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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He needs to get therapy to get his head on straight.  Period.  Personally, if my husband was unwilling to make any effort to connect with his kids, I'd be thinking about divorce.  It's not fair to the kids to have to live with a father who won't even try, and who's sexist as hell to boot.  [/quote]

It’s crossed my mind.

He’s a good to me.  He’s supportive and a very hard worker.  He doesn’t yell or hit our kids, which given his childhood means a lot.  He’s broken a lot of cycles.

[b]I sometimes wonder if he separates himself from our kids because he doesn’t know how to parent them in any other way than how he was parented but he doesn’t want to do that to our kids.[/b]  He’ll spend time with them, but they won’t even talk.  They just exist together.

I can tell it affects our oldest daughter the most. [/quote]

New poster. Regarding the bold, that is very perceptive of you, OP. He has had no role model for parenting in his life and very likely might be utterly unaware how to relate to kids. His vision of a son who would be just like him and enjoy what he enjoys, because son is male, is a very stereotypical expectation, and possibly stems from your DH's just having no idea that a child might not be a carbon copy of the parent of the same sex. I am NOT saying that as a criticism of your DH, but to point out that he seems to have no realistic frame of reference for what children of either gender are actually like, nor can he see them as individuals with individual interests and maybe quirks too.

I note you say he won't even consider therapy. I don't know the military term for it, but isn't there a family services organziation for military families which helps with things like getting service members (and family members) mental health help? (It would be an Employee Assistance Program in a business, I guess.)

Your "old school" DH really , really needs to hear [b]from a man who is also a service member[/b] that it is essential DH get therapy. I'll say it again: [b]DH will not hear YOU on this so he needs to hear this from a male peer in the military.[/b] From a superior officer would be even better. Preferably someone who can talk to him and say, "I too thought that therapy was a crock of crap but if I had not done it I would have ended up divorced and never have really known my kids. If you don't accept that you do not know everything and you do not know your kids, you are going to wake up and they will be graduated and gone, or they and your wife will have left." I think you might have to find out where to go so you can talk to someone and say this is what your DH needs -- a very firm push from another male military member. As soon as possible.

You also might need to give him a serious wake-up call that you are so unhappy that YOU are going to go to therapy solo to work on how to parent your kids for the years they are still at home, because you are essentially parenting solo. He may feel that he's doing a great job -- he doesn't hit them as he was hit, he treats you well, etc. -- but that is not fully parenting and he will not get that unless someone helps him to see it. He might get very angry if you tell him you feel that you are doing this alone and that he does not know his own children, so prepare your script for how to react if he gets angry.

You might consider counseling for the kids at some point too. They are growing up feeling they are inadequate, to their dad. Of course he does not mean to do that to them, but it's the effect on them, in the end. He is right that he has no connection to them because he can only connect with the stereotypes of what he believes they should be, not with the real individuals they are. I truly hope you and the kids get outside help and that you can get him to accept outside help. He sounds like a decent person who is trapped by his upbringing and trauma in a very antiquated world, but it's the world he knows and can control in his mind.

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