AIBU to think DH could have thought for himself?

[Thistledew]

I mostly get DS ready for nursery as he goes on days that DH leaves early for work. Today DH was working from home so got DS dressed whilst I was getting dressed. He dressed him in a smart pair of corduroy trousers and a pale cotton jumper.

I commented that I wouldn't have dressed him in such smart clothes for nursery and said no more. DH said that he didn't think he knew what were DS's smart clothes.

This evening, DH said that he had not liked the way I had spoken and that I should have said that those clothes were too smart and asked him to change DS. He said I made him feel stupid.

This is not the first time that DH has dressed DS in his best clothes to go to nursery. I recall at least one, if not two, occasions where DH has got DS dressed and I have asked him to change him out of smart jeans etc. DH was also with me when I bought DS some hard wearing but easy clean clothes specifically for nursery. He knows that they often do painting, gluing etc and that DS is a bit messy when he is feeding himself with only minor supervision.

I did not think that I was being unreasonable in just commenting that I would not have dressed DS in that way. I thought that it was preferable to undermining DH by telling him to redress DS.

On reflection, I wonder if DH was in fact more offended because I had not told him what to do. If I had told him to redress DS he could have had a minor grumble at me being fussy but that would have been the end of his effort. By just commenting that I would have done differently I put the ball back in his court to make him think about what to do and to think about the decisions he had made. He then had to weigh up the risk of the clothes getting ruined and make his own mind up as to whether it was worth the hassle of changing DS. What he resented was not me criticising his choices but me making him take the mental load.

Does this make sense or is there something I'm missing?

BTW, DH has, without comment, done a sterling job this evening with the Vanish and it is likely that the chicken curry stains will be barely visible on the pale cotton top!

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If I had said nothing, would it have been acceptable for me to ask DH to hand soak the clothes when DS had got home? Would it have made him feel any less stupid if I had said "DH, would you soak and scrub these clothes because they got stained at nursery?" Surely the implied criticism of his choice of clothes would have been obvious at that point.

Because I really don't accept that it was up to me to take on the additional work of cleaning up a problem that could have been avoided.

OP, do you often find yourself overthinking how you phrase things when speaking with your husband? I ask because I didn't realise for several years that I had shut down my natural way of interacting little by little because I'd say something trying to be helpful and be told I was criticising. So gradually I said less and less and picked my words carefully if there was something I felt I needed to say, in an attempt tobe non-threatening. It meant that I internalised my annoyance over little things more and more instead of being able to express it, deal with a problem and move on.

If you recognise this pattern, I'd suggest you speak out more and pander to his feelings less.

Hopefully I'm seeing something in your description that is not there at all. In which case I agree, having clothes like you describe for "best" and not sending them to nursery in them is perfectly reasonable and it should be possible for fathers to notice that if the issue has been previously pointed out to them!

he once proclaimed that "We do a great job in keeping DS in a steady supply of suitable clothes". Yeah, that sounds like something a normal person would say, never.

Let him dress him how he likes. Then keep putting the stained clothes back into the wardrobe (keep the unstained stuff back) when DH finally mentions how scruffy DC looks tell him it’s becuse he keeps dressing him in unsuitable clothing

Grass - genuinely thankful for your concern. Our relationship is generally respectful and communicative, and I'm certainly not walking on eggshells. However, it has been under the strain that the upheaval of having a demanding small child can bring and we have had some breakdowns in communication. I have had cause to express some resentment about how DH has landed me with the mental load with regards to dealing with DS's needs and he has acknowledged that at times he has failed to take initiative or to take responsibility for simple decisions. In this instance I am genuinely unsure as to whether this is again him failing to engage his brain and expecting me to do the thinking for him or if it is a reasonable variance in approach.

Dancing - maybe not exactly verbatim. He might have said "supply of clothes for all occasions" or something very similar.

I think you mental load would be lessened if you stopped trying to calibrate reasonable variations in your husband's parenting approach. Do you have a scale or something ?

@zzzzz if op wasn't solely responsible for ensuring her child had clean clothes that fit and if her dh also shopped and sorted and laundered their son's clothes then it wouldn't be that hard. But as she is responsible because she has a vagina therefore it's her job, then she can bloody well get annoyed that it's another thing she has to think about and sort. Op has told him before so even if he's stupid enough to dress a child up in nice clothes to spend a day in nursery before, he should know better now because he's been told.

I put bibs or tool certain clothes off my kids when they were having food that stained. Washing them is easy, it's getting rid of sauce stains that's a pain. And even worse when they grow so quickly because then you have to replace the stained clothes with others the same size which will have even less wear.

So maybe you should speak to your husband op and tell him that yes, you may be spoke to him in a way you shouldn't but it's only out of frustration. Then draw up an exhaustive list of what you do and discuss with him and divide it fairly. Then you each have your jobs and you can do them how you like.

@musti - I don’t go mountain climbing or whatever obtuse example you chose. Neither do the average nursery aged children.
However if OP wants DH to assisting in her micromanaging of their DS’s wardrobe maybe she should relax a little about play and beat clothes.
And the likelihood of a toddler ages child needing ‘best’ clothes on multiple occasions before they are outgrown is minimal.
It’s a pointless scenario. Op wants to have uniform vindication from MN.

