Husband annoyed at taking his injured daughter to urgent care

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unacceptable. Beyond all the other points made by PPs, I also can't imagine anything less attractive than a man who can't take care of his family, especially in times of crisis. I can only assume you have stopped sleeping with him and he is upset about that, too.

+1

[Anonymous]

My exDH is like this. He could not comprehend putting a child’s (or my) needs above his comfort. I didn’t realize it until we had a baby and he would not do his share unless he had a full night’s sleep and would not feed the baby or make me food when I was bedridden until he had eaten. His rationalization was that three people shouldn’t be uncomfortable if one less person could be uncomfortable or something insane like that.

He was stuck in little boy mode and really believed that others should meet his needs first. It was weird and sad and ugly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does every DH have to be the main parent. You're the main parent, OP. Just do the parenting and let him do the 1billion other things that also have to get done to run a family.

I know people are bristling at this. But honestly, as a strategy it worked really well in my family. I did nothing but kid stuff and my spouse did everything else except that spouse did childcare drop off and pick up because my commute was longer. We had very little conflict because we each did our part to make the family work. And we were both pretty happy about it. I can't remember the last time I did yard work (besides my garden), took the car for service or an oil change, found a plumber, washed a car, cleaned my house and whatever other billion things it takes to keep a house running successfully. Even though my kids are grown, I still don't do these things. My spouse wasn't a bad parent, but wasn't a good caretaker until they got a lot older. The difference between me and OP is that I could count on my spouse in emergencies.

Look, you are missing the whole point, likely because you can’t actually grasp what this man is doing (because your DH was probably a basically decent and non-abusive person). Go back and read what OP wrote again. She is NOT complaining about being the primary parent. She is not saying her DH needs to stay up all night changing diapers. She is describing angry, abusive behavior during crises and emergencies (the older child’s concussion; the younger child’s midnight nosebleed). No matter how much a SAHM does, she cannot prevent emergencies, children crying and getting sick at night, and the fact that yes, sometimes she will need some help at home. A man who reacts angrily to a toddler with a nosebleed has issues that go FAR beyond the household division of labor.

[Anonymous]

Your DH sounds awful. I would have a serious talk with him about going to both individual and couples therapy and would start planning for divorce. You and your kids do not deserve to spend your lives with someone like that.

[Anonymous]

Anger is a secondary emotion- so he may be feeling anxiety and it is coming out as anger. That doesn’t make it okay for you or for the kids. Can he do an anti anxiety med or some counseling to help with that? The underlying issue might be coming out as as anger but it needs to be addressed.

[Anonymous]

Complete and utter turn off. Zero excuse or room should be made for his inexcusable behavior.

A lousy rage filled husband ... Who can't control his temper with his own small children who are sick..

OP, Are you ok?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He needs an anger management therapist and if he refuses I would consider a divorce. I'm not sure why you had a second child but here we are.

I would also go back to work. You need to be able to support yourself.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm just really over my husband's inability to control his temper during any kind of stressful parenting situation. Case in point, a couple days ago my 6 yo daughter came home from camp where she had a basketball hit her on the side of the head. Initially she seemed ok but around dinnertime started complaining of severe ear pain and a headache. Called her pediatrician who advised us to go to urgent care to get her checked out. As I'm still breastfeeding a young toddler, my husband was to take her and spent the entire time they were getting ready to go huffing around the house, slamming dresser drawers or whatever, because he was pissed that he had to go, because he didn't think her pain was "that bad" and "nobody gets a concussion from a basketball." Meanwhile this is while I'm comforting my daughter who is in a lot of pain. On the way out he slammed the front door. Cute. Turns out she had a pretty severe injury and ended up vomiting and dizzy and needed to be admitted to the hospital.. she's doing a lot better now but I'm just still so angry when I think about his temper tantrum about taking his injured kid to urgent care.

