Husband -father of 4- sleeps in every single day
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Anonymous
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Husband is in his 40s. Makes his own hours at work. We have 4 kids under 8. Kids all need to be out the door in the morning for preschool and elementary school between 8:30 and 9. Husband can barely get out of bed. Every day he sets his alarm for 7:45 or 8. Comes downstairs well after 8 completely disheveled, complains about ailments, not sleeping well, how gross the weather is… will begrudgingly drive preschooler to school (in his pajamas) but has nothing to do with the morning routine… I get up alone, dress kids, make breakfast, pack lunches, fill water bottles, make sure HW is done and packed, hair is brushed, shoes are on, hats/mittens/coats/masks are ready. It’s insulting that he lies in bed while I juggle the morning routine alone. After the kids leave the house, he mills around and often doesn’t leave the house until 11am. Comes home around 7. (Conveniently missing the bulk of the evening routine too.) He then parks on the couch and stays up late every night (12-1am).
To make matters worse, on the weekends or on “vacation” or during school breaks he doesn’t set an alarm and easily sleeps past 9. Sometimes doesn’t appear downstairs until 10am. If I wake him up, he gets mad. If the kids go in and jump on him, he yells at them to go away. He seems to feel zero guilt that I am on duty in the mornings 7 days a week. We have fought about this for many years now. He gets very defensive and says things like “I need more sleep than you” or “you need to respect that I have different sleeping patterns than you”. Sometimes he’ll try to change (come downstairs at 7:30 two days in a row) but then he gets especially tired and just can’t keep up. A couple times a month he’ll *go back to bed* after preschool drop off and snooze until noon. On the weekends we do quiet time and he ALWAYS naps. It makes me crazy when he gets up at 10am and then naps from 1-3. I’m at the point where I would rather be a single parent than be annoyed by this sloth lying around all the damn time. Why doesn’t he feel guilty? How do I get him to understand how unfair it is to put me in this position every single day? |
Anonymous
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This would drive me insane. Do you both work? I have no words of advice but this would an out the crap out of me. |
Anonymous
| No advice. Just me too. Even down to the “I need more sleep than you.” |
Anonymous
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Um, why did you have FOUR children with this man? Are they his biological children?
Do you have a job? If you are SAH, then some men, unfortunately, think that you are therefore solely responsible for the children since his responsibility is to provide financial support. In the meantime, do not have any more children with this man. Do not get a pet. And hire help ASAP. |
Anonymous
| What if your job started requiring you be in at 7:00am? |
Anonymous
| You need to go away on a girls’ trip and let him see how it feels to do it all himself. |
Anonymous
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I actually have zero sympathy for anyone who has more than 2 kids.
You deserve your misery. You deserve each other. |
Anonymous
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Have you brought this up very explicitly? Not like “I need more help” but what you’ve explained in detail here, all the ways his schedule is impacting the family? Then you’ll have a sense of whether he’s at least aware and willing to change this to benefit everyone.
If he’s willing it will take time to adjust because his sleep cycle is way off. Would he take melatonin or cbd to make him sleepy earlier? Then he could start changing his schedule little by little. In early covid I had an awful sleep schedule for months — because of distance learning for multiple hours a day I spent 9p-1a catching up on work every night. Eventually I got used to staying up so late and could barely get moving by 8:30 the next morning. In hindsight I was completely overwhelmed and depressed about the whole situation. It took awhile to adjust back to a schedule which is now like 930p-6a on weekdays. I now take CBD, which helps me get sleepy and sleep like a rock. Melatonin helps me get to sleep but sometimes I would wake up and have a hard time falling back to sleep. |
Anonymous
| OP are we married to the same man? Why are they so lazy… |
Anonymous
| He would be a perfect match for my ex-wife. She sleeps in every day, and also takes a nap. |
Anonymous
This behavior is unacceptable whether there is one child or five children… |
Anonymous
| I also had a “sloth laying around”. It turns out my DH had a serious alcohol problem. |
Anonymous
I have seriously considered taking a job with a very early start time. I think the kids would really suffer though… and I’m not sure I’m willing to let that happen right now… with covid there have been a lot of school disruptions and the kids need routine/consistency at home. |
Anonymous
DH does drink every night. IPAs. How do I figure out if it’s a problem though? I’m upstairs asleep shortly after the kids… he does his late night couch routine alone. |
Anonymous
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Three days a week you need to go to an exercise class at 7. Your kids will be fine. What is the worst case scenario here, they are hungry for a few hours? They aren’t dressed? They’re late to second grade? They’ll be fine. If your excuse is that it won’t be done exactly how you would, then you’re being a martyr. If something goes really wrong you will find out and then you can deal with that problem.
The only way to get your husband to do more is to leave the house. |