I’m not sure what to do. Today I felt my husband’s fuse was short. He was impatient and snapped at our 8 year old who was coming along on a road trip he didn’t sign up for, full of errands for things he didn’t need. This was 3 hours of driving all together to the nearest city. Considering that, I worked out a little deal that if he behaved, was helpful (he helped list the things he could do to be helpful), he could have a reward at the end. He was behaving pretty well, but my husband’s expectations are high, in my opinion. At one point, son starts saying he’s hungry. Husband threatens he may not get his reward. I try to smooth things over saying, “it’s okay, he’s just hungry.”
Later my husband refused to go get the reward; he didn’t want to go to the mall. I smoothed it over once again by promising to buy the reward online. Understandably our son was disappointed he couldn’t have his reward today but would have to wait maybe weeks.
Husband snapped soon after again for my son having a little laugh at his expense (grabbing a handful of chips while he was driving, with some of them falling). I hinted at my husband’s fuse being short and he made me repeat that TWICE in a taunting sort of way. I just repeated myself, “maybe your fuse is short”. He spun it on me, apparently “I was the one who got mad at him in public.” Total deflecting.
I tried to bring it up this evening to no avail. He thinks I’m being condescending. He also thinks I spoil our kid. Sadly I think our child is misunderstood and not shown nearly enough empathy (mostly from his dad, but I’m not perfect by any means). Another example of his father’s treatment… with no consideration of my feelings he worked out a deal with our son last week that if he behaved he could have a cell phone (!) HUGE decision we had been adamantly against, but spur of the moment he springs this on our kid (WITHOUT TALKING TO ME FIRST) partly because 1) he wants to see improvement of his behaviour, and 2) doesn’t think he’ll be able to achieve a few days of perfect behaviour anyway, and even made this known to our kid. When I said I didn’t even agree with this, husband abruptly said “let’s call it off then.” Like the flick of a switch. Indifferent. I reminded him our son would be very upset about this, to which my husbands response was plainly, “you know I don’t care about stuff like that.”
I don’t think he understands how a child thinks and feels, nor does he want to. 90% of the time our relationship is fine, good, but this is bothering me and I’m not sure how to address it with him. I really feel for our kid and feel it is my job to protect him from this unfair treatment. But when I try to do this I am at odds with my husband. There’s no winning.
We are even doing a parenting course at the moment but I have finding him very unengaged; I am doing most of the work. He reverts to the old ways.
And if I am overreacting I would be relieved to know this and could try to relax or support my husband more…