Should I do every bedtime or let DH continue to fail miserably?

[Porterpolitics]

DH and I have two children, 5 and 3, with one more arriving very shortly. He hasn’t ever been especially good at bedtime and what will usually take me 30 mins in soft lighting, hushed voices and whispered stories takes him 90+ mins on a good night, with high tempo dance music blaring, shouting, screaming, often culminating in him losing his sh1t and me having to intervene. This means the 60/40 split is increasingly 80/20 with me seeing them both off most days of the week, in spite of being quite heavily preggo.

He appears to be a) unable to fathom why allowing them to bounce round the room won’t make them magically fall asleep and b) unable to understand that the amount of time we have together to unwind in the evenings is the inverse of how much time he spends putting them to bed. He also won’t listen when I tell him he needs to whisper, calm his voice or encourage some quiet time. He simply tells me they don’t behave for him like they do for me whilst simultaneously blaring out Taylor Swift from his phone.

He recently took a few days off work and ran them into the ground so that by the time I got home from work at 5pm, they were both asleep on the sofa, filthy, not fed and fully dressed. I woke them up to eat and brush teeth but they then obviously were not tired for bed.

So far it hasn’t been ideal (!) but the oldest is now primary school age and I’m about to EBF DC3 so I’ll be taken out of the equation and will no longer be able to intervene as readily as I do now. I don’t want our oldest to be going to bed so late that they fall asleep at school.

So my question is WWYD? Would you take over every single bedtime knowing they’ll be down before 8pm, even though that will likely mean doing so with a newborn hanging off my boob? Or would you leave him to it and hope he eventually works it out on his own? I’ve been attempting the latter for weeks but it is getting us nowhere except later and later bedtimes.

I’m no good at expressing milk and don’t want to bottle feed DC3 so I know they will be Velcro’d to me whatever happens.

Can’t you get him to do other stuff at bedtime like tidying the kitchen after dinner, do the dishwasher, tidy the front room. That sort of stuff. ?

Leave him to it. He has to find his own way.

FWIW, rough time tumble before bed is shown to aid sleep quality.

I think I’d sit him down and set limits on the music, max volume low, max songs 2, and tell him it’s exhausting he can’t seem to remember he’s a dad putting his children to bed, and say we will be in family Counselling explaining how you’re harming the children with the late bedtimes and destroying the marriage with your inability to focus on basic parenting. I’d refuse to handle any fallout- dh you’re home today, if I come home to filthy sleeping children at 5pm due to your parenting then your parenting extends to bedtime and the next morning if they have to be up and ready for anything. You don’t get to just make my life harder because you forgot what good parenting looks like.

I think you just have to let it go, I like the idea about reflecting, but some ways suit different parents and children differently.
I am a more calm and stick to rigid waffle up and bedtime every day (even weekend) and my other half is more go with the flow, easy when hungry and get them ready for bed when ready.
My way works for me and the eldest and her way works for her and the youngest, although he's often beside himself with overtiredness by the time he's in bed.
You do you and let your partner do them. Just try to set up so things don't impact on the other.

That sounds like an arsehole method of doing children's bedtime.

I suppose you do have to let him get on with it but I personally wouldn't find that easy. Not long term. He's getting them overstimulated at bedtime, hardly helping them to wind down and sleep. He really must be a bit dim if he can't see that.

I appreciate the idea of leaving him to it and making his own repeated mistakes, but what about the poor children? They deserve a decent bedtime and opportunity for enough sleep.

His poor parenting is affecting the DC, and you.

He’s an adult and could do this well if he wanted to.

