‘Don’t splash me!’

[Justputsomecocoabutteronit]

Having a short, four day holiday with Dp & Dd.
We went to the beach this morning, Dd very excited & happy. She ran into the sea, Dp came in with swim shorts on and stood there to get used to the sea. Dd playfully kick splashed him with water, he sharply shouted ‘Don’t do that! Don’t splash me with water!’ Dd looked a bit shocked and said ‘Sorry’ quietly
Sat at the coffee part and Dp starts talking to me about insurance payments he has to sort for his bike, whilst i’m chatting happily with dd and looking at the blue sea.
We drive to the restaurant for lunch, Dd needs a poo so he’s going slightly fast, a man crosses the road, I say ‘Careful! The man crossing the road’ more because I’m anxious of these things, he gets so angry and saying awful things to me and how I don’t need to tell him how to drive etc.

Is all this normal? Feel so low

The op isn't asking if people like being splashed. She's asking if they'd shout sharply at their kids for doing it.

Jesus Christ, this thread is insane. Some people either shouldn’t have kids or should just stay at home in their po-faced splendour and let them have fun with other people.

Your kid splashes you? You yell “WOAH!!” in shock and then splash them back 10 times harder.

We’re off to the beach tomorrow and I’m going to making sure there’s plenty of splashing and more to spare. And I’ll be able to spot all the cats bum MNers at a thousand yards, I’m sure. If they actually go to the beach, which with any luck they won’t.

Quite a lot, stressed easily and unable to control emotions

This made me smile, thank you 💓

😂 yes of course it is! If my kids are being annoying or dicks they may well be spoken to sharply and (hopefully) they will shut up. Applies to real life and holiday.
We don’t live on Instagram. We are a real family.
You seem to have set yourself an incredibly
high bar for how to interact with your kids.
I don’t find holidays an endurance test and never have, even with littles. Always enjoyed it and always have all had fun together, because we don’t silently grit our teeth and put up with behaviour with can’t stand because we are on holiday so you mustn’t have any boundaries in case it upsets the kids. If they’re annoying they get reined in. If DH wants to discuss some life admin whilst we have a drink at a bar, we do, and the kids listen and maybe learn a bit or they play cards or they just zone out. Four people in the family, all working together as a team. No kids on pedestals.

I've got 4 kids. Each one of them learned very early on that Mum does NOT like being splashed and will get in (the freezing cold fecking sea) in her own time and then will be just as fun as everyone else.

None of them are damaged adults. In fact it's a running joke which i'm happy to join in laughing at. (But god help you if you splash me while we're laughing).

The convo about getting insurance ... can't see what's so bad about that. Things pop into your mind even on holiday. I'd hate to feel i couldn't speak about something because people were gazing at the ocean ?

Saying horrible things: haven't really heard what horrible things they were. But if you have a tendency to be an anxious passenger i'd be likely to snap at you too.

She doesn't even say the water was cold, let alone freezing.

There's better ways to dissuade a small child from having fun than making them feel like crap.

My dad is like this when he paddles in the sea with her…he’s 76, he initiates jt. Dp stands there po faced, unable to relax, so sad

There' s a difference between beingsplashed by accident when a child kicks their feet too hard while swimming when you're alreayd in the water, or jumps in next to you, or throws a ball and it lands next to you, and a kid deliberately scooping their hand across the water to splash you on purpose when you have specifically wanted to get used the cold water gradually. The latter is REALLY annoying, and is not very fun from the point of view of the person struggling to get used to the cold water.

Some people like my DH don't seem very sensitive to temperatures (his hands are always toasty when mine are blue blocks of ice in the winter outside, for example). Others, like myself, find getting into a cold pool or sea difficult, don't particularly enjoy the whole thing.

