Husband keeps having accidents with 15mo

[newmumabouttown]

My DS is 15 months old. My DH is incredibly accident prone. I have tried to talk to him calmly, I’ve also more frequently lost my temper. I’ve tried to approach conversations with seriousness, explain repercussions, but I feel he’s just not listening. Monday he closed the dishwasher and didn’t see our son had his fingers in it and trapped them. Just now, he had his wardrobe open with DS under him but was choosing an outfit and didn’t see DS trap his fingers in hinge. It is destroying our relationship as I keep thinking I just need to get him away / out.
I know he cares, as he can be loving, but I feel like he doesn’t care enough to be on alert all the time or make adjustments. I don’t know what to do… feeling lost.
Also, just to add it’s not just with our DS. He’s constantly stepping on my feet. I had an operation recently and when we were in car he accidentally hit where I’d been cut, and then seconds later slipped changing gear and punched my leg. It wasn’t deliverable, but it’s hard not to feel like it is when it’s so frequent.

I don’t think this is the issue. Out of interest we both did the quiz and both scored well below the threshold. I know that’s not the only way to measure, but does indicate what we both have discussed in the past, neither of us have ADHD

his proposal was not using doors
Is he being wilfully obtuse? Or do you think he just genuinely doesn't understand? (which, if that's the case, really suggest to me some kind of neurodivergence).
Or, I hate to have to ask this, but is he not particularly intelligent in some ways? Genuine question; I would rather think that it's one of the two above explanations, but obviously none of us here know.

I have an adult DS with diagnosed ADHD who was an unbelievably clumsy child; capable of knocking several drinks over in a single meal. I think when people are clumsy and that’s what they know, it’s also hard for them to understand the perspective of non-clumsy individuals. Does your DH understand that for you normal is not having multiple accidents a day. That it’s possible to avoid accidents?

The two of you need to work out whether formal assessment would be of benefit - but regardless, you don’t need a diagnosis to put strategies in place. Look at resources on ADHD and dyspraxia and try some things out.

One thing I would add is that children are naturally one step ahead of their parents and it is probably optimistic to think you don’t need safety gates and playpens. I can almost guarantee that your DC will prove you wrong.

I wasn't talking about you, I promise! 😄 I was responding to a crazy post that suggested your hubby was almost some sort of closeted serial killer in waiting 😂

He’s highly intelligent, which is why I think I find it so frustrating

So he just isn't that bothered about hurting his child and potentially ending up on the radar of social services?

This thread is getting a bit crazy.

In response to that, I'm refreshing all our memories about this bit in the OP

It is destroying our relationship as I keep thinking I just need to get him away / out.
I know he cares, as he can be loving, but I feel like he doesn’t care enough to be on alert all the time or make adjustments. I don’t know what to do… feeling lost

This sounded very concerning. And tbh, I don't really care about what a grown man prefers in terms of finding solutions and not hurting feelings. I do care about a very small child being hurt, repeatedly, and the person hurting him not being motivated enough to want to change the habits that lead to it. It's about time he took that seriously. You've said he did that today and that he's 'open' to a joint counselling session. That still sounds fairly low level to me and it's something you already had in place. I hope you can come back and tell us what this man is prepared to do, that puts him out and requires extra effort from him, that will stop his child getting hurt.

Well there's either a reason underlying why he is like this, or he's just an uncaring careless oaf putting your child at risk for no good reason.

Don't rely on online screening tests.

What that tells you is that he's a chaos maker who enjoys putting other people at risk (one specific other person person in this case), with a few aims in mind.

A chaos maker is never going to take responsibility for what he's doing. He'll always build in some plausible denial ('an accident'). But he enjoys the chaos, and the effect it has on you has the potential to pay big dividends for him - keeping you on the back foot, making you less likely to entrust DS to his sole care, limiting your options for time to yourself while expanding his own available child free time.

There is no reason for a man of normal intelligence whose heart is in the right place to play games like that with you - 'avoid using doors' is insulting.

The proper conclusion is that for some reason his heart is not in the right place.

When you said earlier this thread is getting crazy was that a warning for this?

Because this together with some of your other updates are the craziest things on this thread.

You say he’s intelligent so he is feigning ignorance and incompetence here. If he kept having similar accidents at work and hurting others or even damaging property and his boss sat him down, you think he wouldn’t come up with a better solution than “not using doors”? Of course he would!

While I’m not necessarily saying it’s deliberate - as in going out his way to purposefully jam his child’s fingers, I think the sad truth is he just doesn’t sufficiently care enough to pay more attention which you actually admitted in the initial post.

He knows he’s “accident prone” as you describe it, but yet isn’t doing all he can to ensure his tiny child isn’t harmed further.

