on the other hand expects them to do as they are told and when they are told, with the repeated phrase, if I were to have behaved like that I’d have had my head ripped off… he calls them idiots and doesn’t have any allowances for unusual circumstances, ie staying up late for new year, bed time was closer to 10pm, norm 7.30… he was goading our boy instead of just ignoring his excitement, causing our boy to have a melt down, I said to him that he wasn’t helping, he said that he should learn, I said what he should learn now 2 hours passed his bedtime…
We are looking to separate though. So I guess my question is more about my behaviour…

Also, separating terrifies me cos I won’t be there in the middle, separating means when he has time with them I won’t know what he has said to them and how he delivered it.

So he definitely has an issue. Sounds to me like he has anxiety or some other issue where he is triggered by stressful situations of the kinds mentioned. The biggest concern is that he won’t acknowledge he has an issue and therefore won’t seek help. He doesn’t want it discussed externally because it would force him to acknowledge the truth and he would probably find it highly embarrassing. Is his public image important to him? Does he like being thought of as a good father?
if he is otherwise a good father/dh I would look to work through it together but he needs to address the anger issues and potential underlaying causes, and to do that he needs to first acknowledge his behaviour isn’t acceptable. You need to sit him down and have a difficult conversation and potentially be prepared to issue him an ultimatum.

It’s all very well telling the op to just leave but 1 that could potentially be dangerous for her and her children and 2 the fact is that if they split he will be entitled to unsupervised time with their children during which she cannot protect him and for everyone who thinks that she can easily block that, it isn’t that easy, and could be incredibly damaging to her children if he can spin a narrative to them in which she is the bad guy. I stayed with my alcoholic ex because I was so afraid of the risk of his unsupervised time with the children and then when we did finally split because I just had to leave, the only think that worked I. My favour were his manipulative drunken suicide attempts, I don’t know what he did or said in hospital but I ended up getting a call from social services to say they recommended supervised time only. Which meant ok my children were safer but they spent months going to a contact centre twice a week, and they’re no fun either, my children are teens now and still remember how much they hated that contact centre and they also hated all the stuff their dad said to them about me while they were there. So please don’t make the OP feel like shit because she isn’t taking immediate heroic action, there is literally no easy way out of this that isn’t going to be damaging to her and her children in some way and everyone piling in telling her she is subjecting her children to abuse isn’t helping. Abusive men don’t magically become reasonable when you hold them to account, in fact that normally unleashes the worst side of them.

OP the best advise is around letting other people in to what is happening. Abusers rely on you colluding in silence, you don’t have to make a big thing of telling him you’ve told people but it will help you feel more certain, it is so easy to minimise and normalise to yourself xx

My dad used to play lego with me and other things but he would occassionally shout etc. It kept escalating until one day he punched me in the face.
Seriously consider how damaging this environment is for your babies.

It's really hard parenting these days because many young parents had smacking in the mix when they were kids.

Who do these parents model their behaviour on?

I personally think that some of the very good parenting courses should be manditory and encouraged by all child nurses, kinders, schools and child care centres. Flyers should be in the kids' back backs every term.

There has to be no stigma connected to learning how to parent gently and better, how to retreat to calm down etc.

Op, I would insist that your husband completes some child care courses and I would ask him to also take counselling for his demonstrative anger. Call him out on his behaviour before it esculates every time. Discuss with him alternative options.
Ideally, he would remove himself from parenting until he has successfully learnt coping skills.

You are not "questioning his parenting" you are calling out an abusive grown man abusing small children.

Protect your children. Does he abuse you? If he hasn't he will.

Speak to as many people as you can. Get as much proof as you can for eg text him about it so you have it in writing. Then keep your children safe and away from him.

If this was happening in the home of a client, I would have a duty to raise a safeguarding alert with children's services.

Get him gone, before someone does exactly that.

Please end your relationship with this man as soon as you can. He won't change, and the sooner you leave, the better

The father of Sarah Sharif probably started like this.

“I said I need to talk to someone (a friend, my sister, my mum) about this (he’s always lovely in front of them) but he said if I do this, he’ll leave.”
ask him if he’d like you to help him pack his bags.
This is awful and it won’t get any better. Just wait till they turn into horrendous teenagers what’s he going to do then? I would be very concerned. Get out now

Please get your children away from this vile abusive piece of shit.

Awful man