Oh dear, what have I done...?

[mediocrity]

I've posted about my relationship confusion before. I'm back. Dh and I had a serious talk last night including his reassertion of his idea that if dd cries without motive, he should "give her something to cry about for real". I was very firm in my expression of disgust for any type of physical punishment, especially for someone so young (dd = 19mo) and told him that I'm afraid to leave her alone with him ,that I'm scared of his anger. He got really upset, shut down, left the house and when finally came home he slept on the couch and now he's not talking to me. Well, he's talking, as such, but not communicating. Maybe I was too harsh but how can you gently tell someone that you are afraid of leaving your dd with them? I'm wondering if this is the beginning of the end. I think this is the beginning of something. It has the chance to be the kick necessary to make some changes but I fear it's put the wheels in motion towards the other direction... I feel numb. What have I done...

I think I just need a hug, please?

There is a lot of information about why spanking is damaging and wrong here, M:

www.nospank.net/

Although why people need to be persuaded that hitting people of any size (small or big) is wrong is beyond me, but some people are very attached to hurting children.

You did the right thing, M (I'm can't bring myself to call you "mediocrity" because what you did standing up for your child is far from mediocre).

elizabetth - thanks for the site. Some of it seems a bit over the top to me but there are bits on there that are helpful.

The mediocrity name came from previous posting about the mediocrity of my marriage, not me being mediocre. Thanks for objecting to me being called mediocre.

really hope you work this out as it sounds like an awful situation for you.

would it help to print this thread and show it to him?

i have a 22m old monkey who can drive me nuts on occasion. at this age, as you know, kids have no real concept of danger and are just learning about boundaries etc.

my dd needs watching 24x7 otherwise she'd be swinging from the chandeliers with delight and no thought whatsover for her safety!

i also find that my mood can directly affect dd's behaviour. when i am grumpy and stressed she becomes more demanding, less patient and more likely to act up.

when i am calm and take the time to explain firmly why she can't do something at the same time as offering a distraction she is a different child.

whether you are pro-smacking or not, at this age it really serves no purpose IMO (I'm not pro-smacking myself btw). They're just not old enough to understand punishment of this nature.

but you know all this so i will stop waffling on.

maybe you could just try to encourage him to look at the benefits of staying calm but firm without resorting to the smack.

ask him if he really enjoys physically hurting his daughter. i can't believe he would say yes and assuming he doesn't say yes then show him the other options.

good luck and well done for standing up for your daughter and your beliefs. i understand your comment about "my way or the highway" but ultimately, you know you're protecting your daughter and breaking the cycle.

Paddlechick's point is a good one. Ask him how he feels knowing he's hurting and scaring her. Does he enjoy it? Does he get some sense of satisfaction from it? Does he notice that it doesn't make a difference to her behaviour?

he wants to smack a 19 month old? he's an idiot, I wouldn't leave him alone with her either

his comments simply display the fact that he does not know how to cope with your childs behaviour.he finds it stressful.(and who does'nt, they can be a nightmare at this age).
do you love him? if you do and you want it to work, get help fast.show him coping strategies,read up all you can on toddler behavior,ask your hv for advice and get tips off other mums on how they deal with sticky situations ie, before he loses his temper with her.
don't leave her alone with him unless you feel 100% sure you can trust him.

if you want my honest opinion tho, he sounds like a complete idiot. my dad was like this with us as kids and my mum never left us with him thru our whole childhood incase he smacked us.he firmly believed children should be seen and not heard, he had no idea of how a childs mind worked. it was'nt his fault tho, he was brought up like this himself,and regularly got beat for the slightest thing. i think its a very hard thing to undo.

I am with everyone else on here. Trust your instincts about the situation and don't back down. I have a 21m year old and he is always up to mischief, but he can't even understand proper english yet, never mind understand why his mother would hit him! For christ sake don't worry about what you have done. Your Dh has probably gone off on a silent one because you have made him realise he is capable of harming his child. I know something, if my Dh ever hit my 21m year old I would punch him back and would seriously consider the longjevity of our marriage! and if its any consolation, I wouldn't leave my ds with my dh if he had said that. Keep strong girl, our many opinions on your op cannot all be wrong, stick with it and stand firm or else tell him in no uncertain terms to 'do one'!!!!