Oh and a few weeks ago our toddler had a nosebleed in the middle of the night and my husband and I were with him to help, and my husband was just so angry at having been woken up that he was cussing out the toddler,"WTF (toddler name!)! It's the middle of the night! ARRRGHHHH", and stomping around, meanwhile the poor kid can't help that he had a nosebleed and is scared and stressed out already and I'm trying to get both of them to calm down.

These are both medical examples but he loses it during any kind of mundane stress, kid won't get ready for school on time, kid isn't hungry and won't eat at dinner, kid isn't listening, whatever. Just normal everyday parental interactions he manages to get so worked up and makes every situation worse and way more stressful than it needs to be. We use an easy 1,2,3 then time-out strategy at our house when our kids our misbehaving, which works well for them, and he never remembers to use it, just lets himself get super annoyed and angry instead and then blows up. We talk about it and he admits he loses his patience too easily and feels bad but we never get beyond that.

It could be that he's a bad person, has mental disorders, etc. It might also be that there is 0 happiness in his life because it's entirely centered around performing tasks on demand for how you think everything should be done. He's probably unwilling at this point to end it but he's on his way.

Taking a child to the ER is a “task on demand”? Helping a toddler with a midnight nosebleed is a “task on demand”? Sadly I believe you actually mean this - and I also think this is the thinking that made my exDH behave identically to OP’s whenever our child or I got sick. These incidents are some of the very worst memories of our marriage.

I eventually concluded that in fact, my exDH reacted to any emergency as something that I was doing to him. Instead of his instinct being to he our kid, his instinct was to attack and blame me. Like, even when our child literally could not breathe from severe croup.

So yeah, without meaning to, you exposed the thought process here that these guys use in any circumstance where their says anything with authority (including “call 911!”): “I will NOT be ordered around by that nag! She is just hysterical and trying to tell me what to do.”

It all, I believe, boils down to power. In a scenario where a child is sick, the mom generally has the drive and authority to get the kid help. This confluence of the woman’s power and authority triggers the man’s opposition and anger, and he expresses it. Even if the emergency is clear for all to see, he denies it because he does not want to give her the power ti manage the emergency.

[Anonymous]

OP, if your DH is like mine he may also be controlling and sabotage your attempts to go back to work and/or your job once you get one. For this reason I recommend you look at your finances very carefully right now and document everything and make sure you have joint control. Make sure you have retirement funds in your name and not just a 401k in his name from his job that “you’ll both use when you retire”. No.

If you have any non-marital assets, keep them sequestered. If you have a way to put away tiny amounts of emergency money, you need to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you both let your DD down. If he was angry, you should have taken her. Surely you have frozen breast milk for your toddler.

Way to blame the victim

[Anonymous]

This is really big OP, it should be a turning point. To throw a tantrum and slam doors when a child is in severe pain with a possible head injury, which ends up putting her into the hospital... this is beyond the pale, ultimatum, someone moves out for a few days to reflect territory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm just really over my husband's inability to control his temper during any kind of stressful parenting situation. Case in point, a couple days ago my 6 yo daughter came home from camp where she had a basketball hit her on the side of the head. Initially she seemed ok but around dinnertime started complaining of severe ear pain and a headache. Called her pediatrician who advised us to go to urgent care to get her checked out. As I'm still breastfeeding a young toddler, my husband was to take her and spent the entire time they were getting ready to go huffing around the house, slamming dresser drawers or whatever, because he was pissed that he had to go, because he didn't think her pain was "that bad" and "nobody gets a concussion from a basketball." Meanwhile this is while I'm comforting my daughter who is in a lot of pain. On the way out he slammed the front door. Cute. Turns out she had a pretty severe injury and ended up vomiting and dizzy and needed to be admitted to the hospital.. she's doing a lot better now but I'm just still so angry when I think about his temper tantrum about taking his injured kid to urgent care.

Oh and a few weeks ago our toddler had a nosebleed in the middle of the night and my husband and I were with him to help, and my husband was just so angry at having been woken up that he was cussing out the toddler,"WTF (toddler name!)! It's the middle of the night! ARRRGHHHH", and stomping around, meanwhile the poor kid can't help that he had a nosebleed and is scared and stressed out already and I'm trying to get both of them to calm down.

