In wanting DH to go to bed early

[TicklishHedgehog]

DH generally only gets in from work at gone 7. He stays up super late, often only goes to bed at around 2 in the morning.

The problem is he’s then exhausted the next morning and we have two young children. So when they wake up it’s me who goes to them as DH is unconscious. For years now I’ve got up with them in the morning and I don’t mind in the week but never having a break from it gets me down

I promise, he doesn’t. He just carries on snoring. It could well be because subconsciously he knows he doesn’t have to get up with them, but I’ve been in a hotel room with him where he’s snored through crying children.

Work out a schedule, in advance, and then it's up to him to sort himself out as to what time he'll go to bed in preparation for getting up earlier.

You might have to persist with being awake but not getting up until he gets used to getting up earlier. Eventually surely he'll work out he needs to go to bed earlier.

Just tell him you're unable to keep getting up with the kids every single day, it's not fair and you're not doing it any longer.

He hears but knows that you will deal with it so he doesn't need to rouse himself. If you book yourself into a hotel next Friday night and tell him he's in charge of the children, he will deal with it.

How would he react if you told him that?

He will hear them. He just doesn’t have to as you get up with them. I second trying it out for one night, go to a friend’s house, turn off your phone. He will have their number in case of an actual emergency, but he will have to call your friend and it will probably put him off having to embarrassingly say that being tired and needing you is an emergency according to him!!

@WallaceinAnderland , he doesn’t hear. If you’re not going to accept that then it’s pointless keeping posting: no one wants a back and forth of ‘he does / he doesn’t.’

@Noshadelamp i literally did that for over a year, it made no difference. He has never been good in the mornings tbf. I just want to say of course you’re fucking exhausted if you go to bed at 2 and are up at 6!

Go get your little one. Put her in DP's bedroom. Go back to bed.

What do you want from this thread OP?

The mother of small children with a man refusing to wake up in the morning with them would and should in my opinion.

He is directly sacrificing time with his children in the morning and helping out his wife with this for time scrolling on his phone - I would say it to him and complain about it more and more often if nothing changed, with escalating emotional consequences if ignored.

Relationships aren’t about just silently sucking stuff up.

Decide in advance who’s getting up with the kids on Saturday, and who is on Sunday.
Tell him on your lie-in day you don’t want to be disturbed.
If kids wake at a certain time, he sets alarm for just before that time. Can you wear ear plugs? Lock your door?
We managed it, supported the other one’s lie in by ensuring kids and cat didn’t disturb the sleeping parent. Then we would take them a coffee and around 9am.
Otherwise the resentment is a killer!!

Surely you just tell him he does one of the weekend mornings and you do the other? Maybe ask him to do both for a month to make up for the years he has missed, then take turns? And if he is unconscious, wake him up by any means. Not on him to shirk the morning care. I'm a night owl, but still share the mornings. No reason he can't do both.

Don't make yourself a martyr, tell him to share the load. And don't continue to pull his weight for the both of you.

I don’t know really. I wouldn’t exactly get to sleep in if I LTB!

You would on the nights he has the kids.

I just want to say of course you’re fucking exhausted if you go to bed at 2 and are up at 6

Then say it.

If they are unsettled before 2am who deals with them? Tell 6yo to get daddy not you if they wake up early

Whilst I agree that a bedtime cannot be enforced on another adult I think a wake up time can be imposed by circumstances.
If the children are awake in the morning and need attention that is wake up time and the start of the day. The children have 2 parents and the early starts and lie ins should be shared as fairly as possible.

I asked if it was reasonable to ask DH to go to bed at a more civilised time. I accept I can’t really make him though! Mostly it’s just frustration I suppose; there aren’t any magic solutions, it’s unfair though.

Then an alarm clock is the obvious answer.

But the actual answer is to give him the problem. Tell him you need a lie in, and the children can’t be ignored. What’s his solution? And it can’t be not knowing or making you do something.

The six year old pretty much never wakes.

He doesn’t have one and this is the thing, he doesn’t need one. I can’t really get the children to suffer.

It’s like cooking; if one parent just refuses to cook then either say kids go hungry or I’ll make something .,, most of us would make something (I hope.) I don’t want to play petty upmanship. Equally I would be interested if anyone’s ever solved this!

I have @acorncrush but you can’t keep saying something, it has no effect.

What other option do you think you have if he obviously doesn't give a shit about what you're asking of him?

You didn't answer my question - what has he suggested trying?

Put the 2 year old in his room for a week. He can't claim not to hear her then. Seems him saying that has the effect he wants, so change the effect.

You need to tell him this. How unfair it is. How you would like to vaguely hear the kids and then roll over and go back to sleep.

I haven't read all the posts but in all the years, have you never talked about the unfairness of it with him??

Suggest every second morning on the weekend. You get to lie in on Saturdays and he gets Sundays. But it has to be a proper lie in. Whoever is 'on' has to get up straight away so the other one is only minimally disturbed. And take them off to the playground or whatever.
I can't believe you've been doing it all for 6 years and only addressing it now!!

If he is a man who would let them starve unless you feed them, and let them cry rather than go to them, and let his wife suffer when he knows he could solve it, he’s a shit man. And that means planning to leave. I’d tell him exactly that BTW as long as I was safe to do it. Tell him you’re considering leaving because you’re exhausted and he won’t step up. Calmly and at a moment of quiet. Sadly. Not angrily.

He hasn’t, why, what were you expecting? (Not trying to sound like an arse; genuinely wondering.)

If I stay … I’ll get some time to myself in just a few months when dd ups her days a bit at preschool. And then more when they are at school. If I leave, I will be taking ds out of his school where he’s happy and settled and dd out of her nursery and live in poverty and the stresses and strains of co parenting. It really is a nuclear option and not one I can countenance over a lie in.

Honestly OP my only advice (from a similar husband) is to go into the other room and wake him up. One morning every weekend is yours and the other is his. You go in and you wake him at 6, you tell the kids daddy is doing breakfast. You stand there repeating it til he does it.
then you make yourself a cuppa and go back to bed (fine not to sleep but read a magazine or watch some tv or something). It’s not a lie in but it’s making him do a morning.

repeat x 20 times and the he is more likely to start doing it himself. It’s shit I had to do this but it worked