Reply to Married for 15 years and I don’t understand my spouse

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'd be pretty pissed if my DH reacted to spilled water the way you did. You should both take a parenting class. [/quote]

Really? You think asking a child why they aren’t doing anything to clean up a mess they made us out of line?  You and OP’s DH both sound like great parents. [/quote]

NP here.  It’s not what was said, it was how it was said.  Sarcasm and rhetorical questions with a 7 year old not only has a snide tone to it but it typically isn’t effective.  It becomes very obvious when they start parroting back the same tone and phrases to you and then say, “that’s what you say to me”. Then you straddle the line between correcting them because they still need to be repectful to an adult and adjusting your behavior because you realize you don’t want them to be in a relationship some day with someone that speaks to them that way.  The way we’ve handled this is to say “here are some paper towels, let’s get this cleaned up.”  When they were little and they would get upset because we were upset, I would try to calm everyone down by using the saying about not crying over spilt milk, what’s done is done, let’s focus on cleaning this up and what can we do so we don’t spill x next time.

Both OP and DH have to figure out how to communicate better when they don’t agree with each other about parenting.   You don’t want your child to see oh going to this parent gets me out of the consequence or me spilling water starts an argument with my parents and no one is speaking to anyone. [/quote]

I agree so much. You need to either work this out or go to a professional.

It's okay for parents to have different styles but you should really be on the same team. When one loses it, the other can step in and up. In this scenario, you both could have done better. A 7 year old should not be asked why he is just standing there because that's belittling and not helpful. If he were to take it literally, he would merely answer something that wouldn't solve the present problem anyway. He should be instructed what to do. But I know that's easy to say after the fact, in the moment irritation slips out.

Where your husband went wrong is in not jumping in and helping the child himself if he disagreed with your response. He should also be able to discuss with you calmly at a later time and not do the silent treatment. Have you talked about how to parent your child? [/quote]

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