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.

My husband does bedtime differently to me and is very similar to yours. Lots of carry on, dancing, laughing and excitement whereas I try to get her to wind down, calm time, story, cuddles and both get same result eventually. When I was pregnant with my 2nd I had to let my husband start to do more bedtime and bath times so it was an easier transition when the baby arrived that it wasn’t me every night. It was me most nights as I loved doing it and while I done this he cleared up the kitchen from dinner and walked the dog. I think it’s best to leave them to do it their way, offers of help and advice can feel like criticism when we don’t mean it to. My husband struggles sometimes that our girls are both quite clingy to me even though they adore him and he’s a very hands on parent so I make sure I don’t ’take over’ even though sometimes I want things done my way but I also need to know I can get space sometimes and not the expectation I do every bedtime or bath or meal or cuddles or getting ready in the morning.

Please look up weaponised incompetence.

In the nicest way possible, how can you find a man like this attractive, he sounds like a child himself. I hope you find a solution.

Tbf DH always used to hype them up before bed. I’d come in to them racing round the house, back flipping on the beds, dancing to techno. You name it.
But he always got them down, sometimes quicker and more effectively than me. Leave him to it and he’ll work out his own way

“What are you doing to help them feel sleepy?”
”Is it working?”
”What else could you try?”

Is he thinking he needs to wear them out with high jinks? Nice idea, but wrong.
Send him to the internet to research ‘good bedtime routines’, ‘how to get kids to bed’ etc. Ask him what he finds.

He’s clearly a bit of a dick and doesn’t want to learn from you, so get him to learn from the millions of peers and thousands of experts that live in his phone.

Leave him to it, otherwise you’re continuing to enable his messing around & then mom comes to save the day. I don’t get how you’ve managed with this for so long!

Christ he sounds unbearable.

No meaningful advice as such, but I do know how you feel! Thankfully mine are older now, but when they were little, DH would often get home from work around 7pm, just as I was starting bedtime. He'd come in all over excited, happy shouting and just generally get the kids all wound up. He'd then go off for his half hour poo, leaving me to try and calm them down again.
It sounds like he's a great dad, so I'd just overlook his incompetence at bedtime and either do it yourself while he does other jobs or be prepared for bedtime to take forever. It will get easier as they get older and become more independent.

Obviously blaring out dance music at bedtime is not conducive to putting kids to bed, but all the whispering you allude to is also over the top. We just used our normal voices when putting kids to bed, no need to whisper.

Leave him to it. My dh is similar at bedtime (also loves a dance party), I've explained a couple of times that I think it's a bad idea, but he has his own style, his way takes longer but that is his prerogative. Our kids are 10 and 8 now and he still takes an hour longer than me over bedtime (music parties, silly voices etc) but he is their dad and I'd be mega insulted if he told me to change my way of doing some parenting. Ultimately they still get to sleep at a reasonable time and I am certain they'll remember some of the silliness when they're grown up way more than my boring and sensible bedtimes.

Let him make mistakes, work it out, or deal with any fall out. I find when there's a big issue if I send a podcast, article or book (e.g. when we needed to align on how we support our autistic son) that worked better than just giving him my ideas and opinions - parenting should be equal views and equal contribution.

If you intervene or take it over you set a very clear pattern for both of you - he half heartedly fails or makes mistakes or can't work it out and then immediately expects you to jump in and be the responsible one. Don't allow the "he is incompetent so I'll do it"/"She is responsible and in charge of all parenting and I can piss about for a bit then tell her I can't do it and be let off the hook" dynamic to flourish. That way lies "my kids are 10, 8 and 6, am I being unreasonable to have a spa night away with a friend as my dh says he can't cope without me and doesn't know how to look after them". You also need to think practically, he will look after them if you're ever ill, away, in hospital for the new baby etc etc- he needs to be able to do basic shit like bedtime. I'd hate to be ill and also then anxious on top about him looking after the kids.

Look up weapon used incompetence. You'll do everything if you intervene. Leave him to it. Help him find a better option, like calm reading. He'll soon learn.

If you take over, soon you'll be doing everything.

If his bedtimes end in screaming and crying most times and he refuses to change his approach I would be having an absolute fit at him. It’s not on. It’s bad parenting. Not just “non-ideal” but bad parenting bad for the kids and bad for you. And his refusal to try other approaches would seriously make me consider divorce.

But there is no way I would be having a 3rd child with a man who, 5 years after his first, had failed to step up to the plate for them, so I suspect you have a different perspective.

Leave him to it, but don’t let him claim he’s doing 90 mins of parenting and expect you to do more of something else because he’s to arrogant to adjust.

Nobody is so stupid that they don't know better than to play football anthems on their phone while getting kids ready for bed. You shouldn't have a screen around at all. He's doing this on purpose.

Every bedtime is his to learn until he gets it. If he needs the learning time he just needs it OP.

No surrender to strategic incompetence

My partner similar to this OP, had a lot of different random games they played at bedtime whereas I stick to story and bed…took him hours 😂. I’d say it’s taken a year but he’s now managed to get down from maybe 5 or 6 games to 1. He’ll get there in the end!

6 months is when babies start food, it is not when they get cut off from mums milk.

Why would you have a third child with someone who can’t understand the basics of having children? Is he hard of learning? Is he unable to find solutions in other aspects of life, like work? Or is he fine there when you’re not around to pick up his shitty mess?

I’d ask him to join you and DC for bedtime routine. Not to do anything, simply for you to demonstrate how it’s done, because just telling him how isn’t working. Maybe if he spends a few nights seeing how it works, he’ll be better at it. Let’s hope so.

Read this post whilst waiting for my DH to ‘do’ bedtime for our 4yo. It’s 11pm 😂😂😂
granted it was a late night but still 1hr later… 😂😂😂

Not really funny

I think we need to let our spouses do these things their own way unless it’s dangerous, really counterproductive, etc. Bedtime doesn’t have to be all hushed voices. I’d only intervene if they’re not getting enough sleep.

He is doing it on purpose so you will do it instead.

My bedtimes are more like your DH’s. People parent differently and that’s fine. It’s perfectly ok for children to grow up with two parents who do things differently.

Get yourself some earplugs and a good book and leave him to it.

@Starrylawn I thought it was quite the coincidence and I did not realise there were so many men doing similar bedtime routines involving techno / dance / antics etc! The issue of poor parenting isn’t funny I agree. But I did not realise I was not alone and neither was DH in his methods 😅

He has only tried for a few weeks, he’s ignoring your advice and allowing chaos because he knows you will intervene.

You need to have a serious discussion. Yes, they likely don’t behave well for him, but he’s not being consistent with what you have established. Children need consistency for bedtime. Right now they think it’s party time.

It’s perfectly ok for children to grow up with two parents who do things differently.

Not that differently at 3 and 5, it just confuses them. Children need consistency and clarity on is it bedtime or is it stay up late party time. OP’s DH needs to have a bedtime routine that is close to OP’s.