January 2012 Weddings
shellyamf
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Frustrated and Hurt Vent
Let me start by saying I love my husband. And I know he loves me and he loves Lily.
But I am very frustrated. We got into an argument this morning. P feels that I am always criticizing how he parents. Now I will admit that in the beginning I was correcting him a lot but that was mainly because he had no experience with babies. When I realized how often I was, I made very conscious efforts to not do that. I've been letting him learn by experience. Our current argument is that when Lily is doing something she shouldn't be doing, we handle it differently. And I know it's okay for us to handle the situation differently. I've tried to address with him why his method bothers me, but he refuses to listen. I'm not asking him to do things my way, but to just edit his method a little.
My method is to say no or uh-oh and ask her not to do what she is doing. Depending on what it is, I explain why in basic terms and redirect her attention. P just says no repeatedly while raising his voice. He says that if you say no often enough she will learn not to mess with it. While that may be so, there are certain things like climbing up the stairs that I feel need immediate intervention/redirection. Not just yelling no This was what I asked him to do. The other day she was headed for the stairs and I was cooking. I asked him to go get her and he just kept saying no to Lily. It wasn't stopping her. Finally after the 3rd or 4th time I asked him to "please redirect her". This made him so mad. He says by asking him I'm undercutting his parenting. UGH! No, I'm wanting you to get up off your A$$ instead of yelling no before our child hurts herself. She knows how to go up the stairs but turns around and will fall down them if you aren't there to catch her.
When he gets home from work, I ask him to watch Lily while I make dinner. She loves to be underfoot in the kitchen and beelines for the oven when I open it. Yet I still find myself having to stick my foot out to hold her off while I pull dinner out of the oven while he sits on the couch saying "No Lily". So I end up putting her in her high chair. Or I ask him to watch her while I go take a shower. When he's gone for work, I put her in her crib to shower. So when he's home, he asks me to just take her with me and put her in her crib. Really???? So yes, I find his parenting methods to be very lazy. And it drives me crazy. Then he wonders why I'm frustrated with him. And when I try to talk to him about this, he just says that our methods are different and gets mad at me. I'm not telling him he has to do things my way. I have tried to just bring up why I need his help. I don't think I need to ask for his help since he is also a parent.
He isn't always like this. There are days where his is way more involved with her. It just depends on his mood. This morning we were arguing because he brought it up out of no where that our methods are different and than proceeded to say that my methods/redirection don't work. The only reason she stops doing things is because of his "No" training. ???? Really ????? This upset me and hurt my feelings. I spend all day with her. 95% of the time I can just say her name in a warning tone and she'll stop. I try not to overuse the word NO but I do say it. I just told him that I didn't want to argue and tried to explain why what he said upset me. He just got up and started getting ready to leave saying "whatever".
Most days I feel like a single parent due to his lack of involvement or help. He comes home from work and spends at least 50% of his down time if not more playing games on his computer. He gets mad when Lily listens to me and not him.
Thanks for reading/listening. I just needed to get all that out.
But I am very frustrated. We got into an argument this morning. P feels that I am always criticizing how he parents. Now I will admit that in the beginning I was correcting him a lot but that was mainly because he had no experience with babies. When I realized how often I was, I made very conscious efforts to not do that. I've been letting him learn by experience. Our current argument is that when Lily is doing something she shouldn't be doing, we handle it differently. And I know it's okay for us to handle the situation differently. I've tried to address with him why his method bothers me, but he refuses to listen. I'm not asking him to do things my way, but to just edit his method a little.
My method is to say no or uh-oh and ask her not to do what she is doing. Depending on what it is, I explain why in basic terms and redirect her attention. P just says no repeatedly while raising his voice. He says that if you say no often enough she will learn not to mess with it. While that may be so, there are certain things like climbing up the stairs that I feel need immediate intervention/redirection. Not just yelling no This was what I asked him to do. The other day she was headed for the stairs and I was cooking. I asked him to go get her and he just kept saying no to Lily. It wasn't stopping her. Finally after the 3rd or 4th time I asked him to "please redirect her". This made him so mad. He says by asking him I'm undercutting his parenting. UGH! No, I'm wanting you to get up off your A$$ instead of yelling no before our child hurts herself. She knows how to go up the stairs but turns around and will fall down them if you aren't there to catch her.