Thanks, again, everyone. He finally decided to stop sulking last night and we had another talk. He acknowledged that he loses his temper, that he will try to change. I very clearly said that I cannot accept the "make it her cry for real" attitude. I think that maybe with a lot more communication, he might be able to change. That and not leaving them alone together at night when dd is tired and most likely to start on a crying fit. I'm not 100% ready to give up on him yet. Thus far, it's only threats and verbal anger (which, I know is also wrong!) and he said "it's much different to say than to do" but I asserted that maybe so but it's not ok in my books even to threaten her with it.

I'm putting my foot down on this one. If he doesn't change, that's it. I cannot accept violence (whether physical or verbal) in my house.

So there.

Good for you mediocrity, good for you

Just want to agree with all who said spanking a 19mo is unacceptable.

My friend had to leave her husband (who'd had a violent childhood) when he threatened her and she feared for her child's life. The nicest people can be abusive and your duty is to your daughter and yourself. Two women a week are killed by their current or ex partners. I'm not being melodramatic but feel it's a really serious issue.

Not suggesting your dh is this bad but a temper is a temper and I think it's a continuum.

Good luck anyway, it's great you're still talking

I have a 19 month old and know what a handful they can be they are just starting to learn about words, can't communicate their needs or emotions and get very frustrated. My DD2 lashes out at me a lot and I'm always telling her hitting/biting/pulling hair is wrong. How can I try and teach her this if I was smacking her?

I think you have done the right thing theres no way anyone should be thinking about smacking a 19 month.

I also think he needs to speak to someone about his anger issues, kids push us to the limits and if he finds her difficult at 19 months it only gets worse IMO. Either that or some episodes of Supernanny where she shows you that smacking doesn't work and what alternatives there are.

I am sorry but I wouldn't let him anywhere near my dc. He is a product of his own unfortunate upbringing but unless he addresses the underlying issues he will cause untold harm to your DD.

I am talking from personal experience of having been hit as a child (it did anything but make me respect my stepfather. Hate, yes. Respect no) as well as on an intellectual level.

There is an excellent book by Alice Miller called "For your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Childhood" which explains why this cycle of violence in child rearing has to be stopped.

At 19 months she is still a baby, there's no way she can understand what he's trying to communicate to her. Honestly, my heart broke when you told me he's trying to spank a baby, I'm glad your DD has a lovely mum like you to fight her corner. TBH it sounds like your DH has absolutely no idea how to raise a child and is simply falling back on what he can remember from his childhood. Show him House of Tiny Tearaways or something, he needs to do some parenting homework.

He mentioned the idea of going away for a couple weeks, to "give me some time". Maybe that would be a good idea. I am so very confused about whether or not to try to make things work or just accept now that we are not going to make it in the long haul. I don't want to fight fight fight for staying together just to end up breaking up a couple years from now when dd is older and thus possibly impacted more by it. I'm terribly confused. Part of my questioning - even if he does change and no longer threatens to hit her, isn't there something fundamentally wrong with him for wanting to do so in the first place. Does that make sense? I don't know to what extent I can fully forgive him for the things he has said and done up until now.

If I had known what I know now, I never would have married him. I don't regret it, as such, because dd is the love of my life but he is not. Could I put up with him, assuming the spanking issue is resolved, yes. But, should I? I know there are essentially two camps on here: 1) those who argue that you should do everything possible to stay with the dc's father (assuming no abuse) so as to ensure a two parent household and 2) those who feel that you should leave if you are unhappy as unhappy parents provide poor life examples to dc. I feel like I am walking the tightrope between those camps and don't know where I want to fall.

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

How is your relationship otherwise? Is he a good dad (apart from this). If you are seriously thinking about parting company then you are thinking serious enough for some ultimatiums. I would say to him that he HAS to do something productive to address his anger and disapline issues because you cannot forget what has happened and see how serious he is. If he does realise the seriousness of his 'threat' to your dd and is prepared to do something to change then he does realise he has a problem. If nothing positive happens from this then I expect it will eat away at your mind for ages.

Honestly, all I can think of at the moment is "give her something to cry about for real". SHE'S A BABY FFS

Magsi - yeah, I can't stop thinking about the "give her something to cry about" thing either. It eats away at me.

