DS escalating consequences given by DH

[ThaQuilomum]

Sorry this will be long.

DS age 15 is smart, kind and funny but too into screens. Does very well at school but needs to be told to study and sat on. His phone is controlled by us by Quostodio app so it is limited to approximately 2 to 3 hours per day. He is allowed to game at the weekend for 3 hours ish although it is often longer. If he was let, he would stay on screens all day long. During the summer, he can game some evenings also. He has a few jobs he does. Usually has to be reminded: feed the dog, walk the dog, empty the dishwasher. In July he was involved in gym project in the garage with the whole family - clearing out the garage, painting it and putting new gym equipment together. His best friend is abroad at the moment on an exchange. He looks forward to gaming with him in the evenings as there is a time difference. He socialises mainly online.

It is hard to get ds off Gaming. He recently started playing Rainbow Six Siege Where once you start playing you get peanlties and rank can be affected. But if given a warning to turn off once game is over he will come off. This can legitimately be in 30 mins though once the game finishes often the first team to reach 5. So in theory could be up to 9 rounds.

Dh and I had both previously agreed to give DS a fair warning to wrap up gaming sessions. But last night DH demanded he turn off the console instantly while ds was in the middle of a live match. Dh said it was in the loading screen. Ds said it was actually started.

The Escalation: Expecting an immediate shutdown within seconds I feel set ds up for instant failure. When he didn't comply instantly, dh stayed in the room giving out til the match was over. I was in bed having spent evening ferrying dd to activity and asked him to get ds off the game following what i know needs to be done in order to get ds off and over the high and dopamine hit of the game.

I woke to it conpletley escalated. Dh saying he was losing 45 minutes of gaming tomorrow. This went to no gaming tomorrow, to uninstalling the game and to taking the pc out of the house altgoether. Dh definitely eacalated things. Did not hold his boundary calmly. Said ds was harrassing and judging him ('what do you do all day' kind of comments from ds). He pointed out that dh spends hours and hours every day on his phone. Dh was shouting and in his face and ds was saying he was a bully and treats the girls differently and does not give the girls such punishments.

i tired to intervene and calm the situation down. There was no calming dh down who was getting bedroom keys to lock ds in and telling me to f off and slamming doors. Eventually dh locked himself in the sittingroom downstairs and went to sleep while I comforted ds and he cried himself to sleep.

I woke up to ds telling me dh had removed all his time from his phone which i feel is vindictive. Dh says he doesn't respect him and answers him back the whole time. Last night ds was cursing at dh which is extremely rare for him and he was so dysregulated I can see why although it is not right and it needs to be addressed in a calm way after the fact.

10 year old dd was awake during it and recognised the overreaction and stepped in to tell dh he was going too far. He shouted at her that she had no scream time tomorrow.

he is now not talking to me and dh I think. Seems to be talking to dds. How he is not ashamed of himself and reflecting on this is beyond me..

This happens about twice a month always with ds and I end up trying to support a reasonable consequence and have tried on calm days to explain to dh that he is 15 with a developing brain and his push back is normal teenage behaviour and he is actually a very sweet lovely boy. What would you do in this scenario. It is a constant source of conflict between us and tbh I make no apologies standing up for ds because I think the behaviour is so unfair. I just want consequences to be porportionate. I actually feel ds did nothing wrong initially and then lost it completely and didnt shower himself in glory. But how does dh align all that with thr fact he lost his shit and behaved really badly. Aibu to expect dh to be able to regulate himself and deal calmly with his son. He is a gamer himself which I think makes it worse he doesn't understand.

Ok, so perhaps this type of addictive game should be avoided for the sake of family cohesion?

Aibu to expect dh to be able to regulate himself and deal calmly with his son.

No you are being completely reasonable. Your DH is a bully and abusive to both kids. Take the focus off DS not being perfect, he’s a developing child.

Your major issue is your husband.

As others have said, the tone of the last bit of this comment is unpleasant. I also (and I say this as a reader but not a gamer) think the analogy to reading doesn't quite work, because a book can be put down and picked up exactly where you were, with maybe just a moment to get back into it. Gaming is more like watching live tv - obviously it's not more important than real life, but if you miss a bit you can't easily get it back, so being interrupted unnecessarily is really annoying.

That said, I do sometimes tell my family to wait until I've finished my chapter before I do whatever they're asking, and I don't think it's causing the family to fall apart! I'd be annoyed at them expecting me to stop reading and come look in the fridge for them at the very moment of their choosing, unless food was about to burn.

Perhaps DH should stop being unreasonable and bullying his kids?
The OP was spot on when she said DS is being set up to fail and her DH should never have escalated things the way he did.

Last time yes he did apologise which was because ds had eaten two or three fulfill protein bars in the one day. He will eat whatever is handy and not bother making himself proper food. Ds went mad about the cost of the. Sounds absolutely ridiculous typing it out.

So I feel there are two things here.

firstly this is partially father-son butting heads. My son and my (then) husband did similar. In that case my H would decide the dishwasher needed emptying right now and would tell DS to do it irrelevant of what he was doing - homework, music practice, whatever.

it was so obviously a power play.
my then H and his father had a horrendous relationship when he was a teen - his father regularly saying while you are under my roof etc etc and my H wanting to move out as soon as he could. It got physical on a couple of occasions.

