I've never done this before but I desperately need someone to vent to so please be kind!
My husband and I have been married a good number of years and we have 2 wonderful children together under the age of 10.
In recent years my husband has had to give up his job to become my full time carer.
It is not what we planned but we manage OK and get along fine together.
He does a lot of the jobs that I cannot manage anymore and takes me when I want to go shopping etc.
We love each other and still have a laugh together and enjoy watching a film in the evening together.
The problems occur when the children are home from school, my hubby has no patience with them.
Our son has autism and attends a special needs school. My hubby tells people our son has autism, but makes no allowance for his autistic behaviour.
He constantly berates our son over, what I consider to be small things, such as chewing loudly, talking loudly, bouncing his ball, spinning in circles etc etc.
My hubby doesn't say it in a kind way either, he will shout things like, 'why are shouting, shut up'
I actually counted the other day, he berated our son 14 times and he'd only been home an hour.
When the children are being well behaved things are OK, but as soon as they behave in any other manner than perfectly my husband cannot cope.
He will shout at the children, grab them roughly by the arm and drag them to their rooms.
Most of our arguments are now centered around the children because I refuse to sit there and watch him belittle the children or treat them badly.
We have been on parenting courses to tackle these issues and while that helped settle things for a while, my husband seems to have forgotten everything we learned.
My hubby says that I am too soft on the children, and gets angry when they don't listen to him and asks why they only listen to me.
I have tried to talk to him about what we learnt at the parenting group, asking the children politely to do something rather than ordering them around and being as consistant as possible. However he just gets angry with me making snide comments such as 'it's alright for you, you love them' and 'well we can't all be perfect like you '
I'm not saying I'm perfect, just trying to put into practice what I learnt.
He has started making snide comments to the children too like 'so when are you moving out'. I think he means it as a joke, but I don't think it's very good for their self esteem.
I want the children to grow up confident and happy, not constantly put down for the smallest infraction.
I feel like I've got to the end of my tether having these conversations with my husband when he makes no changes.
I don't want to give up on him, but I don't know what else to do.
He agreed to go to counselling but the result of that was the counsellor said he too has autism and we should just accept my husband is the way he is and cannot change.
So when I ask my hubby to be a little kinder in the way he speaks to the children he just throws at me 'I've got autism, I can't cope with their noise and you shouldn't expect me to.'
I understand it's difficult for him, but the way he treats the children is worse since he saw the counsellor, almost like he's given himself permission to act the way he does.
I've got to the point I just want to take the children and walk away.
I love my husband, but I love my children more, does that make me a terrible person?
I use the term 'walk' loosely, I'm in a wheelchair and I can't just walk away. My home is adapted so just leaving isn't an option.
Any helpful advice would be gratefully appreciated