But, he can be really loving and great with her. When she's "good" and not crying, whining or climbing on the furniture, etc. He just can't deal with the slightest bit of "bad" (aka age appropriate if you really think about it) behaviour. I hardly ever ask him to help when she's being "bad" because I know he will end up flipping but sometimes I'm exhausted (working full time, trying to essentially take care of dd all the time after work and she often refuses to sleep until later in the eve).

Oops - I hadn't thought about the possibility that splitting up could lead to more time alone with dd... @#$! I am suspicious, though, that he wouldn't be terribly active in her life if we do split. But, I could be wrong on that.

Mediocrity, that's so sweet that your DD is the love of your life . My DS's also will always come first because they need my protection, and my DH is an adult and can look after himself.

I fully advocate staying together and trying to work through problems except where there is physical violence involved. Your DH isn't a bad person but it sounds like he honestly believes violence is the answer and unless this changes your DD is at risk in so many ways.

None of us can understand why anyone would want to harm an innocent child. But the people that do usually feel that way because they too were innocent children who were harmed physically and some empathic connection has been severed somewhere along the way. This violence gets perpetuated down the generations unless the chain is broken.

I don't wish to be alarmist but anyone whose children or indeed themselves are threatened with or actually suffer physical abuse are not only mentally at risk. Physical violence can kill. It is not just people who set out to commit murder that end up fatally harming someone. I know of more than one person who has been killed through domestic violence and I have personally witnessed (on the receiving end) how smacking and slapping a child can soon become punching and throwing across a room.

Oh please don't "stick it out for the kids". It's never worth it. If your DD told you that her husband wasn't the man of her dreams, but that she'd stick it out for the sake of the kids what would you say? I bet you would encourage her to find someone she'll love very much and stop wasting time on anyone who provides less than that. Life's too short.

pages and dizietsmama... you're probably right.

A big thing that holds me back - I don't want to hurt him. I know that he would be truly and deeply hurt if I split up with him. I care about him enough that I don't want to be the cause of that pain. He's not a bad person but he has a lot of baggage (sexually abused by female caretakers (more than one!) when he was little, parents hit him, father favoured his younger brother and ignored him, etc) that I'm not sure he will ever work through. But, really, my main worry are the repurcussions for dd, of both options, staying together or splitting up. Either way there are chances that she will suffer and that hurts me deeply. I have screwed up royally.

pages, you obviously managed to come out on top but your story makes me so sad for the younger version of Pages for having to suffer through that. And, makes me scared of the prospects...

Hi, just thought i'd put my two pence worth in.
I also used to smack my ds(not hard but thats bad enough) and thought he should have something to cry about, also would threaten and shout. its the way I was brought up also ended up on the receiving end of worse physical abuse.
My dp (not ds's natural father) told me this was completely unacceptable and the look of disgust on his face totally floored me.
It was what i'd learned was 'normal' and honestly thought it was normal .
Now im totally reformed thanks to DP. He told me other ways to deal with DS and I tried to stick to them. It took a while but I got there and no longer 'smack'.
Its not to say i don't feel like wringing his neck now and again (ds & dp) but I managed to changed and it was deeply ingrained, so perhaps your DH could as well.
It made me ashamed when I thought of how i'd scared ds and didn't ever to want him to have to feel frightened.

just read this

would it help if instead of focusing on what you want dh not to do you agree on a strategy together on what you will do if dd is misbehaving? - naughty step or whatever you prefer.

I guess your dh is feeling a bit disempowered as his only parenting strategy is being removed and with his shitty sounding upbringing it sounds as if he doesn't have much of a model to draw on for alternatives.

There's one thing for sure - with a 19 month old you are only just at the beginning of the naughty years. If you can agree on a strategy now that will help dh feel he is doing something to control dd and that is fair and consistent the more difficult times to come will be a helluva lot easier.

I really like what hoolagirl said. I've got 3 dcs. They are infuriating. I have wanted to hit them in frustration at times. Anything to shut them up.

Many many 'perfect' parents feel these urges.

The point is I didn't and haven't done it. I walk away, put them in the garden, whatever until the moment passes.

All parents feel angry and infuriated, it's normal, goes with the turf. Doesn't make smacking ok.