Parenting conflict with dh

[pebblepots]

I'm just hating the way my dh parents sometimes.

Our dd has just turned 3. Here are some examples of things that are upsetting me:

He was getting her ready for bed a few nights ago and she was lying the bed being uncooperative with putting her nappy on and kicking at him.

He ends up trying to force her to put it on, I went to up there and he was holding her upside down by her ankles to stop her kicking. I helped get things calmed down a bit and the nappy on, then retreat again (he gets annoyed when I interfere and 'undermine' him). He ends up smacking her as I think she kicks him again and leaving her crying for me to go up and sort out.

Tonight he was getting her ready for bed again and I can hear it escalating, she has hit him. I can hear him saying 'No bedtime story tonight' 'I'll shut you in the dark' 'you're being horrible' - this does not help, just escalates the situation more. He is berating her and going on and on, using language that she really won't understand.

She does not kick me when getting ready for bed and of course I don't think this is OK but it is the way dh deals with these things, it is just unpleasant and does not work.

He makes threats if she doesn't do as she is told straight away, such as coming to get shoes on as we are going out, 'right we will leave the house without you, we'll leave you here' which I disagree with as they are cruel, inflammatory (not to mention an empty threat) and just escalates the situation by upsetting her.

A few weeks ago he tried to do the naughty step technique with her, of course she would not stay on the step so he ends up holding her on the stairs while she cries and gets more and more worked up. He's probably hurting her by holding her down. He is determined to 'win' and make her apologise (I can't remember what she did now). I wait as long as I can but enough is enough and I go intervene.

So after tonight I am in the dog house and I dig out the Toddler calm book by Sarah Ockwell-Smith which I bought ages ago but haven't read much. This approach really fits with the type of parenting I do, but is so different to his. He expects me to 'back him up' with his parenting, and i try but I just can't if things are getting unreasonable in my opinion.

I said to him that it is worth a read but he just said 'not interested' and walked off.

I'm so sad he is treating our dd like this. He thinks she is naughty and needs sorting out. She is great but like all toddlers can be a pain at times but her behaviour is just typical toddler stuff, he just seemingly can't head it off or deal with it reasonably and goes into head to head confrontation. These examples are probably over the last couple of months, he does have lots of lovely calm and fun play times with her.

What do you think of this? I don't really know what to do, its so difficult to find a time when he'd be receptive to talking. Communications and respect are breaking down between us sadly.

OP I'm not going to get into the specifics of your DH's parenting because I am a totally shit parent frankly and I'm sure people may think I'm missing the point of the thread here but I've got a practical tip for bed times. When we went through a stage of dc making a fuss about the night time nappy, we switched to pull ups. They can usually get these on themselves by 3. Get them to choose the one they want, be grown up putting it on themselves etc. Helps to manage the DC's frustration and mainly avoids physical manhandling of dc.

balders, if you need a push to choose your daughter's emotional over a relationship with your husband just pm me

I have virtually no meaningful interaction with my mother now even though she lives only a few miles away, she has only distant contact with her grandchildren and she lives a miserable daily life with my father who still treats her like shit

imagine this when you get to 70yo

emotional *welfare

Well the name change reveals a lot.

How do people expect to get genuine and proper advice if they are only giving half stories.

I started the thread agreeing with anyone who said not to over react, and that looking after a toddler is hard...etc and yes, you really need some parenting advice together and team work, it can be hard for mums and dad's in many different ways.

BUT

Your the same person who has posted your partner is watching porn on the toilet while his daughter is bathing because he is bored.

And you don't think these two kinds of things intertwine in anyway?.

Your getting skewed advice because you aren't giving the full context of his very clear issues.

He needs help. In more ways than just becoming a more understanding parent.

I agree with Hermit. It's totally unfair to disengage two sides of the discussion. I gave very sound advice (I think) regarding different parenting styles and reaching a compromise and finding a way to work as a team.

For which I was attacked with a lot of off the wall comments (because others knew the other side of the relationship) and comments about watching porn!! Wtf? No mention of this in the post!

Frankly it's bloody annoying when people do this and personally I lose all sympathy for the poster. If she had put the whole story no one would have advised staying with this man regardless of his parenting. I find this type of post very manipulative!

Thanks Anyfucker. I need a kick up the bum! I come from a very similar family dynamic to the one I am in now only my SF was a violent pig, so I suppose I have kind of justified it to myself by saying at least my H isn't violent.

I deeply resent my DM for not leaving until I was 18, when effectively it was too late for my Dsis & I to form normal relationships.

So I totally get where you are coming from.

There you go then, balders

just because your daughter's father isn't blacking her eye doesn't mean he isn't damaging her

I hate my father for the emotionally and verbally abusive man he is but I accept he cannot change his make up and never could

I reserve a special sort of contempt for my mother I am afraid who always had a choice to protect herself and her kids from it and decided staying with him was preferable

snappy, I agree that posters only detailing part of the story is manipulative

the thing is though, when you read a lot of these threads it is quite clear that what is initially posted is very much the tip of the iceberg and almost invariably

Sorry pressed post by accident....

almost invariably the problem complained about is part of a larger pattern of behaviour

by the time people post here looking for advice, the situation is pretty dire and all the obvious "just talk to him rationally" have been very much exhausted

Thank you anyF. You're no doubt right, but not everyone is aware of this and will just see the problem as it is written, and if it is written in such a way as to give the impression xyz is the only problem and everything else is fine (because nothing else is mentioned) the answers they get are going to be worthless! So why do it?

As my IT tutor said re computers ..garbage in, garbage out.

OP looks as though she just wants people patting her on the back for parenting in a good and responsible way while encouraging responders to give her H a good kicking. And that's manipulative. She should have been honest and said I've posted here before and this is my story etc etc. instead of name changing and misleading well intentioned posters who themselves end up getting flamed because of their ridiculous suggestions!