It’s not fair if he’s losing his shit at the kids. They are getting told off for not going to bed but he is not doing an effective bedtime.

my husband would be like yours if I let him but I find him with the kids jumping around at 7 and I get firm and say right everyone brush teeth. And I give husband a look and say it’s bedtime now. Which child are you doing?
we have a third btw, a baby. I’ve done lots of solo bedtimes with all 3 - completely fine when baby is small and not crawling.

since baby has been 12 months doing all 3 bedtimes has been hard. Husband often does elder 2 and he has finally learnt to start a bit earlier and have an end time to the bedtime madness

I would be having a very serious conversation with DH about this at another time (not bedtime). I would be telling him that I am tired, and worried, and stressed because I am having to do more than my fair share of parenting, even when he’s around. I would tell him that I expected equality in our marriage and our parenting, and that I’m not getting it, and that’s unfair. I would make it very clear how unhappy I was that he won’t take on board the things that the children need for a good night’s sleep, and how this affects them negatively and creates more work for me.
I would tell him that it HAS to change. He HAS to start doing what the children need. He is my partner here, and I NEED him to do this.

Then I’d go in with the specifics of exactly how bedtime should look, again.

If he knows how you feel and how negatively this impacts you and he STILL does it then he’s a terrible partner, and you have a wider problem to look at.

Just go out at bedtime. Make an arrangement with a friend. Let him deal with it.

Having a 3rd baby with a man like this is a mystery to me.

I agree that it can be a viable part of the bedtime routine if it's done right. I think op's dh can adapt and refine his method rather than use op's calm routine.

It's not deliberate on our part, but our kids (approx same ages as op's) do have a manic phase between bathtime and bedtime each evening where they run around shrieking and laughing for a bit before they put their PJs on. We just let them for a bit before we settle them down. Tbf these are some of the best memories of childhood imo. Sometimes they spontaneously do a gymnastics show.

I think you need to stop making bedtime such a task
bedroom was for sleeping at night time any stories downstairs
then bed light off door shut

You’re being unreasonable to force your way on your DH. I don’t really do quiet whisper voice wind down with my 2 of a similar age to yours, the bounce around and go crazy before bed. There’s not only one single way to do things.

Would I do every single bedtime for the next ten years or whatever it is because a man who is their other parent can’t manage it because he makes poor decisions? No, I wouldn’t.

I would start going out when it was his turn though.

Your situation sounds absolutely hellish. Your own routine sounds somewhat over the top but coming home from work to sleeping children and having to jump in to manage what should be perfectly ordinary situations is nit something I would be willing to participate in.

He should start bedtime earlier if it takes him longer.

I don’t think I would have considered a third child with someone who can’t deal with the first two. I can’t see it being easy if you want to sit feeding the baby. Would you not consider bottle feeding & he can get on with that instead of hyping the other two up?

I think that he probably needs more direction - so men are deliberately incompetent to get out of doing things at home. Obviously not all of them. But could it be that he is not improving in the hope that you will just take over?

If it's all too much with two kids and you don't think he's a very good father then why are you having another? I don't understand it at all. Personally I always wanted to do bedtime because I loved reading to DS, why are you so desperate not to do it when you haven't seen them all day?

Either do bedtimes your way or leave them to him to do his way and accept that it's not the same as yours and will take longer. It sounds like the kids had a great day out if they were so exhausted that they fell asleep on the sofa. it's the holidays now, who cares if they're up a bit later.

You sound very controlling IMO. If it takes him 90 minutes how does it stop you from unwinding downstairs? Why do you keep getting involved? Either do it yourself because only you can do it 'right' or leave him to do it without interfering.

What an utterly ignorant response. Go back and read my post. Nowhere have I said he isn’t a very good father. And it sounds like you had one child. I will have THREE. What a rude response to insinuate that I don’t enjoy spending time with them and that I am somehow desperate to find a way out. I am looking for my husband to do his fair share whilst I have a newborn. Can you not understand that? Perhaps so long ago for you that you have lost your senses and at the same time, any manners.

Presumably he's not a total moron so he must notice that loud music and craziness means hyped up kids who won't sleep, so the only explanation is he is choosing to do bedtime really badly.
Maybe not even consciously, but he's doing it badly enough that you are considering taking over.

