Wife taking it out on me at every DD's tantrum - suggestions?

[ExhaustedFather]

Dear mummies and daddies of mumsnet, I could use some advice on a situation at home that's getting a bit out of hand. Of course I mean some constructive advice: just saying "poor you", or "it's all your fault" or "you need to understand her" without elaborating doesn't help much.

When our 3-year old girl throws up tantrums, mummy is usually the only one who can calm her; we range from situations where she doesn't explicitly ask for mummy, but only mummy can calm her (eg refusing to go to bed because she wants whatever dessert she saw on TV), to cases where she goes totally ballistic because she has decided she wants to be near mummy and finds it unacceptable that mummy might be having a shower without her.

I have tried all I could think of: distracting our daughter with songs books toys, offering some milk or a babyccino, hugging her to comfort her, talking about inviting her best friend or her cousins over, etc. The only thing that works is pulling out a mobile and showing something on youtube, but I don't do that anymore as she seems addicted to it, and her reaction when I try to switch it off is even worse (withdrawal syndrome, almost).

The typical cycle is: kid throwing up a tantrum with parents, followed by wifey taking it out with hubby (me) and using me as kind of emotional punching bag.

Wifey's typical comments are along the lines of: what do I even need a husband for, I'm practically a single mum, why do I even have you in the house, all you do is bring a salary home, etc.

I always point out that it would be in my interest to be able to calm our daughter, because if I did I wouldn't get the double earache of daughter crying in my ears + wifey taking it out on me, and my life would be oh so much better. When I try to say this, and ask her: ok, what do you want me to do? Calm her by myself? I'd love to, but how? Reason with her? If you have found a way to reason with a toddler, you're in for a Nobel prize! Yes, it's unfair, yes, it sucks, no, I probably can't imagine what it must really mean for you... but, realistically, what can I do?

I work longer hours than my wife, typically arrive home 2 hours after her, so it's inevitable that our daughter spends more time with her than with me. Maybe if I were a stay at home dad things would be different, but neither that nor getting a 9-5 job closer to home are realistic options for now.

Thoughts? Thanks!

Sorry OP, my post took so long to type that you'd got in ahead of me.

It sounds like your DW is adding to this if she's telling you off for not taking DD to her. Does your DW make a 'thing' about going for a shower? I mean, does she say 'I'm off for a shower now'? How does DD know where she is? Can you start the distraction before DW heads off? Get DD involved in something - even if it's just watching TV together and DW just slip away.

She needs to let you handle the tantrum - stepping in is just confusing DD.

And you can reason with a three year old. You just need to do it BEFORE the tantrum starts. You know she wants to go with mummy to the shower. So ask her what she'd like to do together when mummy goes for a shower in future. Guide her to something sensible - 'do you want to play with your toys or have a story'. Speak to her now and keep reminding her. 'We can watch that Toy Story film when mummy goes for a shower' or 'Shall we get the toy box out ready for mummy's shower' 'let's go and choose a book ready for later'. Don't spring it on her but ask DW not to make a big deal off where she's going and, if she can, wait until you've got DD busy then just walk out of the room.

and I constantly get crucified for getting it wrong.

This kind of exaggeration is so unhelpful, if it is not a joke. In fact even as a joke it's unhelpful. I suspect your Dd is picking up on the divisions between you (especially as you blame your wife to DD when you're frustrated) and it is making everything worse. You really need to learn to cooperate together, and at the heart of that is trust and communication. Not exaggeration and hyperbole to blow off steam.

Do you have any time for just you and your wife? A date night every week or two weeks?
And you need to sit down without DD at the weekend, when you are both calm, and discuss your strategy, and stick to it. This means never giving in to s tantrum. Physically remove your daughter from wife's earshot and wait it out. I have spent a few embarrassing times in supermarkets waiting silently while DD lay on the floor kicking. It stopped pretty quick when she realised it didn't get her what she wanted.

But kids are also excellent at manipulating adults, so I genuinely don't know...

Are they? Some do I suppose, when they're older, but they're not little evil geniuses plotting how to outsmart the The Olds, certainly not at that age, they just love and have a preference parent wise. Maybe stopping thinking like that might help. I find it weird.

I think you need to be firmer tbh and stop tip toeing round and being apathetic and "giving up". Me, I would bodily remove my child to somewhere she couldn't be heard so my spouse could get a shower in peace "Mummy is in the shower, leave her be" and that's the end of it, then ride out the tantrum. Such things can be made unnegotiable and after a while you can prepare your daughter with "Mummy is having a shower, she will be out when the clock looks like this or when we've finished this game". The End.

I suggest taking your daughter out of earshot of your wife while she is showering etc. Take her to the playground, for a bicycle ride around the block, down the garden...anything. She may still tantrum, but your wife won't have to hear it, or have to deal with it. And without her to fall back on, you will get better at dealing with it.

