Yikes, this doesn’t sound like a fun situation at all for you.
first off I’m sorry you are going through this, I’m not a professional but happy to talk to you about this.
I went through a difficult time too with our first one, my wife was struggling with post natal depression so I was concerned for her but at the same time I think we both missed on some vital early steps we could have prevented to help our daughter be better ready for the world. She didn’t get much time with other children in her early years so she didn’t really know how to interact with others.
Now she’s 7 and we still refer to her as the wild one out of the two (affectionately of course).
I realise this could be far from the same situation that you are in now but I would bet that there’s a degree of the same feelings involved.
I felt:
Ashamed that I didn’t spot my wife’s issues sooner (it was 2 years she went undiagnosed).
Heartbroken she couldn’t talk to me (I know it’s not her fault, that’s how mental illness works).
Embarrassed to take my daughter out because I would think others would just think she was feral.
Like a failure of a father.
Always angry because I couldn’t “fix” the situation.
I was very fortunate to have a really good support network around all of us, we started with a visit to the doctors who was extremely helpful and explained post natal depression and we both just said wow it’s like you described our lives. I won’t bore you with all the details that we went through but the big takeaways I have taken from all of this is:
Look after yourselves - I don’t mean everyone for themselves it’s important to remember you are important too (both of you). Help is different for everyone, I would start by going to the doctors and be really honest the fact you are asking help means you need help, they have a wealth of knowledge and support they can use. As an example among other things I turned to meditation and mindfulness and my wife found a support group she started going to.
Talk - It makes such a difference, not always straight away, but the more you talk about things the better they get. This is especially true with our children, we talk about everything with them and we don’t hold back. We talk to them about our own feelings and we talk to them about consequences too. If they are doing something that requires telling them off we make sure they understand why and what the consequences will be.
We also just encourage them to talk to us about how they are feeling by asking questions like “what do you wish mummy and daddy wouldn’t do?” We have learned a lot about our kids from this. We have a pack of cards now that sit on our dinning table that has discussion topics on them.
Stay Calm - This is really really really difficult because it’s all so overwhelming. I was a shouty parent (I’m almost completely deaf, so probably still am), it didn’t work, it wasn’t until I started working on my self that I realised what I was doing. Now when I need to talk to them about something I stop I remove us both from the situation (where possible) and start by asking what happened, usually when a child is naughty or acts out there’s a reason, it may take a while to get to the root of that reason but when you do you can help by advising on a better way to deal with the situation.
Sometimes it only take one step to start making things better and by acknowledging the issue you have already talked the first step, so well done.