2 the gaming.
so if I was in the middle of a physical board game of monopoly and I was told I needed to stop right now I’d be fucking pissed off. Equally if I’m reading and I’m told to stop right now. It’s a power play and adults don’t usually do it to other adults.

your son does not sound like he games excessively. He’s got limits and he sticks to them. It’s very common now for friends to game together online and that’s how they socialise. When my son was at uni he gamed every Friday night with a group he was at school with and it was a great way to stay connected.

if you and your h have agreed to give fair warning to your son then I would suggest speaking to your dh about what that looks like and making clear you will not suppprt him if he simply randomly demands that DS stops.

clearly your dh is upset and angry and is taking it out on his kids. But escalating in this way just upsets them (they can see it isn’t fair and he’s taking out anger on them). It can also lead to them deliberately pissing him off of their relationship gets too bad.

your DH is a spiteful bully. This is nothing to do with gaming, it's your husband not being able to control himself and parent your children. You need to step up OP.
Oh and some posters ignoring what the father then did to the young DD. Let just call a cunt a cunt. Why are we still condoning men behaving like this?

I have a 15 year old on screens all day. I dont see the problem with it, so long as he has friends, goes out and does well at school

No advice. I feel your pain. My teens have adhd and probably dh does too. He is very prone to doing what your dh did.

The most concerning part for me here is "bedroom keys" and DH locking himself in the sitting room.

Why do all your rooms have locks??

Yes agreed.

I mean if the ten year old daughter is taking it upon herself to get involved, he’s clearly not a big, scary abusive man.

That is clearly very naive. Many abusive men are lovely fathers to their daughters while using the wife and or sons as emotional and literal punching bags, the daddy girl, princess is well known phenomenon. The cynic in me is these abusive men realise it is in their long term interest to have a girl child that thinks they’re decent in old age and they need nursing.

Yes his son not obeying him I think is massive and talking back to him is like he is the worst person in the world when I tell him it is normal teenage behaviour. Had an amazing relationship with him from age zero to about 9 or 10.

I am from a gaming family. I don’t, but DH and both DSs do.

The key to managing this well is to clearly set out timescales and warnings in advance. If they ignore them, I don’t mess about. I’ve turned their computers off (well, DSs’!!) once or twice - they learn fast then. But we have had very few problems over mealtimes etc and as long as they did their other activities and progress and behaviour at school were good we were ok with a fair amount of gaming because they were doing it with their mates.

In this scenario DH was well out of order - his behaviour was wholly unacceptable. I would go ballistic if my mine swore at me. He needs to understand that he is risking his relationship with every member of his family.

I would have roared at him to be honest and told him to get out. If on reflection he still thinks what he did was acceptable he needs to be made aware very quickly that it was not.

Do you play in your phone?
Do you scroll FB or IG?

Im going to guess that like 99% of people you do.
These games and platforms are built exactly the same.
I think YOU should stop all of those too. it’s not good for you right?

Check out The Calm Parenting Podcast. This mismatch of parenting strategies is one of the recurring themes and he covers father/ son shitty parenting conflicts a lot, explains how it can be unnecessarily escalating the situation. He’s also mostly talking about much more challenging kids than yours and it might help your dh get some perspective.

You’re not likely to get through to him if he feels your approach is too soft. Sometimes it helps to have another man explaining it.

The rage, apology, rage, apology where you have no idea what minor thing might ignite a rage is a common pattern of abuse.

@NorthCoast500 Insane post. That poor little girl must have been sick with fear standing up to the father who is supposed to love and protect his kids.

The father is abusive, end of.

Some older houses do have doors that all have locks on them. I’ve stayed in holiday cottayes like this

I am not a gamer either. However, it's a past-time DH and DD's very much enjoy, and I'm not going judge it negatively or disrespectfully because I'm not into it. Just as I used to give the girls warnings when they were into something, and they were going to need to disentangle themselves from it, I would be doing that in this situation. Sometimes, yes, there was negotiation that they were at this point, and it would be a pain, and could they get to that point, and then it would be fine. If that could be agreed to, without pain, then of course I did. Sometimes they were unhappy about it. In that case, compliance might come with a side of grumpiness. To a point, the grumpiness would be tolerated, because there had been compliance.

Shouting, ramping it up unilaterally and arbitrarily, because you don't feel your authority has been respected, is not parenting, it's bullying. If he has form for this, and it's occurring regularly and often, it's a serious issue, especially if your son is correct and it's disproportionately him that is copping it. Especially at this age, when you really need to ease off the authoritarian pedal, keep the lines of communication open, and model respectful interactions and methods of negotiation.

Your DH isn't just the parent, he is also the adult. He needs to show behaviours worthy of respect to be respected as a parent, and he is not doing this. Therefore his kids aren't respecting his parenting, including those on the sidelines, and neither is his parenting partner, who is placed between a Dad being a dick, and a kid that is confused, and distressed by his Dad's behaviour.

I suspect ADHD in DH. Not there is DS. He is literally a carbon copy of me. Have asked DH to go for counselling to deal with anger and also assessment many times.

This concerns me too. Bedroom keys have not been used in years since we moved in. This is first time in years they were taken from drawer where they are kept. The sittingroom downstairs has a key in the lock as dh works from home and would lock it when in a meeting.

Your DS is 15, demanding obedience is completely inappropriate at that age. Parenting teens is more about negotiation, reasoning and debate than blind instructions and immediate obedience.

I also don’t understand why you expect your teen to have more capacity for reflection than his dad. Teenagers learn that capacity by modelling - so your DG speaking to him about how, on reflection, he overreacted and was too harsh. Explaining why he overreacted (tired, frustrated etc) and committing to being more measured.

Your DH needs to pull his socks up - if you’ve agreed a process for DS leaving a game then he needs to stick with that not stand over him hectoring him. Your DH was so far over the line on this one, I’d struggle to have respect for him.

I missed the locking the kids in their rooms and locking himself away while you cleared up the mess he created. He has no respect for anyone - I’d honestly be rethinking my marriage particularly given he won’t seek support for his repeated behaviour.

this seems to be the starting point ;

But last night DH demanded he turn off the console instantly while ds was in the middle of a live match. @ThaQuilomum

why the sudden change from previous agreed rules ?