What the fuck do I do about H treating my son like this?

[whatthefuckdoIdoaboutmyH]

My H does love his children,.. He also has autism. And, bluntly, the iteration of autism in him is a toxic combination when it comes to being a parent. He has very, very little mindsight, a very rigid and inflexible approach, a strong belief he is right, no apparent ability to learn from his mistakes, largely because he never admits to making a mistake in the first place. He also has extremely poor emotional regulation. It doesn't matter how bad things get in his relationship, with me or now with his children, it is always someone else who is the problem. Nothing, NOTHING, makes his reflect that perhaps his behaviour is contributing to the problem.

My eldest son (older junior school age) has real eating problems and always has. He has failed to grow and is now the size of a child 3 /4 years younger than him. He has been seeing a paediatrician about this and is now on the waiting list for another. Everyone we have seen about his eating throughout his life, paediatrican, paediatric dietician, health visitor, everyone, has said the same, ' 'Don't make mealtimes stressful.' My son seems to just not be interested in food, and very out of touch with his appetite. He is prepared to be hungry rather than eat. I suspect he has a baseline of usually being hungry and so does not really notice he is, as well as a small stomach from chronic undereating. He is also very sensory sensitive, which probably does not help. He has never had a hungry phase related to a growth spurt and he has never had a growth spurt. He has never shown interest in what anyone else is eating. His diet is limited but he does eat a range of foods from all major food groups.

His Dad's strategy is to make food and then become very angry if he does not eat it. I have just had to go downstairs to intervene as my son was screaming at the top of his voice, ' Get off me! Get off me! Get off me!' as his Dad was trying to physical restrain him in his seat, whilst yelling at our son to eat. When I speak to his Dad about this he claims he is not making mealtimes stressful. If my son isn't eating he will become angry and start yelling about all the work he put in, start yelling about how he needs to eat and just go on and on. He will then insist he is not making mealtimes stressful. I have shown him a thread on here from people who said their parents were like this and the terrible effect it had on them, but I doubt he even remembers me showing him that. He never remembers anything that doesn't shore up his own narrative.

Nothing makes a difference to his Dad's approach.

Is this a one-off or does he have this battle with DS every meal at the weekend?

He may want 50:50 but he’s not that likely to take it in reality as he clearly cannot cope with parenting. He would also have to be able to take time off work for illness and he may not want that in reality either (and may not be able to negotiate it at work).

Exposing your kids to him 100% of the time for fear of him having them 50% or the time is not sensible.

I think it’s quite possible that son’s eating issues are related to DH’s behaviour - so they may resolve with less exposure to DH.

I had to give a number of ultimatums over the years when dh had crossed a boundary. It hurt and it was very stressful but was effective in changing behaviour for the better.
I absolutely agree that this problem needs to be shared with your son’s drs and teachers. It’s time to tell the truth. One thing that really helped change dh was the idea of other people’s disapproval. Shame is a real motivator. Dh would never listen to me when I was asking him to not respond with anger to ds’ behaviour but he listened to people in authority like teachers and camhs.

I did talk about this to the last paediatrician and she said she would speak with him at our next appointment, but she never! And it wasn't something I could really raise with him there. I will speak about it again with the next paediatrician and press on her the importance of this. But then, being as he paid no attention to the previous ones.. And if he suspects I have spoken with her he will just accuse me of ' poisoning' her against him. Which will give him further reason, in his own mind, to ignore me. I will speak with her though. Ask her in general to just outline, and write down in bullet points, what meal times should look like.

I also think I will try to get him out of doing mealtimes at all. Its a shame he is actually a much better cook than me. If he could work with the kids to create meals they want to eat, it could work really well. But he just makes meals he wants to eat and then rages when eldest does not eat it.

Its frequent. This is not a one off, but its not every meal time.

Have you had your son assessed for autism also? Sensory issues, battle around food etc isn't uncommon and there is a genetic link. Either way you need to work towards leaving your DH, he is abusive.

To start with he cannot be in a room with your DS when food is around. New rule. If he claims he isn't making it stressful then whats the harm in him not being there? Is there any safe foods your son eats? Especially snackwise. He could have them in his room to eat when comfortable?

In the very short term you need to take over all food/mealtimes for your son, his dad needs to have nothing to do with it at all. Longer term I would be involving social services, initially to see whether hearing professionals say his approach is abusive makes a difference to his behaviour, but ultimately to lay the groundwork for supervised contact if/when you do split.

I have autism btw and understand (to a degree) the rigidity of his thinking, but what your son is experiencing is child abuse and your H's autism is neither excuse nor reason for that. You can't let this happen even once more though OP, your H will have done massive damage to your boy already and you have to stop him doing anymore.