If my kid kept doing it when i'd specifically asked them not to then yeah, I'd shout at them for it. If someone does something to someone and the receiver doesn't find it fun, hates it, feels uncomfortable etc and the other person takes no notice and carries on then that's just not nice behaviour. That applies to adults AND kids in my view. "It's only a bit of water" doesn't rub with me, I didn't like it when you did it the first time and told you so, so why would you carry on.

It's not really about telling her not to splash though. It's fine not to like being splashed. It's about how he told her. Similarly my husband and I will occasionally have back seat driver incidents but it doesn't provoke outright nastiness from either of us.

I think @Justputsomecocoabutteronit you're making it clear that you are no longer enjoying living with this man and your relationship with him. The question is what are you going to do about it?

You can either have a serious conversation with him about it and explain the effect his attitude is having on you, or you make plans to leave.

Same here

Oh, for goodness sake. I suppose you were an advocate of the belief that 'children should be seen and not heard'.
OP, your daughter did nothing wrong. If your DH is not able to adjust his tone to talk to a young child then he's the problem.

She didn’t keep doing it, she did it once, he shouted at har, she apologised and went to build sandcastle’s

I absolutely hate being splashed; I have no fear of cold water (I’m always the first one in), but have incredibly sensitive eyes and just a few drops of sea water is enough to temporarily blind me until I’ve rinsed it out (I do wear big shades in the sea). So my son knows not to splash me, and if he did, I’d be speaking sharply to him.

I can’t quite see what OP’s partner has done wrong, tbh.

I’m yet to hear what these “awful things” were that he said. When asked OP says, “Oh you know, I don’t need you to tell me how to drive etc etc”…There hasn’t been one example of an actually “awful thing” that he’s said.

That's...not what happened.

Can people stop pretending they’ve never spoken sharply to our kids when they’ve done something we’d rather they hadn’t? Yes, EVEN on holiday 😱

Maybe being unexpectedly splashed doesn’t bother some people, fine. But maybe your child has drawn on your arm, spilt something down your top, accidentally broken something, jumped on you and started hanging off your neck, whatever it is, we’ve all…ALL, bitten our kids heads off for doing normal kid things at some point in our parenting careers. Having a moment like that doesn’t make you a “po-faced cats bum” as a delightful PP put it. It makes you human for God’s sake.

I mean I would try and channel my inner gentle parent but I’m a human being with a whole rich inner life of my own so I might be a bit snappy or sharp or not always my most delightful and charming self when I have just been doused in sea water. Do you never snap at your kids or use a sharper tone than intended? What’s it like being perfect?

I would think my husband had lost his marbles if he threatened to leave me over it though. Maybe it’s the same for OP’s husband?

But…you are also real people with real lives and real things to discuss. Are you honestly saying that insurance shouldn’t be discussed in front of your child?! Your family life shouldn’t be 100% a funfest
for you kids; that’s very unrealistic.

I would be pissed off of my husband said I should only talk about child-focused things when my child is present. Fuck that! Kids fit into family life, or they should anyway.

It sounds like you may be on the lookout for ways to criticise him and he knows this. Why shouldn't he talk about bike insurance? That's a bizarre thing for you to complain about.

Yes we all would as they know better.

Tbh I absolutely hate when someone tells me "watch out for the bus/passer by/whatever" - it's so distracting and patronising, if you have anxiety and feel the need to tell the driver such shit then maybe walk instead or close your eyes as they drive.
Youd DP sounds like a dick mind you.

No not at all, but we’d literally arrived at a beautiful beach, sat down with coffees and ice cream and looking out at the blue sea and he starts talking about needing to sort the bike insurance out and how the police are clamping down on it etc and bills we need to sort that month..it’s like ‘Ok, but can we sort that out even when we leave this beach, can we ever just be happy and enjoy the moment?’
Then my head is full of money worries

I have always told my kids not to splash people- one thing if it’s accidental in a pool when they’re playing, but I think they need to learn not to delicately do it, as loads of people hate it! The ‘saying awful things’ to you is a lot more worrying though, hope you’re ok OP