Volitile dad and impact on kids under 10

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will cause life time trauma and damage.

If he’s like this in front of non-family he’s likely worse in private, ie extremely abusive. If you can get the wife alone, just ask how are you, is everything going ok and if she doesn’t say anything it just means she’s not ready to talk and definitely not ready to leave.

+1

[Anonymous]

I get the sense that OP is the wife, not the friend, and is writing this to dip her toe into getting feedback on this situation.

It is not good but you are in a bad spot because of you divorce, it is highly likely your kids will spend half their time alone with this guy. You need to stand up to him and draw really firm boundaries so your kids see this is unacceptable. "Diffusing" sounds like you capitulate and that isn't helping.

[Anonymous]

The wife is choosing to stay with this man. Protect your child and stay away from him. If that means staying away from her as well, do it.

[Anonymous]

Invite the wife and kids to your home
Don't discuss her husbands behaviour with her unless she brings it up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not her husband. It's her friend's husband.

OP can you just invite the mom and the kids over or to do an activity?

Yes but then he gets mad if they stay too long. Nothing seems to ever end well. Luckily he likes to golf a lot so he’s gone a decent amount.

Invite them over as much as you can while he’s golfing. That’s the best thing you can do.
Does he golf every Saturday or Sunday? A weekly routine is best, barring rain. On rainy days when he isn’t golfing, perhaps a public place like a museum where he’s less likely to make a scene. Or maybe he won’t even be interested in your choice of museums.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are you meddling in their personal business when you’re visiting?

Are you an abuser?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If any man was angry at me, I cried, well into my 30's. I was never able to become close with my father, even now late in my 40's. By the time I was a teenager I didn't respect him because despite being a control freak, he couldn't control his anger, his temper. I was physically afraid to be alone with him, to walk past him, etc. It was embarrassing when he'd scream at my mom in front of other people. He did this at my grandmother's home, on an airplane, stores, etc.

Are you my sister? This was my dad. It was scary, and also so humiliating.

And then I grew up and was free.

It is hard to see children in this situation now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have family friends and the father is incredibly moody, aggressive and volitile. The wife does her best to diffuse at all times. They have 3 kids under 10. What are the long term ramifications of growing up in this environment? My child does not like to be around him and is very scared of him.
I’m very good friends with the wife but I’m at the point where we can’t hang out with them anymore for my own and my child’s well being. But that selfishly makes me very sad because we love hanging out with the wife and kids. He openly berated his wife in front of us the other day and then I tried to diffuse and he picked a fight with me, so we left.
But I feel like he somewhat wins because he further isolates his wife from her friends.
At the end of the day, I want to be supportive but I’m very worried for them. Any advice on what I can do? Maybe this isn’t for this forum. But I am very concerned about his kids growing up like this and what the long term impact is on their mental health.

Short and long term permanent damage. He would get anger management counseling or get out of the house. I wound never tolerate behavior from a parent that would permanently damage my children!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have family friends and the father is incredibly moody, aggressive and volitile. The wife does her best to diffuse at all times. They have 3 kids under 10. What are the long term ramifications of growing up in this environment? My child does not like to be around him and is very scared of him.
I’m very good friends with the wife but I’m at the point where we can’t hang out with them anymore for my own and my child’s well being. But that selfishly makes me very sad because we love hanging out with the wife and kids. He openly berated his wife in front of us the other day and then I tried to diffuse and he picked a fight with me, so we left.
But I feel like he somewhat wins because he further isolates his wife from her friends.
At the end of the day, I want to be supportive but I’m very worried for them. Any advice on what I can do? Maybe this isn’t for this forum. But I am very concerned about his kids growing up like this and what the long term impact is on their mental health.

OP, we had a somewhat similar situation in our neighborhood recently. This dad has 3 daughters under the age of 8. There were about 10 families who were closely affected by what this dad did and here's how we handled it. Initially, we cut him off. We stopped responding to any texts of his and we stopped inviting him to anything. If we saw him anywhere, we didn't engage. We made it clear to our kids that he was to be avoided and that he was not "safe" anymore. We made sure they knew the kids were not to be shunned, but we didn't have them in our house for a while because we didn't want him to have any "reason" to think he could come over.