I would be (icily calmly) telling H that he will be having nothing to do with feeding your son from this moment on and that for everyone's sake he needs to remove himself when you are feeding him. Then maintain that boundary (by reminding H if he tries to get involved that it just ends in everyone getting stressed and upset) while you try to put something in place with social services. He may well be shocked/upset by you involving SS but that shock, plus hearing from someone other than you that he is being abusive, may be the very thing that will change his mindset.

It's abuse. Your son's 'eating problem' is also now his father.

On paper he will look like a good Dad, ironically in part because of things I have heavily pressurised him to do, like be involved in kids activities in the local area.

He would definitely want as much custody as he could get. There is a serious possibility he would be the primary carer. I wouldn't be able to live anywhere near the kids and couldn't get them to and from school so I'd possibly end up the every other weekend parent.

At the moment he spends much less than 100% of the time with them as I work from home. So me leaving, and it would be me who ended up leaving, would mean the time he spent with them alone would increase massively.

How do you think he would respond to an ultimatum and/or boundaries like have been suggested? do you think he truly loves you and dc? How would he feel if you were to say he had to change or divorce? In other words would it get through to him and get him to realise how bad his behaviour actually is or would he dig his heels in deeper and become even more of an ogre?

I have autism, my son has severe autism and eating issues. My dh has autism and bipolar. None of us would EVER behave the way your dh is. If he is capable of leading a reasonably independent adult life then he can control his behaviour and quite frankly it’s offensive you’re using autism as some way of explaining it. It’s not okay.

You need to contact womens aid and start documenting the abuse so when you leave - and you should leave - you can show a pattern of abuse which should help stop him getting 50/50.

Record this abuse. Report to everyone - police (physical and emotional abuse), GP, HV. Start building up evidence.

This is horrific. It’s abuse. You have to do something, report him to social services. And get him the fuck away from your child. My god.

This - I was going to say the same, would an ultimatum bring him to his senses op? Do you feel he loves you and your dc enough for an ultimatum to make him wake up to what he's doing?

Autism or otherwise, he sounds like he should absolutely never have had kids. You need to do everything in your power to limit his exposure to your son. GP, health visitor, social services, women’s aid, the works. If you document and record his abuse they will not give him custody.

Vile. You need to protect your children. Why are you not doing that? There are refuge's I suggest you contact one.

I can try this. Another PP suggested rigid boundaries. The problem is I have been doing this for, well, the children's entire lives. And our family life had disintegrated as a result of this. I refuse to go on holiday with him due to his behaviour, to have family days out with him due to his behaviour. I have told him he needs to show he has taken steps to get help with his behaviour and show improvement before I will start having family days out with him again. But none of that motivates him to start to change. Instead he becomes angry that I am ' 'excluding him from family life' I can explain that its him that has excluded himself due to his behaviour and that he can re-include himself by improving his behaviour, till I am blue in the face. His only explanation is that I am spiteful and want to hurt him.

In a way I get it. He has no narrative of what has happened. I genuinely believe that he has no insight into his behaviour. He simply cannot see the impact of his behaviour on others. So when he is raging, he has no insight that it is harming those around him. Its very clear to me that he sees no connection between his behaviour and how others feel about him. Because to him there has not been ' a behaviour' that he has engaged in, so how can there be a connection? Therefore the only explanation left to him is that I am 'spiteful'. And as my feelings to him have degenerated, this provides further proof of what he thinks.

He won't get that much access it you are honest about the abuse

If you have to stay together then you need to find a way to work on his behaviour. It will be a very long term project.
The first thing is to lay out some boundaries with mealtimes. If ultimatums or serious conversations don’t work then you’ll need to be more manipulative. You can say that you know mealtimes are difficult and to relieve dh of the stress that you and ds could eat separately to the rest of the family and that you will deal with all food matters for ds from now on. It might work best to make out that you are doing this out of consideration for dh. I know you shouldn’t have to do this but if it’s your only option it’s your only option.

He is abusive. If you start recording and reporting everything, he will not get custody.

I would speak to a family solicitor and see what they say about this.

Is there any reason why you seem to think he would get a much bigger share of the marital assets than you would?

Why are you assuming he would get the house and you would be in a flat? Why the claim you wokld have to be the one to leave. And why would he get primary carer when you work from home? None of this is rational it seems to be based in fear. You need to go and have a serious chat with a solicitor/s.

It doesn’t matter what he looks like on paper, if you had to pressure him to be involved with the kids it’s because he didn’t naturally want to do it.

Many men threaten 50:50 fewer actually take it.

Contact social services and explain the situation (tell the school too) and ask what you have to do to ensure any access to father is supervised when you leave. Your will get a social worker assigned to them and will support you. I think until you’re ready to leave foster care might be the best place for him for a bit.

This is a great idea if it would work.

I totally understand where you’re coming from. My experience was different as my dh has adhd but similar difficulties with empathy and insight. I didn’t really see it before we had dc and he was brilliant with them as babies. It only became an issue when Ds started having issues of his own.
it might be an idea to get yourself some support and counselling from someone with expertise in Neuro-diverse relationships.