I think you have to go the other way and let him take complete responsibility. I wouldn't even comment on bedtime, don't offer any help or suggestions. Just chill downstairs.

Yes this. While dancing around with high energy music on headphones. He either can't or won't do the other task.

What a prat.

Why are people so harsh on these threads! A mother of soon to be 3 coming on to ask for some “helpful” advice on bedtime routines before baby 3 comes along to help be prepared and it’s turned into other people opinions on someone’s relationship they know nothing about except from a short paragraph!

anyway OP… I myself have a husband who tends to hype the kids up close to bedtime, yes it can be a bit annoying at times and I have to remind him “remember it’s almost bedtime and the wind down is turning into a wind up”. I’m quite a calm person and DH is more of an up beat, likes a carry on. This doesn’t make them bad dads, the kids need some one on one time that’s fun and they will remember for years to come. Imagine if there older thinking back to bedtimes being so miserable for everyone.

i have 4 children, there’s only 17 months between the oldest two and if I’m honest bedtime routines were non existent, we tried, we failed, we were happy to just have them sleeping whether it was in our bed, on the couch, on the floor and then they were carried to their own beds, eventually they came round to a bedtime routine. There’s so many opinions on the right and wrongs of parenting, what’s expected to look like the perfect family etc…but really what works for one doesn’t work for others, none of us know what’s exactly right, we do our best with what we have and that’s all that should be expected.

My 3rd however, has always had a bedtime routine (maybe because his sisters were there to set an example or maybe it’s just because every child is different! Who knows!). Anyway, what has been a charm for us with him is the toniebox, if you’ve not heard of it it’s an audio box for children and they can pick there characters that reads a story or sings songs. This along with a star projector has been a life saver when it comes to bedtime. So maybe your DH can get them into bed, read them a short story himself then allow them to choose their own tonie (light projector highly recommended also!) and then walk out the room and see how that goes, that way he’s less likely to feel the need to entertain the kids in his own ways or feeling bad at the thought of walking out the room when there still awake ( this is what my DH struggled with).

Anyway…that’s a helpful suggestion of something you could maybe try from someone who isn’t here to judge! Trial and error and yes, a little patience on your end until DH does his own trial and error and figures out what works for him, even if it messes with you sanity a little lol and sorry for the long post!

Do they get enough sleep when he does bedtime? Are they underslept and grumpy the next day / struggling to get up for school , or are they okay but your DH gets less of an evening? If it's the latter I would leave him to it personally, it's on him how much downtime he gets. Maybe he prefers to take more time over it if he doesn't see them during the day due to work etc.
If they are becoming underslept I would pass on some information about how small children shouldn't have screen time one hour before bed as it does hype them up. I think a health visitor told me that. He sounds like he really throws himself into his time with the children, he doesn't sound like a terrible Dad to me, but your approaches on this are different.

That is really fucking annoying. I bet he can see cause and effect just fine at work?

Has he ready books on toddlers/bedtime routine?

He’s pathetic and to be honest this sounds a bit like weaponised incompetence. What kind of moron could honestly think that blasting loud upbeat music is going to help settle young kids to sleep?
If it was me, I would just do all bedtimes until they are a bit older. That’s because I would have done pretty much anything to preserve bedtime. It’s always been sancrosanct to me.
But he then needs to take charge of some other task- whether it’s cooking dinner, doing all the tidying and dishes or whatever else needs doing in the evening. Or can he do bath time? I know it’s part of the bedtime routine but it’s also the bit that’s going to be trickiest for you when EBF a newborn. Get him to do bath, and then you go up and finish putting them to bed with your more calm approach. It would be good to get the kids used to following your verbal instructions so you can do this hands free! Eg fetch their own book, minimal help with jammies on, that sort of thing. Some parents are just better at some tasks. But make sure he pulls his weight in other ways. And that he has a cup of tea ready in a tidy kitchen when you get downstairs!