These are both medical examples but he loses it during any kind of mundane stress, kid won't get ready for school on time, kid isn't hungry and won't eat at dinner, kid isn't listening, whatever. Just normal everyday parental interactions he manages to get so worked up and makes every situation worse and way more stressful than it needs to be. We use an easy 1,2,3 then time-out strategy at our house when our kids our misbehaving, which works well for them, and he never remembers to use it, just lets himself get super annoyed and angry instead and then blows up. We talk about it and he admits he loses his patience too easily and feels bad but we never get beyond that.

It could be that he's a bad person, has mental disorders, etc. It might also be that there is 0 happiness in his life because it's entirely centered around performing tasks on demand for how you think everything should be done. He's probably unwilling at this point to end it but he's on his way.

Taking a child to the ER is a “task on demand”? Helping a toddler with a midnight nosebleed is a “task on demand”? Sadly I believe you actually mean this - and I also think this is the thinking that made my exDH behave identically to OP’s whenever our child or I got sick. These incidents are some of the very worst memories of our marriage.

I eventually concluded that in fact, my exDH reacted to any emergency as something that I was doing to him. Instead of his instinct being to he our kid, his instinct was to attack and blame me. Like, even when our child literally could not breathe from severe croup.

So yeah, without meaning to, you exposed the thought process here that these guys use in any circumstance where their says anything with authority (including “call 911!”): “I will NOT be ordered around by that nag! She is just hysterical and trying to tell me what to do.”

It all, I believe, boils down to power. In a scenario where a child is sick, the mom generally has the drive and authority to get the kid help. This confluence of the woman’s power and authority triggers the man’s opposition and anger, and he expresses it. Even if the emergency is clear for all to see, he denies it because he does not want to give her the power ti manage the emergency.

Similar DH and mine later said that I made him feel emasculated in these situations and that’s why he got so angry.

Ok, then step up and be masculine and take action if it’s so important to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, if your DH is like mine he may also be controlling and sabotage your attempts to go back to work and/or your job once you get one. For this reason I recommend you look at your finances very carefully right now and document everything and make sure you have joint control. Make sure you have retirement funds in your name and not just a 401k in his name from his job that “you’ll both use when you retire”. No.

If you have any non-marital assets, keep them sequestered. If you have a way to put away tiny amounts of emergency money, you need to.

Good advice. She can also work on finding a job or career that he is less able to sabotage. The main way my exDH tried to sabotage me was by refusing to do sick days and to attempt to get out of his share of pick ups/drop offs. The key was to put solid childcare and backup care plans into place, and for me to have a job that had sufficient sick leave. I also put my relational effort into making sure he did equal pick up and drop off. It would be like the ONLY thing I would insist on at home - everything else he could flake on or do half ass, but he needed to do the K drop off every morning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thanks for the helpful replies. To clarify I am a SAHM, we have two kids. I should have added it was the toddler’s bedtime when they left for urgent care and I’m always the one to put him to bed and I nurse him before he goes down. If I’m not there, he won’t go to sleep until I come home, so I thought it would be more stressful on my husband to stay with the crying, not-sleeping toddler than take my daughter to urgent care. Yes, I am working on weaning my toddler so bedtime can be done by anyone, we just haven’t quite gotten there yet.

I’m regards to the nosebleed, I was the one to get up with him when it happened but this one was worse than usual and I couldn’t get the bleeding to stop and the toddler was scared and crying loudly, and that woke my DH up when he came storming in angry that he had been woken up, instead of being supportive or caring. I am always the one to wake up with the kids at night for whatever reason. I am the default parent in all medical stuff, bedtime waking, discipline (bc misbehaving stresses DH out), and I generally keep the peace at home and try to keep everything low stress. But I resent that I can’t even lean on DH in an emergency, or to just provide basic parental care when it’s needed without worrying about how he’ll react.

Also DH works from home at a cushy low-stress well-paying job so I can’t blame work stress. We have some other stressors going on in our lives right now but they are affecting us equally and I’m managing not to lash out at the kids.

