Need some advice about temper incident.

[JaneyMum]

My friend is having a bit of a nightmare at the moment, and I'm at a loss to know what to advise her to do.

her husband, who is normally really gentle and kind, lost his temper with their two year old and left a bruise on her after he grabbed her roughly. Apparently their two, who share a room, were still up at about 11.30, and he grabbed her after she ran out of the room to put her back to bed.

She says he is really ashamed of himself, but she's still livid with him. I'm not sure what to tell her, really. It sounds like a one off, but obviously still serious. What would you say?

You said the DH is normally gentle. I think your friend needs to find out if he has ever felt the aggressive rage before. Maybe he feels that angry a lot, and this is the first time he has ever acted on it? If it turns out he has felt rage/out of control/aggressive before, I think he should chat to a councellor.

On the other end of the spectrum, maybe he didn't feel out of control or furious, just quickly acted to stop her running past, and mistakenly grabbed her too hard. I'm not saying that doesn't matter, but its a different problem, where I'd say he needs to be deliberate about avoiding situations where it might happen again (eg, never grab/catch the child when he is feeling stressed).

Have to say why is she cross with him? Seems to me the children were the ones misbehaving and he was trying to deal with it any way he could. I have grabbed my DS roughly on occasion, usually when he's doing something really stupid like about to jump off a table of try to fly down the stairs. It happens, its how you deal with it after thats important. Perhaps they need to work together to try to resolve the bedtime routine so it doesn't escalate to the that point again. Taking the moral high ground here is just going to undermine him as a parent and drive a wedge between them as a couple imho

My gut feeling is he is completely in the wrong. He grabbed her too hard if he left a bruise. I would advise your friend to talk to her husband about his feelings over the incident.

TBH if he is usually really gentle and kind I would not be terribly concerned. From the way you describe the incident above his temper may have made him less careful, but he wasn't intending to hurt, ie he didn't loose his temper and shake or hit and leave a bruise that way...

Some children bruise very easily and if my girls had still been arsing around at 11.30pm then I'm sure I would have lost my temper too, probably far earlier, more like 9.30pm.

I wouldn't think any more of it, as you say he's normally gentle and kind. That sort of playing-up at night is enough to test the patience of a saint. IMO it doesn't hurt kids to see that they go can too far with a parent and the parent loses it occasionally, as long as it is talked about afterwards and explained.

I'd say it depends on whether it was accidental due to being annoyed and not taking enough care, or whether he deliberately yanked too hard due to being angry.

If the latter then he prob needs to think through how he manages his anger so he doesn't hurt her and if the former then no big deal as a one-off.

I think it's mean of your friend to be annoyed with him though - he clearly feels bad about it and needs her support, not her condemnation. My dh gets v shouty as he suffers from a short temper when v stressed - but he hates being like that so pretty out of order of me to make him feel bad rather than support him to help him change it.

umm -- my SIL grabbed her daughter's arm once to stop her running off, and dislocated it.

It's easy to underestimate your own strength when dealing with very small people.