Abusive or snappy?

[Frogstobutterflies]

Can’t see wood for the trees here.
my feeling is this is abusive but I’m so tired I wanted some objective opinions in case I’m over reacting.

context: dinner with my 3 kids, 12 year old has adhd and was particularly bouncy tonight - couldn’t sit still so was bouncing around kitchen while interacting in our conversation. Irritating yes but fairly normal and I was happy we were all together and I’d managed to make a home cooked meal and everyone was happy, yay.

my DH has been…off lately. Can’t quite put finger on it. longer hours at work, later home, just a bit moody I guess. Anyway he walked in this evening to the above chaotic but happy family dinner mess and within a few minutes my son inevitability crashed into the table making my drink spill. No one hurt, no harm done and I firmly told him no more running around now, either sit or go into the other room and I mopped it up.
my dh suddenly comes over to our son and shakes his head and says “fucking Idiot”. We all were stunned, my son started laughing (which he does when he’s overwhelmed) and I think I managed to say “we don’t swear in this house so please apologise” and he muttered something and left the room. All feeling of happy fun disappeared with him. He later apologised but in such a blasé way you’d think he’d stepped on a toe accidentally.

Am i overreacting and it’s normally for parents to get annoyed and swear at their kids? Don’t get me wrong I get frustrated too but never in a blue moon Would I swear at one even if they were being boisterous etc.

Thank you 🙏
I can’t ever imagine walking out on him and the kids no matter how hard my day or week is. It’s inconceivable to me☹️
i guess I could message his sister- we don’t talk really unless we are all together but it’s not hostile in any way. She lives 2 hours from us. Problem is I don’t know what he’s told her and I don’t want to make anything worse by asking her if he’s really there if he’s not told her there’s a problem 😔this is all just so so new and unexpected to me 😔

Just take out £20 and stash it somewhere safe. And do the same on payday, for £50 if you can, and every month after that. Worst case scenario it’ll be enough to get you a sack of potatoes and some bread for a few days.

I’m sure his money will go in and it will all be fine. He’ll come back and apologise and it’ll all be smoothed over. Hopefully, this time next year, this will be a blip that you won’t even remember. But I strongly suspect he’s not finished with the nasty surprises and you don’t want to be blindsided over money on top of everything else.

Ok I’ll do this. It would be horrendous if his salary didn’t come in as all our big d/d come out next week (mortgage, council tax, energy, insurance etc) which would wipe my salary out and then some

Seperate issues here.
Yes he shouldn't have sworn at it. . he know that. He sounds super stressed. Is something horrible happening at work? Risk of redundancy etc?

You undermined his parenting that was a conversation to be had privately not telling him we don't swear in this house ..

No trouble of work that I know of, or thread of redundancy.
i can see why I was patronising but really didn’t mean to be, I felt I had to say something as the kids all just sat open mouthed as they were so shocked he’d called X what he did, and ironically I thought it would be more patronising to tell him it was wrong to swear so instead said quietly we don’t swear in this house, meaning all of us. But I guess it came out wrong 😔

Shaking a ND child's head and calling them a fucking idiot is parenting?

You haven't done anything wrong. I'm sorry but it reads to me like he has another woman. Is he even at his sisters? Could be with somebody else.

Depends on your norms I suppose. In our house no one swears in front of a child, certainly not at one, so it would be incredibly shocking and would read as aggressive, so yes, abusive. If you've a more lax attitude to swearing at children then not so much.

Sometimes parenting needs 'undermining'. When it's awful then it's important the child sees the other adult in their lives will stand up for them and challenge it.

Dear OP, I am so sorry you are going through this. Please note you did not do anything wrong. All these people saying it is ok for your husband to call your ND son, "fucking idiot" and saying that you telling your husband “we don’t swear in this house so please apologize” is not, are wrong. You handled the situation as best as anybody else would. I do not think that the school will do much more then they already did, but I guess, you never know.

As for your husband, obviously, I do not know him well enough to "diagnose" him, but from little that I learned from you, he is an an asshole at the best, a narcissist at the worst, and I am almost 100% certain that he has a women on a side. This is what men often do, when they find someone else, they start placing faults at everything and everyone else around them to minimize the blame that is supposed to lay on themselves for cheating. I could never understand why they cannot man up and just confess.

Either way, as a mother of three, two of which are ND, my heart is aching for you. Please remember, you are a wonderful mother, you are doing your best, you did not do anything wrong. Whatever happens, it will not be your fault.

Hugs.❤️

I think she was very measured.

I don't think speaking privately is enough. I would want my child to know that I was not ok with this. Otherwise, they may believe me to be condoning it. It is not ok and should not be tolerated from any member of the household.

That was exactly what I was trying to do, the kids were stunned and I didn’t feel ok just sitting blankly without reminding everyone (ie him but without starting an argument) that we don’t allow swearing in the house (well I thought we didn’t) ☹️in case it looked like I was agreeing with it

Absolutely. In this instance, he was 100% wrong. So the kids/child needed to see them being defended or spoken up for...not the behaviour being tacitly approved or or permitted by her silence.