Then go get yourself a cushy work from home job. But the nighttime wake-ups are yours b/c with a kid at camp and a napping toddler, you can take a rest then. Even with a cushy job your, husband can’t take a midday nap. If you don’t like your job, find a new one and get the balance you want since you don’t seem to like the labor division you signed up for.

Honestly, STFU. The fact that he works doesn’t give him the right to be a jerk and also does not exempt him from all domestic duties. You MAGA red pill trolls crack me up - spouting off this Jurassic sh*t on the one hand justifying terrible male behavior, then fretting about our declining birth rate on the other hand.

All domestic duties? How do we know? We have two examples.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm just really over my husband's inability to control his temper during any kind of stressful parenting situation. Case in point, a couple days ago my 6 yo daughter came home from camp where she had a basketball hit her on the side of the head. Initially she seemed ok but around dinnertime started complaining of severe ear pain and a headache. Called her pediatrician who advised us to go to urgent care to get her checked out. As I'm still breastfeeding a young toddler, my husband was to take her and spent the entire time they were getting ready to go huffing around the house, slamming dresser drawers or whatever, because he was pissed that he had to go, because he didn't think her pain was "that bad" and "nobody gets a concussion from a basketball." Meanwhile this is while I'm comforting my daughter who is in a lot of pain. On the way out he slammed the front door. Cute. Turns out she had a pretty severe injury and ended up vomiting and dizzy and needed to be admitted to the hospital.. she's doing a lot better now but I'm just still so angry when I think about his temper tantrum about taking his injured kid to urgent care.

Oh and a few weeks ago our toddler had a nosebleed in the middle of the night and my husband and I were with him to help, and my husband was just so angry at having been woken up that he was cussing out the toddler,"WTF (toddler name!)! It's the middle of the night! ARRRGHHHH", and stomping around, meanwhile the poor kid can't help that he had a nosebleed and is scared and stressed out already and I'm trying to get both of them to calm down.

These are both medical examples but he loses it during any kind of mundane stress, kid won't get ready for school on time, kid isn't hungry and won't eat at dinner, kid isn't listening, whatever. Just normal everyday parental interactions he manages to get so worked up and makes every situation worse and way more stressful than it needs to be. We use an easy 1,2,3 then time-out strategy at our house when our kids our misbehaving, which works well for them, and he never remembers to use it, just lets himself get super annoyed and angry instead and then blows up. We talk about it and he admits he loses his patience too easily and feels bad but we never get beyond that.

It could be that he's a bad person, has mental disorders, etc. It might also be that there is 0 happiness in his life because it's entirely centered around performing tasks on demand for how you think everything should be done. He's probably unwilling at this point to end it but he's on his way.

Taking a child to the ER is a “task on demand”? Helping a toddler with a midnight nosebleed is a “task on demand”? Sadly I believe you actually mean this - and I also think this is the thinking that made my exDH behave identically to OP’s whenever our child or I got sick. These incidents are some of the very worst memories of our marriage.

I eventually concluded that in fact, my exDH reacted to any emergency as something that I was doing to him. Instead of his instinct being to he our kid, his instinct was to attack and blame me. Like, even when our child literally could not breathe from severe croup.

So yeah, without meaning to, you exposed the thought process here that these guys use in any circumstance where their says anything with authority (including “call 911!”): “I will NOT be ordered around by that nag! She is just hysterical and trying to tell me what to do.”

It all, I believe, boils down to power. In a scenario where a child is sick, the mom generally has the drive and authority to get the kid help. This confluence of the woman’s power and authority triggers the man’s opposition and anger, and he expresses it. Even if the emergency is clear for all to see, he denies it because he does not want to give her the power ti manage the emergency.

Similar DH and mine later said that I made him feel emasculated in these situations and that’s why he got so angry.

Ok, then step up and be masculine and take action if it’s so important to you.

I’m impressed he could even articulate that. Although I suppose it could be even worse if he said that feeling emasculated justified medically neglecting his kids.