Does anyone's DH lose patience big time with the children?

[WildWombat]

DH has had to take on a lot more active parenting since our second came along a few months ago. He's realising (at last!) how difficult being a parent can be, dealing with nap refusing, tantrums, making a mess, night wakings etc. But he gets so short tempered with 3yo DS over all these normal things. It's really unnecessary and the problem, whatever it was, could usually have been solved by talking to DS about what he's feeling and thinking and being patient. He's only 3 and still learning! But DH just gets cross and raises his voice and invariably DS gets upset and scared and I have to comfort him. I worry that is going to affect DS's relationship with his dad if he escalates it in his head to 'daddy is cross = daddy doesn't love me = I can't trust daddy with my feelings'. DH loves him to bits, he's just feeling shattered and overwhelmed and is too damn stubborn to read any parenting books or reach out for advice. Has anyone else experienced this with their DH too? I want to encourage a healthy relationship between them, but equally I really don't want to have to spoon feed everything to DH because he can't be arsed to figure things out himself.

It's so hard but he has to learn to keep control of his emotions, even if it means leaving the kids with you and stepping outside for five minutes. The problem with shouting and losing your temper is that once you've done it for the first time it's much harder to resist it in future. So I'd suggest to your DH to take it in chunks - resolve, say, not to shout or lose his temper for a week, and see where his mental state is after that. Best of luck as it's a really tough place to be in

Also, I don't want to read too much into it, but is there some tension between you both about his parental contribution? That might not be helping matters