When DS was about 18 months his DF used to "mind" him while I had a shower. Always right outside the bathroom door, so I showered against a constant stream of "Mummy? Where Mummy?""She'll be back in a minute". It was more draining than looking after DS myself, because it was effectively a reminder that I WAS NEVER EVER GOING TO GET A FUCKING BREAK EVER! So I say just give the woman a break if you want her to stop getting ragey, like I just did thinking about that.

It sounds to me like you can manage her perfectly well when you are not worried about what your wife will think.

3 year olds pick up on adults feelings. I suspect that becuase you’ve had an incident when your wife was in the shower, you get anxious now every time your wife goes for a shower, expecting it to all kick off again.

Do not let her in the bathroom. Be calm and assertive with her. Seeing adults worried is very worrying for children. It frightens them. If she sees you are terrified of her mums reaction, then you are teaching her that Dad is scared of mum, and Dad is scared of my behaviour. What you said was totally unacceptable.

Take her to the other end of the house if she does have a tantrum. Pick her up screaming and wriggling if you need to. Obviously be careful not to hurt her, just hold her tightly and move her. It may seem cruel, but it reinforces that “Dad is in charge” and that is in some respects reassuring. When you are well away from the bathroom, put her down and leave her alone but stay in the room with her. Don’t allow her to leave that room, but do let her cry and stomp until the upset is all gone.

Trying to calm a child mid tantrum is pointless. Let her get it all out and then give her a cuddle.

Some good advice about avoiding tantrums above which I won’t repeat.

The important thing is not to give in and not to give up. It will pass. It’s normal. Don’t panic, just let it happen.

It sounds like the root problem is that things are breaking down between you and your wife. You don't sound very respectful of her ("wifey"?/ a "birthday present" of her going out with her friends while you stayed with dd - isn't that just a normal night out that couples take turns with, or do neither of you ever go out?) and she sounds like she is fed up and angry with you and equally talking to you with a lack of respect. Your dd is possibly picking up and responding to all the stress in the house.

You need to focus on what is happening between you and your wife really. Maybe try counselling? Or a few nights out to enjoy each others' company followed by time together to talk it through when you feel more inclined to communicate with each other?

My dd also wanted me all the time when she was little and it was exhausting. But it doesn't last forever. She's almost a teenager now and likes her own company. Sometimes you just have to battle through the hard parenting times as they don't last and different challenges crop up. You'll deal with them better if you feel like a team, so your first job is working on that. (Not through arguments but by saying you really want to work on it and maybe a start is spending some relaxed time together.)

We have been dealing with this too. We have found like others have said, that praising good and ignoring the tantrums is working for us.

That being said our dc3 will ask for Daddy when I'm dealing with him and vice versa for my dp. If we are both about then he wants his nana!

Over time we have found distractions can work too. Even something as silly hide and seek - 'bet you can't find me.' The more we gave in the more he did it so now we just give him space - making sure that he is safe. We check in every few minutes and ask if he'd like to do something. If he cries/shouts we say ok I'll come back in a bit and repeat until it's out of his system.

Assert yourself as this child's equal parent. Your wife is not the sole parent and you a) have responsibility for the child and b) get a say in how you manage the child.

You need to have a discussion in which your wife isn't the teacher. She may or may not WANT to teach you, but either way she should not be allowed to dictate how you care for your daughter in your time unless what you are doing is abusive (and it doesn't sound like this is the case).

You can say NO. both to a small child and to your wife. No, Wife, I am not getting you out of the shower on the screaming whim of a toddler. I am not going to be the parent that caves.

Dear mummies and daddies of mumsnet

Is this seriously how you communicate with adults? And you are surprised your DW gets irritated?

It would irritate the hell out of me. I cannot in a million years imagine my kids' DF talking like this to any adult.

Gahhhhhh! Stop with the Mummy thing!

Should we let her cry till she calms down because she must understand she cannot get anything she wants just by crying?

Yes, let her cry. Ignore her until she is normal again. By showering her with attention when she tantrums, you are giving her what she wants. If you ignore a tantrum, it becomes ineffective, and it won't take long for her to realise that it's not worth having a tantrum, because it doesn't have the desired effect.

No child ever died of crying.

"Mummy", "wifey"...that's really annoying..

Re tantrums and a shower..DON'T let your DD to your showering wife. All you need to do is close the door of whatever room you are in. Put peppa pig on or something similar. Let her tantrum and when your wife is done with her shower she can calm her down then.

If my DH would let our DS to the bathroom wgen I'm showering because "he can't calm him" I too would go ballistic! Our DS prefers me and has been known to cry when I Ieave the room. Doors get shut so I can have 20minutes to take a shower in peace...My DH can manage his son and it's not a big deal if he cries a little-usually calms down very quickly once I'm out of his vision and earshot and DH distracts him.

