Differences of opinion between mine and dh's parenting

[Whatamithinking]

Not really sure where to start, we have 2 perfect children and my dh works hard Full time and i work part time so am here with the children the most, and i'm sure he loves us but he is so critical and hard to please.

We've always had disagreements about our parenting methods. He believes i'm too soft (i dont think i am, i just pick my battles with the kids but believe i'm consistent and firm) he is much stricter with them. Wont tolerate a lot of things ie toys left on the floor, any kind of whinging (even if tired/under the weather), flitting between activities, not letting him speak etc. He really nit-picks at them (imo) which leads to a bad atmosphere when he's about and everyone on edge really. Dont get me wrong we have happy times too when the kids (who are 2 and 5 btw) 'behave' but most days lead to stress.

I'm not an overly confident person at all and watch and read a lot, on mumsnet, tv, books etc about how to be a better parent etc which husband doesnt like one bit. He firmly believes that us, and only us, should be bringing up our kids and we dont need any outside help or opinion on our kids, if i suggest a different way of doing things, he asks where i've got this hippy mumbo jumbo from! ie, tonight i'd been reading an email from a parenting course that said about recognising kind helpful behaviour, he read this over my shoulder and basically said how ridiculous it is and kids will become too needy if their every move is praised and he doesnt need any help and will learn from his own mistakes! This ended in a big argument as i'm geniunely just trying to do the best for my kids and want them to be as happy as possible.

How can i reason with him and make him realise that his negative behaviour changes the mood in the house? He refuses to discuss it properly and thinks i'm attacking him and saying he's no good if i mention anything. Its driving me mad, i feel like i cant say anything at risk of upsetting him and causing an argument. He used to be sooooo much more laid back and easy going about ideas and life in general.

So so sorry for waffling, if you made it through all that, thank you!!

He sounds like a nightmare to deal with. So he's lovely...as long as he always get his own way?
Why should you be on his side when he's being nasty to your DCs? And why should they want to go to him if that's how he treats them?
Some of the people on the Stately Homes threads who suffered abusive childhoods are most resentful now not of the parent who abused them, but the other parent, who could have stepped in and stood up for them but didn't. Please don't let that happen to your DCs.

Thank you for the replies. Thats interesting and quite disturbing about the resentment I'm going to have to try to get to the bottom of this not sure how or if its possible to make him listen to me and calm down though

Yes he does prefer everything tidy and organised. I think sometimes the children just get in the way of that in his opinion

I agree with what LesserOfTwoWeevils said.

Children rapidly lose real respect for adults that are clearly being unreasonable.
Rather than pussyfoot around him hoping he'll come round to your way of thinking, I'd stand firm if I were you and not let him roughshod yours or the DCs feelings anymore.

Also, do you think he's jealous of the DCs?

As a Stately Homer, I can confirm that your husband's criticism and nitpicking is damaging to your children, even if he doesn't and never would hit them. Children - especially at the ages yours are - need to learn from their parents that they are capable and lovable individuals just as they are, in order to develop confidence and a healthy self-esteem.

I can also confirm that I resent my passive, co-dependent parent just as much as the overtly tyrannical one. They both failed me, when I was utterly dependent on them. My experience is typical of others who had similar parents. Don't let your children suffer like this: it will take them a lifetime to try and build up their self-esteem again, and it will never be as whole as it could have been with supportive parents.

But what I really, really want to stress to you, although this may take you some time to accept, is that you cannot make your husband see the error of his ways.

You can try. I'm sure you have done. Till you're blue in the face. But he cant and won't change his outlook and his behaviour unless he wants to. And you can't make* him want to.

Even if it's patently the right thing to do. Even if it's for the good of your children and your family.

You can't change another person. Especially not a bully. All you can change are your own choices.

Good luck.

Both of you are currently imparting very damaging lessons to your very young children. He is a tyrant and you cannot readily challenge his mad assertions. I can only assume your H's own parents acted similarly towards him as a child so he is just repeating what happened to him now with your children. You do not want to leave this legacy to your children because if you do your children could as adults well ask you why you put him before them in childhood. They will bitterly resent you for not having enough guts to protect them from his overt tyrannical behaviour so your relationship with them could become irreparably harmed. This indeed has lasting effects.

