DH called DD annoying and it’s made me feel really sad

[GugiGi]

DH and I have 3 children, DS1 who is 19, DD1 is 16 and DD2 is 12.
DD1 is a live wire, she has such an incredibly vibrant personality, never stops, wakes up every morning and does a workout in our home gym, showers and by the time any of the rest of us make it downstairs she is already in the kitchen making an omelette or porridge, music on (not loud enough to wake anyone) dancing around. In the evening she’s always getting her homework done then doing something, she never seems to sit still, even if you check on her at 10pm she will be pacing around her room while testing herself on flash cards or FaceTiming friends, sometimes she’s being a little silly and will be balancing something on her head while she does so “for posture”. She’s got so much energy and is such an intelligent, vibrant girl. She can be hard to get a story out of as she does go off into mini stories within the story, but they are always told with such energy and are genuinely funny. She is the most active user of the family group chat, always sending little things she’s seen, silly selfies, little videos of her doing her sports or singing a song etc.

Tonight she sent a video into the family group chat, well multiple videos. She had tried to FaceTime as she was walking home but none of us answered (I was showering, no idea why DH didn’t). She was telling us a story about her day with her friends and did get distracted a lot during the story, stopped the story to show us a pigeon she passed, then said something which reminded her of a song which she then sung in the video. I appreciate it’s a long watch and hard to follow but I genuinely love that DD feels so comfortable just being her lovely, vibrant self with us. DH however went into a mood, he asked if I’d seen the videos and I said yes then said “she’s bloody annoying and needs to grow up”. DH isn’t very close to DD, they don’t have loads in common, DD is super sporty, loves a deep dive into random topics etc. DH is into his chess and history so will only bond with DD if she takes an interest in history. However this isn’t even sure fire as when DD started asking if the Nuremberg trials were ethical he got annoyed and said she was reading too far into it and would look like a “fascist sympathiser” if she said that to anyone else! He is always putting her down even when I tell him to pack it in, she’s too sporty, she needs to learn to just sit still for a minute, too high energy, too loud etc.
Its all making me quite sad as while DD doesn’t seem to mind, I just hate that she must sense her dad doesn’t particularly like her even if he does love her.

AIBU to find really sad? What do I do to stop it?

@GugiGi if he favoured one child so obviously over the other one, why did you then have another child with him?

I have an adult friend who sends long voice notes of about five minutes entirely detailing her child’s sleep schedule etc. The problem is she also veers away from the topic to another like your DD does so I listen waiting for the important information or question. It has increasingly struck me as being self-absorbed and thinking my time isn’t as valuable as hers to keep sending me these long voice notes which she also starts by saying “It’s easier for my to talk than type.”

I do think DH has a point but so do you of course. I would want to balance your teaching her to be confident being her unique and authentic self with your husband’s concerns about this behaviour coming across as annoying and not being mindful of others’ quite different needs. But we can and I think should let our young adult DC know if and why something they do might be perceived as a little annoying without making them feel that they are annoying as a personality trait.

This is a great quote!
Your DD sounds really lovely! Your DH sounds very rigid and I wonder if he is ND? It’s worrying he can’t meet her where she is and appreciate her. I’d keep trying to explain to him but it’s difficult if someone just centres themself and doesn’t have the empathy to see what damage their behaviour might do.

I expect your DH loves his DD deep down but it sounds like she's overwhelming if she's that full on day after day with no let-up. He possibly feels that she is centre stage and your other DC are overshadowed and get less attention because she's taking it all by being such a perfect person the whole time.

He didn't have to watch it though?

Our other DCs definitely don’t get less attention, like I said DD is hardly home and when she is she will chat for a moment then go to her room. While she is vibrant she is self sufficient, makes her own breakfast, makes her own way to her sports etc.
DD2 gets the most attention by far, as she should as the youngest and DH and DS spend lots of 1-2-1 time together as do DS and I.

Very much agree with this, is she your centre and can do no wrong? Anyone who doesn’t think she is amazing and shower her with praise and their undivided attention wrong?
it seems from your posts you are very blinkered, dh is awful and a bad dad to her and she can do no wrong?
are you giving the other dc this level of attention?

My other DC get more attention if anything. DH never has nice things to say about DD and like I’ve said she’s hardly home so she isn’t stealing attention or disrupting the peace. She goes to a sport every single night of the week, sees friends lots and now has a boyfriend she’s always keen to spend time with.
When we do see her she is always asking about our day, how we are etc. or doing her own thing like making breakfast.

On the flip we spend lots of time with DS and DD2 as they are almost always home when not at uni or school.

So 4 minutes of self-indulgent shit you have to watch to see if there's any important message therein?
Tbh reading your op i can see wherw she gets it from eg she can be fiubd ib her bedroom at 10 pm facetiming her friends or revising - you mean like just about every teenage girl?

Ok x post but while she is never physically at home, if the family chat is always pinging with the “look at me, listen to me, attention, attention!!!” It sounds wearing!

maybe I’m just too decrepit and don’t get the constant expectation of the insta life these days!
do the other dc ever post like she does? Does. She interact with others posts or is she a post and dumper?

Off topic but my hack for this is either increasing the playback speed to 2x or using a voice to text converter so I can skim read the message. I fucking hate voice notes 🫠🫠🫠

OP it sounds like unless your husband is willing to put in the effort to build a relationship with his DD there's not much more you can do. She's very lucky to have such a supportive and loving mother who appreciates her personality. Maybe your DH will find things easier as she matures into an adult (perhaps naturally becoming a bit less hyper and develops topics of conversation that he finds more interesting). Hopefully he doesn't damage her confidence too much in the interim though

@AgingLikeGazpacho can you do that in WhatsApp? We have one for work for rota swaps and again decrepit me can’t cope with the 3 min ramble from people rather than “can someone do fri swap for me!”