I think the therapy you suggested is probably more useful than trying to get diagnosed with any ND in the first instance which can be a long process . Because then you can talk about how this makes you feel and how this impacts your marriage. Of course you can do that without a therapist too but given how he responds it might be helpful to have a third person.

I wasn’t diagnosed until my early 30s, but I already had strategies in place my whole life really. You don’t need a diagnosis to implement strategies and to show concern for those around you.

For example even pre-diagnosis I knew I had an issue with being on time, so I plan to leave my house an hour before I need to meet someone. Inevitably that hour turns into leaving just ten minutes early or on time - but if I’d planned to leave on time from the start , I’d end up leaving an hour late. It’s just little things like that to show consideration for the person waiting for you.

The fact is he should be the one raising this as an issue and being proactive on finding solutions to this problem. He should be showing how much he wants this to stop through his actions. Again his lack of apparent concern and drive to address this isn’t a ND thing.

Set up a fixed, secure play pen.
Encourage DH to put baby into the safe area when ever he is not actively engaged with attending to him.
Your son might be unhappy but he will be safe.

You husband will grow more experienced at minding his child.
Do you leave DH to pacify the crying child and fix the injury?
You should.
Invest in safety straps/lead - for when DH has baby out walking.
Insist that baby always wears his seat belt when in the pram and car.
Have your DH's hearing checked.

Your husband is Fester Fumble with bad eye sight; he can still learn to always follow safe boundaries.

Please train DS not to put his fingers into hinges.
say loudly “ we NEVER put fingers into doors!” In the same way as you say “FIRE Danger Danger! “ Etc to young children.

It strikes me that part of the problem is a young child who likes exploring with his fingers. You might be aware that he does this but DH is not aware/ vigilant to it.

I don’t think you can possibly have any experience of neurodiversity @mathanxiety.

You are also cherry-picking and ignoring some of the information OP has given us.
“I think it’s really unkind how people say he doesn’t care at all about his son. He has been messaging all afternoon about it…”

Punching your leg after surgery in the car seems
deliberate, almost like he "hates you" for being ill.
I do not believe that this was an accident.
He has expressed how he feels with an action, rather than words.
I believe that he could potentially become more dangerous in the future.
Does he have anger issues ?

Fingers in the dishwasher, seems to be incompetentance & not aware of his actions in regards to your son.
Does he really care for your son.

Ultimately, as a mother it is your duty to safe guard yourself & your child.
So this may mean ending the relationship

How many accidents will you allow ?

Secondly, he should get his eye sight & hearing checked yearly.

This is part of the DVLA rules for driving

Punching your leg after surgery in the car seems
deliberate, almost like he "hates you" for being ill.
I do not believe that this was an accident.

OP does believe it was an accident, @Countrysidebikeride, and has said so repeatedly. She has been extremely clear on this.

People don’t seem to be listening to her. That can’t be helpful.

The punching on your leg

He is telling you by his actions, that he is in control, he is the boss.

It was a deliberate action

Beware

Oh for heaven’s sake 🙄

Who hurt you? Projecting much?!

OP does believe it was an accident

She has no explanation for why all his "accidents" hurt others and not himself.

He doesn’t give a shit. I remember walking down the road with my eldest in one of those slings and I could feel it slipping down. I was holding four bags of shopping with all the food in the world that we had for that week and it. And I knew I had to just drop the food I couldn’t carry on and there was absolutely no world in which I was gonna let the baby slip.
All of my eggs broke, I had onions rolling down the road, but the baby is the priority

I've fallen over and broken bones, regularly walk into things, have stepped on the dog, I am always over the top carefulw ugh the kids because I know what I'm like but it's very hard work and always has been. I'm hypermobile and very academic but very scary, highly likely ADHD or dyspraxia in my case, with a child with ADHD which is highly heritable. Why do you think ADHD is overused? Is he hypermobile? If he's always been accident prone and clumsy what doesn't he fulfil in terms of dyspraxia/ADHD?

It's not to say he doesn't have to be more careful but I have to be so careful around the kids in a way other parents don't seem to have the think of

@Letmecallyouback

You are totally projecting! This is not about your son. This is about a small baby getting hurt - repeatedly.

I think everyone's pretty shocked that your baby is getting hurt, for whatever reason, and you're arguing back to posters trying to talk about how you can change this.

Actually OP agreed strongly with a poster who said she (the poster) hurts herself on a small scale so often she no longer even registers it.

OP said her DH does things like stubbing his toe constantly, so he does seem to be hurting himself routinely, albeit on a small scale. She also said he’s the same as his sister who breaks and loses things constantly. So she doesn’t seem to be giving a description of someone who’s unscathed by all this.