OP - From what you’ve said I think at least 50 percent of the problem is your the impact of becoming parents on your relationship - here’s a clue (it just may resonate with you?)
www.google.com/amp/s/english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/amp/

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, remove child, reinforce boundaries and wait until the tantrum naturally subsides. If the scenario is mummy is on the shower you remove her as far away as possible, ideally out of ear shot so she can relax a bit in her shower, and just deal with it. Faffing around trying to placate her with treats is not worth the energy or the precedent it sets. Your wife is frustrated because you don't step in and take control, so she has to by default.

I am close to a major tantrum now having read that.

OP - your daughter is 3 and tantrums are totally normal.
And she doesn’t need to be ‘calmed down’ - she needs to learn to deal with her feelings herself. Or it will only get worse and worse as she gets older.
She needs to learn that life doesn’t revolve around her needs and wants.

It’s hard intitially to hear your child cry and do nothing, but you get used to.
With both of mine - I’d just acknowledge their feelings - for eg ‘you want to go to mommy now, but you can’t’ - and let them get on with crying it out.

These constant outbursts are affecting your relationship.
Hope you can figure out the way to deal with that.

It sounds to me like you can manage her perfectly well when you are not worried about what your wife will think.

I think this is the cause. You and your wife need to talk this through properly. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't in this triangle.

Having read your update, I think that an inconsistent approach between the parents is making this worse.
If one parent believes in giving in and the other doesn't of course the child is going to want the "soft" one. Who wouldn't pick that choice? . If you both decide the tactic of you trying first, then mummy trying later then it's inevitable that a stubborn toddler will be difficult for you so she gets her preferred parent mummy.

‘Mummies and Daddies’ ‘Wifey’ 👀👀👀👀

🤮🤮🤮🤮

I guess you are joking....you are, right?

To be fair, people do say in wifey, hubby, mummy, etc in real life.

Saw a MIL post to her son-in-law 'no more helping wifey' when he posted a status saying he had cut his hand in the kitchen.

Speaking as a parent who used to be pretty good at calming 3yo tantrums, the only reason I was good at it was because of the enormous number of tantrums I had ridden out without having the luxury of passing the job onto somebody else and while always doing my level best not to inconvenience other people. This didn't happen in a day, or a week, or even a year: it was the result of sticking to the job and never giving up.

I understand that it is difficult if your wife keeps criticising you, but would she be equally critical if you just rode the tantrum out out of earshot without inconveniencing her or causing additional upset to your dd?
(what you said to your dd was really not right, you need to show both of them that you're an adult)

This is a non problem.

As a pp said - your wife showers, your DD tantrums, you keep DD from interrupting your wife, and the world keeps turning. And your DD slowly learns how not to lose her shit.

or I have to try to physically restrain her while she kicks and screams because she wants to be with mummy. Not easy.

Yes... You're right it's not easy. Who told you parenting was easy?

I suspect your wife got sick of you flapping about how dd won't "calm down" and has just given you an out (" don't let her get too upset"), because she can't be doing with coming out from a shower and finding you beside yourself and attempting to emotionally blackmail a 3yo into stopping crying.

In the nicest way, this is a 3yo child. You are supposed to be teaching her resilience and emotional control. That means occasionally exposing her to situations where she loses her temper - not desperately shushing and distracting her the moment she feels something you don't want her to.

You need to develop just a smidge of emotional strength yourself tbh. Do you understand that by begging and pleading / distracting / trying to reason, you are teaching her massively dysfunctional ways of dealing with her emotions?

Thank you all. Lots of food for thought to digest and process.

@prizeoik, no one told me parenting was easy. No need to be condescending.

When people recommend I keep our daughter from interrupting my wife and bring our daughter out of earshot, well, I'm afraid I may have not explained myself very clearly. We live in a Smurf-sized shoebox flat over one floor only. If I so much as tap my phone in the kitchen, it's heard in our bedroom. Unless I sedate my daughter or fill my wife's ears with cement, there is no way my wife won't hear our daughter screaming during these meltdowns. No way. Keep her from banging on the bathroom door? Again, any solution that does not involve me physically restraining our daughter for the entire duration of the meltdown or me locking daughter + myself in another room will result in her banging on the bathroom door. Initially I tried doing this (locking us in another room); talking to two friends who are child psychologists, they both recommended against it, as they say it may be traumatising for a child. I am sure people will have different opinions, of course.

If we lived in a bigger house over multiple floors, I'm not sure much would change; it would be easier to take our daughter out of earshot initially, but she'd still find her way to the bathroom door, unless, again, I physically restrain her for the entire duration of the meltdown.

I think the main problem is that there is some disagreement between us on how to handle this; I'd be more inclined to let our daughter cry till she calms down, while my wife says that, however unfortunate it may be, there are situations where she's the only one who can calm her down, as primary caregiver etc etc. She says this when we are both calm and relaxed, but, in the heat of the moment, she does lash out. Not much progress will be possible until we at least agree a common front.