Criticism is a love buster. We need a five to one praise/love/gratitude:criticism ratio to be able to take on board criticism apparently. I agree that if it's just personal taste and it didn't matter to the point of suggesting a change of clothes, I would have just said thanks. It's a bit like being told I've done the dishwasher wrong but actually it's just not how DH would have loaded it. I can cope with these comments if rare but not passive aggressive or frequent.

about how DH has landed me with the mental load with regards to dealing with DS's needs and he has acknowledged that at times he has failed to take initiative

But on this occasion he DID take the initiative to dress DS. You were in the shower and he spotted that it would be helpful if he did the dressing. And then you told him he'd done it wrong. It's not the way to get him to be more involved if you take the view that it's your way or the high way.

^
I agree. You say that your DH saddles you with the mental load of thinking about your son's needs. Then he takes charge of getting him dress, but you don't like how he does it. The man can't possibly win.

No such thing as play and best clothes for ours when they were toddlers. I couldn't be arsed with that.

I never hand soaked anything either. Just bunged it straight into the washing machine with everything else and never had a problem.

A toddler's wardrobe doesn't need micromanaged to that extent. Hell, I don't even micromanage my own.

You said earlier that you don’t expect DH to read your mind, but you do - you’ve categorised certain clothes in certain ways, but not shared that with DH, and specifically not split the clothes by type. And then you’ve complained pointlessly at him making the wrong selection.

What you’ve done there is set him up for failure. Don’t do that, it’s a terrible way to live.

You are being unreasonable. It's really not a big deal. Much worse things happening out there in the world then your son going to nursery in his best clothes. I think it's sweet your husband wants him to look smart.

What does it matter? They grow out of clothes pretty quickly at that age, might as well get the use out of them.

Ok, a few replies:

• the decision to send DS to nursery in those particular clothes was, to one objective standard, wrong as due to the inevitable staining they required hand soaking rather than just bunging in the washing machine. This is time consuming and there is a risk that the clothes will remain stained.

• both I and DH take a reasonable amount of care in our appearance and have items of clothing that we wouldn't wear for slobbing around the house but would wear reasonably frequently, for example this weekend for meeting friends for lunch. We both like DS to have a similar range of clothes. He has some things that are easy to wash and don't look too bad if they get a bit stained and some things that are made of nicer fabrics and look a bit smarter but are harder to maintain.

• keeping track of DS's clothes is not a massive job but requires a review every month or so of what he has in his wardrobe. We don't have limitless funds of money and hate waste so I like to pick up bargains when I see them and get the most use out of the clothes. DH does not have to do any of this work but has expressed that he enjoys how I manage things.

• this is my 'system' for managing clothes. Other people may do it differently, but I don't think it is fundamentally unreasonable. I have had sufficient conversations with DH that he knows or ought to know how it works. If he wants to dress DS differently and put him in smarter clothes on a daily basis then it is open to him to become involved in managing DS's wardrobe and shopping for it.

• DH is a good man who does his fair share of the household tasks, but I have really noticed that since having DS and being on maternity leave I have had to push back quite hard against DH expecting me to take on much more of the mental load and 'thinking tasks' of running the house and caring for DS. He has previously admitted that he has expected me to make decisions that really he should have dealt with.

• I expect more than a minimal level of engagement from DH. He isn't going to get any special praise from me for doing basic tasks such as dressing DS.

• as DH is happy to leave running the wardrobe system to me but also to reap its benefits, I find it quite disrespectful that he then messes with the system. As I said above, if he wants to do it differently then he is welcome to do so, but if he wants to leave that work to me then he should stick with its rules.

• I feel this is a further example of him failing to appreciate the efforts I go to and failing to take on board the necessary thinking to keep things running smoothly. I would still be grateful for advice as to how to address this with him as it has added to a certain amount of resentment I feel at being shoehorned into a situation where he is relying on me to do his thinking for him.

Bloody hell just keep a separate cupboard for nursery clothes if you're that bothered.

“He should stick with it’s rules”
“I would be grateful for advice as to how to address this with him”

Explaining the rules seems like a good step, wouldn’t you think? And when new clothes come in, categorise them with him.

I do agree with most of what you’re saying and doing, but there’s that gap in information sharing which makes it look like you’re intentionally withholding in order that you can trip DH up. That may not be that case, but that’s what it looks like from here. You seem to have a buildup of resentment on the split of responsibilities and you’re letting that out in a passive-aggressive way rather than sitting down and fixing the problem.

So, sit down and fix the problem. Then put the fancy clothes in one drawer, and the rest in the others.

Just do as possible have suggested and keep the 'good' clothes separately. Though I'm at a loss to understand how a normal 3 year old won't get them messed up whether at nursery or elsewhere.

I never let DH choose our DDs clothes when they were smaller and he did resent it.

I should have let him. Now they're older I regret keeping it all to myself. It's just that he chose such odd combinations and sometimes, things I thought were ugly.

But that's not the point...he had as much right as me to enjoy choosing things for them and I never let him.

YANBU, OP. My husband does a good amount of the housework, but for some reason when it came to dressing the kids as toddlers, it seemed like all his common sense went out the window.
It shouldn't be hard to think: "right, for nursery I should put the child in comfy clothes, that don't look like "nice" wear. Such as a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a tee-shirt, with an easy clean jumper."
It used to annoy me so badly that he couldn't get his head around something so simple, and to me, common sense.
I would have been far more blunt than you, OP, and just said 'oh shit...DH, thanks for dressing him, but those are his good clothes. You need to put him in something casual and easy clean for nursery - you know how grubby he gets.'