You have a choice re your H; your children do not.

You cannot change him (and talking to him is a wasted effort going by your comments because like all bullies he just talks you down) but you can change how you react to him.

Your children do not have to be hit to be harmed; emotional abuse can and does take years to recover from.

I agree with the others. Yoyu are not doing your children any good by supporting his tyranny.
If your instinct tells you he is an unreasonable, joyless bully, who constantly critisises his children, then your job is to protect them....not present a united front.

My husband used to be quite harsh on our kids....particularly ds1 who is now 10. I certainly never backed him up, or even sat there passively while he demanded that his unrealistic expectations of children be met. I told him to sort himself the fuck out, and protected my kids.

It took me walking out on him with the kids in tow, for him to realise that I wasn't fucking kidding about not tolerating his bullying, overbearing crap.

He has since been for counselling and CBT and is a different man, much more realistic and pleasant to be around, so I am therefore happy for him to be around our kids.

I would not have stayed with him as he was. Presenting a united front is only worth doing if you are in basic agreement. If your partner is acting like a twat towards his kids, it is a shit thing to do.

If he won't be told, then leave him to it. Please don't subject your children to a miserable childhood where they are scared to fart, just to keep the tyrant happy. He does NOT hold the most important opinion in the household.

OP, I have to tell you, my experience of living with someone who can be such a tyran is that 'putting a united front' does NOT help.

What I have seen with my dcs, and you have started seen, are children who do not like spending time with Daddy. Children who come to tell you 'Daddy thinks I am an idiot' (my dcs comments) because the only thing he has been doing is criticizing. And children who are slowly loosing their self confidence because they can never do right (again my dcs).

He is sad because you dcs come to you and not him? Tell him that no one likes to be around someone who is always grumpy and shouty. Neither his dcs or you.

He doesn't like you to read about parenting stuff? Tell him to get lost. This is your life, you can choose whtever you want to read. And reading to learn more about a subject isn't a sign of being 'weak' or 'not being able to stanbd on your own tow feet'. It isn't about whether you need someone else to tell you what you have to do. It's about gaining knowledge to be able to take the best decision.

And I also have a big issue with this 'presenting a united front'. Because that means the dcs will never get to see that you don't agree with daddy's way of doing things. What they see is that whatever he says is the rule. When you let your dcs 'get away with something' does he stay silent too?
And since when is it an issue for an adult in their own house to voice a different opinion? Because actually it is an opportunity for the dcs to learn how to solve disagreement. Or it should be....

It is worth mentioning that in all of this, my husband never raised a hand to any of them.
His attitude was born of jealousy and resentment towards the kids, and his totally unrealistic expectations of their comprehension and behaviour. When ds1 was 5, dh expected him to behave as though he were 16. A spilled drink was enough to send dh orbital.
His argument was "Well I was never like that when I was five!"

Fucking bully for him. Have a chocolate medal for being the best behaved kid that Britain has ever known, Mr False Memory Syndrome!

I'm glad I sorted his twattery right out. He is unrecognisable these days - a really lovely dad. Standing up to him and refusing to accept his tyranny was the best thing I ever did.

Also, perhaps he needs to realize that children are noisy and untidy?
Do you have relatives/friends with children the same age? Could go to their house and see how it is on a normal day? So he can realize his expectations are totally out of the way?

pictish, in my H case, you can also add a total unwareness that children too have feellings and that the way you treat them as infants/young children will have a long lasting effect. He seemed to think that children had few feelings and that what you are doing with them now isn't going to have any consequences as to how they are as adults, apart from knowing the 'rules' of course (because then they will 'choose' to behave in an appropriate way).
A total lack of knowledge of child psychology and the effect of childhood on your life as an adult.

My dh seemed to think that ds1 should just 'know' he was loved.
If anyone else treated our son badly, he was the first one up in arms over it....but when it was daddy, then it was ok.