When he gets home from work, I ask him to watch Lily while I make dinner. She loves to be underfoot in the kitchen and beelines for the oven when I open it. Yet I still find myself having to stick my foot out to hold her off while I pull dinner out of the oven while he sits on the couch saying "No Lily". So I end up putting her in her high chair. Or I ask him to watch her while I go take a shower. When he's gone for work, I put her in her crib to shower. So when he's home, he asks me to just take her with me and put her in her crib. Really???? So yes, I find his parenting methods to be very lazy. And it drives me crazy. Then he wonders why I'm frustrated with him. And when I try to talk to him about this, he just says that our methods are different and gets mad at me. I'm not telling him he has to do things my way. I have tried to just bring up why I need his help. I don't think I need to ask for his help since he is also a parent.
He isn't always like this. There are days where his is way more involved with her. It just depends on his mood. This morning we were arguing because he brought it up out of no where that our methods are different and than proceeded to say that my methods/redirection don't work. The only reason she stops doing things is because of his "No" training. ???? Really ????? This upset me and hurt my feelings. I spend all day with her. 95% of the time I can just say her name in a warning tone and she'll stop. I try not to overuse the word NO but I do say it. I just told him that I didn't want to argue and tried to explain why what he said upset me. He just got up and started getting ready to leave saying "whatever".
Most days I feel like a single parent due to his lack of involvement or help. He comes home from work and spends at least 50% of his down time if not more playing games on his computer. He gets mad when Lily listens to me and not him.
Thanks for reading/listening. I just needed to get all that out.
Re: Frustrated and Hurt Vent
In situations where she is going to hurt herself, he absolutely should be getting up and stopping the behavior. I don't see any problem with him continuing to say no, but he should be stopping the behavior.
But there are a couple things that I learned in my psych and education classes that would be helpful here, IMO. This doesn't mean I'm necessarily right, but the way I would interpret it. First, it's always better to use positive reinforcement than punishment. Saying no is a punishment. Redirecting her attention is a positive reinforcement. If she's going towards the stove, give her something more interesting. The only thing that is going to happen if he continues to say no, is that it is going to loose it's meaning, and in those cases where you really need to say no, say god forbid she's five and wants to jump off the roof... she is going to ignore him, because she knows he doesn't take the word seriously and he doesn't mean it as much as you do. Also, I learned in my behavioral psych class, that the middle ground is the best way to go for verbal directions. The example was that children who were simply told not to play with a toy, were less likely to play with a toy than those children who were told in a loud voice to never, ever, ever play with the toy. So if you apply this principle, the more he say no to her, and the louder he gets, the more she is going to want to do those things.
Okay, now that my parenting beliefs are out there, I hope that you can work it out. I think you still need to talk to him. I'm sorry!
I do still catch myself trying to help him which he interprets as correcting. I step back when I notice what I'm doing. It's just hard to do since I'm taking care of her 95% of the time. I know he has a right to his feelings, but I think he is being overly sensitive about it. He's so set in not listening to me because he feels like I correct him so much that he isn't listening when my concerns are very valid. I feel that if he were to help out more, he would notice that I'm not "correcting" him as much as he thinks.
I will try to talk to him again. Hopefully it goes better than this morning.
01.21.2012---> I married a redhead I'm crazy about.
04.2016: IT'S A BOY! Elias Alan is due!
WDW trips: 05/14 (1st trip! Art of Animation; Little Mermaid), 05/15 (Pop Century!). DL Trips: 12/15
No is a big pet peave of mine too. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. (That's for sure) Now years in the kids have different respect for each parent and they will always need mommy more.