We voiced our concerns to the wife. We told her that we were not ok with what happened and that we were not interacting with him anymore. We said that she and the kids were still welcome but he was not. She initially understood but as time went on and his behavior became worse, we eventually cut her off as well because she refused to acknowledge any of it and kept dismissing things. We still treated the kids the same and they were welcome to play with our kids outside and our kids knew if those kids needed help that they could bring them to us. I have to wonder how your relationship with the wife hasn't been affected? I lost a lot of respect for this one because I couldn't imagine ever allowing someone to abuse my kids the way this dad was abusing his.

Eventually, the police and CPS were called and the family is now moving to another state. We tried to be supportive and we didn't want to make things worse but none of us were willing to put our own children in danger and having a relationship with the wife was not possible because he was coming after us if we talked to her and again, our relationship with her was really impacted because we saw how bad it was and she kept acting like everything was fine. I hope he gets help or she wises up and leaves him but it's not our business and not our problem anymore. Protect your kids at all costs. Protect yourself as well. Don't invite this guy's ire. Tell the wife you're there to help her if she needs it (we said that to her even after we stopped interacting with her - that any of us would help her if she or the kids ever needed it). Sadly there's no much more you can do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get a divorce. If you can't do that, he must be medicated, in therapy, and go into anger an anger management program

It’s not me but this is great advice for her. He needs all of this.

Good luck getting him to agree. The wife probably needs to take some sort of drastic action, which she likely won't because she'll be worried about either him getting 50/50 custody and being alone with the kids or coming after her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s terrible for the kids, but you know that.

Be there for her in whatever way doesn’t make him worse, and be the spot she can go with no judgment. When she is ready to escape, you want her to call you. So no badmouthing him now bc it will cause a bigger rift. (It’s hard to feel like he can abuse her without consequences, but she has to be the one deciding when she is ready.)

It is very, very likely that the kids will start taking out their feelings on other kids, including yours. Just be aware of that. I'm not saying not to have empathy for them, because none of this is their fault, but hurt people hurt people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get a divorce. If you can't do that, he must be medicated, in therapy, and go into anger an anger management program

It’s not me but this is great advice for her. He needs all of this.

Good luck getting him to agree. The wife probably needs to take some sort of drastic action, which she likely won't because she'll be worried about either him getting 50/50 custody and being alone with the kids or coming after her.

+1

Unfortunately the legal system makes it nearly impossible to protect your kids from a parent who is like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My dad was a kind, fun, generous and warm person. He also had a terrible temper and would yell at mom in front of relatives and other guests. He must have seemed like a maniac. My mom deeply resents him and felt his behavior was abusive and threatened to divorce often. She was a terrible nag and often taunted him. Their whole dance was like a toreador and a raging bull. As a child I would restrain my dad and comfort my mom.

I’m sorry, but a “kind, fun, generous, warm” person would never treat anyone in the manner you describe, especially not his wife.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s terrible for the kids, but you know that.

Be there for her in whatever way doesn’t make him worse, and be the spot she can go with no judgment. When she is ready to escape, you want her to call you. So no badmouthing him now bc it will cause a bigger rift. (It’s hard to feel like he can abuse her without consequences, but she has to be the one deciding when she is ready.)

It is very, very likely that the kids will start taking out their feelings on other kids, including yours. Just be aware of that. I'm not saying not to have empathy for them, because none of this is their fault, but hurt people hurt people.

This is not always true. I grew up in a household with an angry father, and I was afraid of his temper. I became timid what that meant was I wound up in a marriage with someone who was extremely angry and became more and more verbally abusive over the years. Our child also became timid, but either through the luck of genetics or maybe because my child had me, there was a core of strength that I lacked as a child. I eventually got divorced and now my kid is slowly coming out from that shell. Neither I nor my child ever verbally abused our peers.

[Anonymous]

My dad was like this for a while and kept blaming his stressful job until my mom told him to get his act together or she was taking us and going to her parents’. It turned out that he had very high blood pressure and a few other health issues I don’t remember. Dad became better once he was on the correct medication. It might be worth getting a medical checkup.