He assumed that ds1 just 'knew' that his dad loved him.

Not if you behave like that, you arsehole - people, including children, judge by what others DO, not what they SAY. It's all very well saying 'I love you, son' but if the actual behaviour towards the child mainly depicts irritation, critisism and constant disappointment, then that's what will sink in.

Kids are not emotionless little robots. They are little people.

A united front also means that he allows you to parent in the way you feel fit and doesn't go against your parenting decisions. Stand up to him.

Try telling him how upset you feel when he is angry with the children/goes against your parenting decisions. ask him to let you do the parenting when he is around and to watch and learn take a back seat.

My only rows with my DH have been about parenting styles, and it has taken a long time but he does it my way well now.

My father was similar to how you describe op. I grew up a nervous wreck, constantly worried abput doing the 'wrong' thing, nervous, socially terrified etc. I could never relax at home in case I'd done something wrong.

He was never physically abusive and didn't even really shout, he just picked on everything I did and told me I was wrong. Very controlling, very belittling.

I hated him for a good 20 odd years and went totally off the rails as a teenager.

I'm now 36 and have a fantastic relationship with him because we finally had it all out (I went to counselling) and he apologised for what he had done. It took a lot of work though to get to the point we're at now.

He (my dad) has mellowed so much with age and is completely different with my dc, he is the perfect granddad. He regrets what he was like with his dc very much and sees himself as acting like a total arrogant idiot back then.

Ask your DH, does he want/need to be right all the time or does he want to be happy? Does he want to be estranged from his dc in 15 years time? Have them grow up scared and ashamed with no self confidence?

Exactly NewYear, if he was confident and able to articulate his approach he wouldn't feel threatened by any other ideas. He'd be able to explain clearly why his approach is better. It sounds as though he's relying on tenuous assumptions and knows he can't explain why they are right. This is why he clams up and gets aggresively defensive when challenged.

Perhaps he thinks the impact of the children's behaviour on him is more important than the impact of strict parenting on them but is aware that saying so will make him sound selfish. Perhaps he accepted his own parents' approach unquestioningly and finds it very unsettling to consider that they could possibly have been wrong (and that this might have shaped him, thus he might not be perfect). Perhaps he just has unrealistic ideas about children and is comparing them to an ill-founded ideal. It might be interesting to discover what that ideal is and where it came from. Perhaps he's just inarticulate, unreflective, or a bit spoilt and used to people agreeing or going along with what he wants.

I suspect he'd see other people's less well-behaved children as an abomination and example of everything that's wrong in the world, so you'd need to be very selective about whose children you show him as an example of normality, people he already has a lot of respect for.

I agree about blaming the acquiescent parent. My Grandma was a tyrant, Grandpa was a lovely man but totally under her thumb. Certainly my Dad was more distressed directly by his mother but she was what she was and was never going to change. The person who could have stepped in and acted on his behalf was his lovely but useless father.

I know what it's like to have disagreements over parenting, but your husband sounds like he's intimidating you all.

I agree with those who say you don't have to put on a united front if the other parent is behaving in a very bad or critical or aggressive way, I have been known to step in when my husband is going red in the face, and he's done the same to me, these are not instances of aggression, but to a small child, a parent launching at them verbally can be very upsetting. Sometimes you do have to protect your children.

I would be frank with him. I would say, you are very critical of the children, and this means they won't want to be around you so much, plus I am around more in the day than you are. If you want them to like you more, then you need to lighten up as you are quite scary to them.

Thank you for all your replies although they have made me worry about the effect we are both having on our beautiful kids

Had a busy day today and havent spoken to husband since last nights 'discussion' i will find some time later to have another read through all your replies again and try to decide what to do next . Bit scared now.

Thank you again, really appreciate the time taken to help me

MNers will always be there to talk you through whatever you decide next.

Keep talking, if it helps.

Do bear in mind that this man is not the boss/owner of the rest of you. He's not in charge and it's fine to stand up to him and tell him to either behave better or fuck off. If he responds to this with increased aggression then you will know he's not worth working 'with' and can take steps to get rid of him.