OH is fuelling the meltdowns

[BooyhooNOTboohoooORbooyou]

ds1 is 4.5 and is going through an amateur dramatics stage at the minute. e.g if i he asks for a biscuit right before dinner and i say no, he flounces out of the room and will sit on the floor/stairs crying very audibly. i ignore him and he usually stops after a few minutes and comes to apologise for his behaviour.

now, OH lives away from us (navy, posted on mainland, we are N.I.) and gets home every other weekend so this behaviour is new to him and although i have advised him to ignore it, he seems to have trouble understanding what 'ignore' actually means. it is getting to the point where i feel like i have two 4 year olds.

yesterday it happened and ds did the usual flounce out to the hall and sat on the stairs. OH got up and walked out to him and told him to "stop that whingeing" i told OH to come in and leave him alone. DS shouted back "just leave me alone" (copying what i said) OH shouted back at him "dont be so cheeky, dont answer me back" i called OH again and said that he was giving ds the oppotunity to answer back by going out and talking to him. he says ds should know not to answer back because he (OH) never would have answered his dad back at that age. (his dad was a bully and i refuse to hear any reference to how OH was 'parented')

so how do i get OH to see that he caused the 'answering back' that he says ds should know not to do?

i agree that cheekiness shouldn't be encouraged but i can tottally see where ds was coming from. if i had left a room in bad form and someone had followed me to have a go i would retalliate. i encourage my dc's to stand up for themselves and OH is expecting him just to submit to his authority whether right or wrong.

i should also add that OH blamed me for the answering back saying that if i hadn't said that then ds wouldn't have said it. perhaps he is right, perhaps he would have answered back with something different. either way i still dont think OH was right to go after him.

You need to have the conversation about this when your ds is in bed. It must be very difficult if your OH is away most of the time, but you and he need to discuss your strategies and agree on a joint approach, otherwise this is only going to get worse, and your ds is going to realise very quickly that he can play one of you off against the other.

Also - maybe he needs reminding that the disciplinary tactics used in the navy are not suitable for use with a 4 year old....

Bringing up children is probably the most important thing we, as parents, actually do, so a bit of discussion and education about the process should be a very high priority. Sadly, many people don't recognise this, even people who have trained long and hard for jobs or careers.

because anytime he refers to the way he was brought up it is always how his dad bullied/ mistreated/smacked him and how 'it did [him] no harm' i dont think that is reason enough to allow it to happen to our ds. i have come to realise that his dad had no clue what being a parent actually means.

i tried to speak to OH last night about what happened which is when he decided it was my fault ds answered him. i tried to get him to see how ignoring him would have resulted in no backchat. OH cant see this. he just says that ds shouldn't answer back no matter if he is provoked.

i agree that ds will see that we are divided on this and start to play us off against each other. i want us both to be on the same page and for ds to know that.

Sounds like yet another parent who has unrealistic expectations of his child. Probably due to the way his father treated him. It is a difficult situation. Parenting classes would help, but I would bet that he wouldn't agree to go to them.

How have things been up till now? Has his parenting been ok in the past?

we didn't row thesecondcoming. i dont think i said that. when we discussed it later it was when ds was in bed so he heard none of it.

his parenting is usually similar to mine, although saying that he usually takes my lead when disciplining because he is away so much of the time he hasn't really developed his own 'style'. i think we are having an issue now because ds is getting to an age where he wants to be assertive. OH isn't used to it and wasn't allowed to be like this as a child, so he sees it as cheekiness.

i really can see where both of them are coming from and i do try hard with ds to help him assert himself in a better way. i just need OH to be more aware of how his actions didn't help the situation.

My dh is an ex Navy man also. I think,(though he probably wouldnt agree!),that it has taken several years and several dc for him to see that "real life" and dc and emotions are not black and white in the sense that they have to be to a certain extent in the forces.
I can "hear" that coming through from your OH when he says, your ds should not answer back,even if provoked. Hes 4 for goodness sake.
Not saying its great to disagree in ear-shot of your ds, or that it is easy for your OH to change his expectations, but from my own experience, know that it is a source of irritation!

OK, so my husband isn't the type to go barging in like that, but if he's tired and getting rattled by DS1, (autistic and very challenging, at times) I ask him to come to me because I need him to do something now (that DS will hear) then out of earshot, quietly ask that he deal with DS1 in a certain way because he's been feeding off any sort of negative emotion he encounters.

It's certainly far more effective in all ways than the time I ended up yelling "oh for goodness sake, you two deserve each other!" before slamming the kitchen door on them!

thesecondcoming i agree with you, i dont want ds to see that we are divided on this. i just wanted to make it clear we didnt row.

i know my way is not the only way. i really didn't mean to imply it was. what i said about OH taking my lead, it is this way because i am the only parent here 90% of the time so naturally most of the discipline falls to me. it is not that i have decided to make my own rules and everyone better play by them, far from it. i sometimes wish it wasn't me who had to do it all but it is and so when OH is home it stands to reason that he would follow the same methods that the dc's are used to. they would be very confused if we both disciplined them differently. we do usually agree on it aswell, sometimes we dont so we discuss it and usually find another way of doing things. i just think OH is being a bit unjustifiably rigid on this one and it isn't fair on ds to allow it to continue.

yes it would have been better to talk to OH out of earshot of ds but the situation itself was frustrating me in that OH would have continued to bicker with ds ('dont answer back' etc etc) unless i had intervened. i dont want ds thinking he cant stand up for himself if it is against an adult. this is not to say i think he should not respect adults. i think that is very important. but i remember from my childhood the most random conversations that have had an effect on how i perceived things which i now, as an adult, know were those adults' views/opinions and not necessarily right. those conversations might have been totally forgotton about by the adults and they may never know the effect they have had on me. i just dont want ds to start to think like that because OH cant think of a better way to deal with him.