Fwiw the H sounds horrendous and she should not allow anyone like him within a mile of her DD. But now I know the facts as presented I can say that.

I agree it is unfortunate, snappy

and irritating for respondents who post in good faith on the info provided

however, this site promotes the ability to name change at will and so the facility is able to be used that way if you wish

it's kinda academic anyway now because as is also rather predictable, the op has now done a disappearing act

oops, that was meant to be a

I don't think the OP set out to be manipulative or to encourage people to gang up on her DH. She sounded exasperated and defeated in her OP, and (reasonably) didn't want to explain her whole life story in one post. I also think there was an element of desperate hopefulness that someone might have a miraculous solution to her DH's bad attitude and poor parenting.

Embarrassed. I gather she has posted much of her previous history outside the poor parenting and as it is massively relevant it puts everything in a completely different light, so just a brief mention of her abusive relationship is all it needs for clarification.
I'm not attacking her but this type of post takes drip feeding to a whole new level. I feel very sympathetic but it's as clear to her from previous advice that her H is awful on any level and the best thing for her and DD is to leave (or get him to) .

Yes she's disappeared, but hopefully she takes on board the advice from so many people to end the marriage.

Well i wasn't sure whether to come back to this or just let the thread die, however here I am. I have not been back as my heart has been breaking as it seems the writing is on the wall. Oviously I have been getting a lot of stick and yes I was wrong to post as I did. The porn on phone incident happened after I'd started this thread and I didn't want that to totally take over, rightly or wrongly. Also I was hugely ashamed at the poor choice I have made in dh. I guess that means in denial of what it would mean to link these 2 threads together, I knew deep down what people may say.

This would not be so hard if dh was crap all the time and I did not love him still. He is decent a lot of the time and does have redeeming featutes but obviously I am only presenting the things that are problems here.

I really appreciate all the helpful advice people have given me.

I understand, pebble and I have massive sympathy for you

However the choice is in your hands as to whether you think what he offers is an appropriate environment in which to raise a child full time

I don't believe it is and I think you know it too

snappy I did not want people to give my dh a good kicking while saying I am right. I wanted a bloomin sanity check as a lot of this stuff is somewhat borderline it can be difficult to see clearly what is happening. If my dh was to hit me that would be so much easier to point and say 'that is abusive, I must leave'.

I do not consider myself to be in an 'abusive relationship' so of course I would not say this (um, am I? ) and don't think I have been told to ltb in response to any of my previous threads

Not that I think it is 'easy' for anyone in a situation where their dh hits them of course

Glad you came back pebble....

I hope your talks tonight get things off your chest.

I don't believe or certainly want to believe you would let him minimise any of his behaviours....

Thinking of you.

Violent men can be very nice some days too, believe it or not. That's what makes leaving them difficult sometimes.

But the underlying lack of empathy and controlling tendency is what makes them damaging. More so than the violence itself.

I'm sorry you are having such a tough time and feel so conflicted.

Hugs to you Op. I honestly don't know whether you are in an "abusive relationship" (maybe you are, but emotional abuse is incredibly difficult to define), but being "abused" is not the only reason to ltb, if you see what I mean. Your husband obviously has major problems which are affecting your relationship and his relationship with his child. He does not seem able/willing to address these problems and this leaves you stuck between a rock and a hard place. I really strongly believe that you should call Relate and speak to a professional (by yourself) to whom you can explain the whole situation. This will help you work through it in your own head and work out what to do. Good luck

Evening, thought I'd report back for anyone interested...

Much has been talked about tonight and i went into discussions prepared to say we should split. Dh was actually been receptive to talking so we have managed to discuss a lot. I asked dh about his parents and what they were like with parenting. Apparently if any of the DC did anything wrong they were shut in the dining room with both parents and lectured for an hour on what they did wrong, do they understand what they have done, possible consequences etc. For worse behaviour it was wait til you dad gets home, left to sweat it out all evening 'feeling the fear' and on occasion the dad would use the belt on them, like half a dozen strokes (I guess to instill the 'fear'). There was also smacking. Dh won't hear much of a word against any of this apart from a persistence to try to make him eat faggots

He says he is massively stressed and miserable that we don't have fixed boundaries, consequences and ways of dealing with behaviour. This is when he ends up going overboard with the roughness. I said I wondered if he did it on purpose, as we don't smack (ahem), to get the 'physical punishment' in in an underhand way. He was pretty shocked that I would think that of him.

We spoke about being quite far apart on how we think we should parent and how we both needed to compromise to come closer together on the spectrum. We discussed about 8 situations and came up with a plan on what the expected behaviour is, boundary, consequence, approach. We have both compromised. He knows the empty threats, physical roughness are totally unacceptable. Everything is now appropriately firm but fair. We will be having a review each evening over the next 2 weeks to discuss how we have got on with these items during the day. (Stuff like getting dressed, bedtime, leaving the house). Hopefully 2 weeks will be a good period to see how things are going.

He still comes put with some clangers like 'a little bit of bullying in the short term is worth the long term result' gah!

Discussed the porn on phone again, reiterated not acceptable. So watching brief on this one and will pick up again as part of further 'relationship' discussions.

Started discussing relationship issues, communication difficulties, lack of respect etc. He thinks if we are less at odds on parenting this may help. I told him I have been thinking if we would be better apart, he was pretty shocked.

By now we are fairly drained so left it for tonight. Will see how we go, there is so much work to be done and effort to be put in if we are to turn this around.

Relationship talks continue next weekend if mum can have dd again.

Sounds like you have had mammoth talks Op....

Thanks for updating....

How are you feeling?

Do you feel satisfied that he is prepared to put just as much of this "work and effort to be put in" as ?

as you