Reply to How to help spouse be less rigid/more flexible with our toddler?

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Reply to "How to help spouse be less rigid/more flexible with our toddler?"

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[quote=Anonymous]OP here. Thanks for the input. I'm a big fan of Unruffled and glad others like it too. If only I could get my husband to listen to it!

I think folks are misunderstanding the example I provided. It's not about the pajamas. My husband doesn't care if she wears pajamas to bed or not. It's that when our daughter has a meltdown, which happens with some frequency because she's at that age where she is still very much learning how to regulate her emotions, my husband will often just argue with her instead of figuring out how to resolve the meltdown. He hears her being combative and his instinct is to also be combative, which creates conflict where there really isn't any. They'll argue about the pajamas for 10 minutes and then he'll do what he was always going to do and say "ok, pajamas are not a big deal."

The same thing happens on stuff where we really do have a firm line -- instead of holding the line, he'll engage in debate. To carry on with bedtime, we obviously have a rule that she has to brush her teeth before bed. If she pushes back on this with me, I very kindly but firmly explain that we have to do it and suggest she make it a game by singing a song or setting one of her windup toys on the counter while we brush. But my husband will literally argue with her, try to reason with her about it, sometimes even say stuff like "Why are you doing this to me?" which obviously she doesn't understand at all.

It's not a question of me being the permissive parent and him being more strict. We pretty much agree on what the rules are and when we are willing to be more lenient. The issue is in approach -- he just has a really hard time "being the grown up" when our toddler is being difficult. We've talked about "being her calm" and modeling the behavior we want her to have, and he gets it intellectually, but then in the moment when she says no or gets whiny, his first instinct is to just say no back and get, frankly, equally whiny.

So I'm more asking for advice on how people who have struggled with staying calm and mature in the face of really challenging toddler meltdowns remember to do so. For me it feels really instinctual -- it never occurs to me to debate any of this stuff with her. But my husband really struggles. Sometimes I think he just forgets that she is a very small child and he's engaging her the way he might engage a coworker or his brother or something. We are just trying to think of things he could do to help him remember, in the moment, to overcome the instinct to argue.[/quote]

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