DS stayed in uni halls last year and had a whole mini series in the group chat of him narrating him cooking dinner like a bad chef (it was called 90 minute meals: convenient cooking made difficult as he very famously managed to take the simplest recipes and make them difficult) DH didn’t mind these at all, and he narrates them the same way DD would, so it’s not that DD is boring in her storytelling and DS isn’t.

If a parent feels 'pressured' by their child sending some fun videos, the parent needs to learn strategies to manage that and communicate their needs maturely.

They can say 'I can't cope with videos so I'm muting the chat during the day' or something.

It's their daughter, not a distant friend.

The parent needs to deal with this much better.

It’s so interesting that DD is expected to meet her DF half way and change her personality.

its actually not normal for a parent to refuse to be interested in anything his child has to say unless it’s about subjects he’s interested in.

history and chess. That’s it. He sounds a dullard. Videos are not mandatory don’t watch them if you’re not interested.

people are different and usually find and gravitate towards their people. Of DH doesn’t like her, he should keep it to himself. She will have people she meshes with and be fine, I would encourage her to widen her friendship circle a bit more. As the connection she is looking for from the family GC is not there, she has to build it with her chosen people who actually like her personality.

i imagine outside of being related her and DH wouldn’t be people who would connect with each other.

Haven't done it for a while as everyone has now learnt to not send me voice notes! But if you hold down on the voice note do you get options to transcribe it? This used to be an option for me. Else you can download and dump it into an online transcription service

Edit: seems you can turn on transcripts automatically like this

Are you finding that you’re getting annoyed by everything he does in the way you feel he’s annoyed by everything she does as almost a defender of her mechanism?
have you mentioned it to him?

She does have lots of friends, she had a 40 minute walk home so if we only got 4 minutes worth of that in videos I’m sure her friends probably spoke to her for most of it. She’s not sharing every waking moment with us.

I think there's a generational difference here in how phones are used.

People of my generation primarily communicate with people over their phones as a way to share needed information or to chat. People of my kids generation (similar ages to your older kids) communicate with people over their phones by sharing "content" which may or may not have a purpose.

My DD1 used to do something similar to your DD and would regularly send me several minute-ish voicenotes in quick succession. You could say (as you said) that there is no obligation to listen to these immediately, but in my mind (and probably your DH's) if someone repeatedly sends you a video/voicenote/message in quick succession - with no attached message saying "this isn't urgent" - then it seems like they are trying to communicate with you urgently.

The thing with voicenotes/videos is that unlike a message you can't skim them. If my DD sent repeated messages about her walk home I could skim them see they were frivolous and read them properly when I had time. But with voicenotes/videos you have to stop doing whatever you are doing and focus on each one for the whole minute just in case there is something important in there.

If it was a friend doing this I might listen u o the first ten seconds realise it was unimportant and go back to what I was doing and ignore the others. But it wasn't my friend it was my daughter so always in the back of my mind was the idea that hidden somewhere in this seemingly bouncy voicenote about her walk home would be a whispered "someone's following me and i dont know what to do".

So for a while I used to stop doing whatever I was doing - working, speaking to my friend, helping another one of my children, being on the phone to my energy company - to listen to these voicenotes which I would see and worry my daughter needed me, only to find out i had completely wasted my time.4 minutes is a long time to break from doing something else - and 4 x 1 minute videos/voicenotes takes even longer and is a further 3 disruptions when you have returned to your previous activity.

In short succession two things happened. Firstly another of my DC blew up at me when I was helping them with something and had to repeatedly stop to listen to DD's voicenotes, and secondly I had to take a break from an important work conversation to listen to them, and a colleague pointed out (politely and rightly) that it had eaten to the limited time they had and disrupted their train of thought.

I ended up telling my DD (who I think was 17 at the time) that it was annoying, that she needed to grow up and have more consideration for other people's time and to quit it. I told her that from then on I wasn't listening to voicenotes that didn't come with a message attached indicating whether it was urgent or to listen to at my leisure, and to put everything in one voicenote not 4 successive ones

So sorry but I agree with your DH. And I think you're being a bit harsh on him. He clearly loves your DD and cares about whether she's OK or he wouldn't bother watching the videos.

Exactly. No one forced him.

why is everyone acting like you can ignore a video just like you ignore message.

I have a child with adhd.

she really grates on some people. Including me when I’m tired.

Because as pp say above, somewhere buried under the multitude of chat and “look at me” there could be something of importance!

I don’t think it’s bad if she sends you a video, as she’s walking home alone and wanted company.

I think you DH is being mean and harsh about her, because he doesnt like her personality.
as he doesn’t mind DSs videos.

it’s that she doesn’t realise that there is resentment and unkindness there where she is looking for company

Really surprised how many people are rushing to excuse a parent regularly putting his own child down and openly favouring his other two.

OP has described her DD as considerate, academic, sporty and social. She is happy, has friends and gets good school reports. Most people would be delighted their child had achieved all this as a teenager. A lot of teens can be a bit much or annoying at times but as parents we should build our children up by celebrating their achievements not put them down because their interests or energy levels don’t match our own.

OP I’m sorry I don’t know what the solution is, but unlike some posters I don’t think it’s excusing your DH’s poor parenting or teaching your child to be less than herself to make someone else (especially not her own parent) like her more.

I think this is fair to some extent but he could also have just replied to DD with “are these urgent or can I watch later” and she would have told them.

I think I’m defensive of DD as I can’t remember the last time DH said something nice about her and it makes me sad.

I do tell DD if she is being annoying, she tends to apologise and move on with her day.