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.

He’s not a child. Personally, I think it is what it is ..he has his way ( which is shit) OP has hers. He either does bedtime or he doesnt.But presumably OP is happy with his parenting in other ways as they are about to have a third.

I get what you’re saying, and yes I have successfully raised children through all the sleeping phases, including the teen ones.

However, no stage of getting baby/toddler/primary aged child to bed in my house included loud music, dancing around and then shouting angrily at my children when they don’t immediately fall asleep after having them bounce around for 90 mins. I like to think that’s typical of most houses and common sense (as well as the fact that decent parents don’t want to create a scenario which ends in them shouting at their kids).

So yes, I was harsh. But I also believe I was fair 🤷‍♀️

Are you admitting you wind your kids up and then shout at them every night? I’m guessing not and I think a lot of people are missing that important bit. It’s fine to have a high energy bedtime if the kids end up getting enough sleep and everyone’s enjoying it. But not if it means the kids are too hyped up to sleep and then you get angry with them.
I don’t think I could just leave that to happen every night, but the two of you need to have a proper chat about him losing his temper, that’s the bit that’s the main problem for me. The way he does bedtime can be annoying for you, but it’s not on for him to be shouting at the kids.

Have a look at the impacts on phone lighting affecting sleep. There's a tonne of research on it - ultimately, it's crap for children and adults and really affects sleep.

I agree with the majority of your post, but this was debunked ages ago. Blue light from screens doesn't disrupt circadian rhythm. It's likely to be the content of screens which is highly stimulating which disrupts sleep, that's what was found to be the mechanism how this was showing up as a link when it's not really.

A quick Google shows there is even very recent research which still supports phone lighting / use being bad for sleep.

The NHS remains an advocate about the impact of screens and phone use, so I'm continuing to believe it, for now...

https://oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/camhs/self-care/sleep/difficulties/screens/

Absolutely open to reading the research debunking the idea though.

As others have said, let him do it his way and ignore what is going on to the best of your ability.

People do not respond well to being told what to do (even when they could bloody well use the advice!). If you go up to help, it runs the risk of annoying and undermining him (will feel controlling; he will resent it and probably double down on his existing approach) or of letting him off the hook (he will always expect rescue, again reinforcing his existing approach). Perhaps even both simultaneously.

If he complains to you about it, that is the time to say something like 'would you like us to think together about what might help?' If it becomes apparent that he's just venting and isn't open to advice, or that he doesn't have the bandwidth for a productive conversation after his 90 minute marathon of silliness, leave be. If he actually does want to engage in a discussion about it, that's the time to offer ideas, but perhaps framing it as questions like 'what do you think helps settle them?' first so that the penny is more likely to drop on his part by encouraging him to actually think it through.

Of course I'm giving you advice here so I'm aware this contradicts the spirit of my suggestion! I can also see how this approach might be seen as pandering to your DH's ego in some way or whatever. Maybe it is. But I don't think anyone, man or woman, usually changes unless they themselves see a need to change, and that people are more likely to adopt ideas that they feel ownership of than ones they don't. Ideally I would have illustrated this by asking you thought-provoking questions in this post but it's late, I've just been woken by my toddler and I don't have the brain capacity (which probably illustrates my point about a person needing bandwidth to engage in a useful problem-solving conversation!).

Btw, the poster who implied you don't want to spend time with your kids because you'd like DH to pull his weight whilst you're going to have a newborn is a massive dick and I'm glad you put them straight.