My father was not abusive in the slightest to us growing up and we weren’t spanked. But if one of my brothers was throwing haymakers at him after getting in trouble he would not sit there taking it and gently ask little Johnny to stop hitting me pretty please.

jfc someone used this term upthread and PPs have continued it as if the kid is Rambo. He's an 8 year old boy. A grown man who can't subdue a 2nd grader without a chokehold isn't responding out of personal fear. That's what dangerous, uncontrolled anger looks like. And trying to distinguish between "hands on throat" and "squeezing" is like parsing out a slap vs a punch to the face.

I'm so sorry OP. You're in a tough spot with your kids, but this is a bright line. I hope your holiday is peaceful and you can get clarity and make a plan.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been in this situation, except my kid was older and the horrible offense was literally not handing over a piece of paper when DH asked. My kid is a dream easy straight A kid. He just HAD to have obedience or he felt he was being made “subservient”.
Move money, talk to lawyers, and find a male councilor who deals with domestic violence. I gave mine a choice. He started weekly therapy that week, and hasn’t stopped in 4 years.
If your husband says “no” to at least weekly individual therapy you are in serious danger. Report to the police. Take off work, pack bags, move money, call a lawyer, and leave without telling him. Follow the Domestic Violence Center.

That's entirely different than what OP described. As usual, people with the most extreme experiences get triggered and post the most extreme advice.

I can't imagine taking a swing at either of my parents, or imagine what would have happened. It's beyond my comprehension. If my 8 year old came at me swinging, I would absolutely shove him away and use the f word.

And what’s triggering you to lie to protect an abuser? The swearing wasn’t part of the violent altercation, it had taken place in the preceding weeks, which is why people are saying it’s escalating. Why are you deliberately distorting the OPs narrative? Did you have an experience of abuse?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. He and my son are saying there was no "strangling" or pressure on the neck, does this matter? I looked immediately afterwards and saw no marks.

In my mind there are 1k ways to restrain a child or leave the situation without putting hands on the neck. Even moving a child to the bed in a somewhat rough manner by picking them up around the waist or shoulders....

Your son started swinging at his father. Your son has an anger management problem. Your husband curses at your son. Your husband has an anger management problem. They both need courses for this. Anger management classes.

Whether there were marks or not is irrelevant. An adult does not respond this way even to an aggressive child. Your husband is abusive to his kid, both verbally and physically. It will escalate and you are next. You need to get out and as quickly as you can.

As someone whose husband escalated into abusive behavior, it’s easy to say “get out” but the reality is that it is very hard to keep your kids away from an abuser. DH has been involuntarily hospitalized for being a threat to me, we have a protective order, multiple CPS calls and a finding of “indicated abuse”, visitation is limited and supervised, and my kid still came home with fresh bruises a few weeks ago.

There are no easy solutions.

I’m a different poster than you quoted but I am one who said get out.

You can only fight in the courts, get limited/supervised visitation etc. if you and your children are still alive. I don’t think it’s easy or uncomplicated just that it is genuinely the only way to protect the OP and her children from ongoing and escalating abuse. I’m so sorry for what you went through and I’m so sorry for your kids but you are an incredible and powerful mother for getting them out even if the struggle is ongoing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. He and my son are saying there was no "strangling" or pressure on the neck, does this matter? I looked immediately afterwards and saw no marks.

In my mind there are 1k ways to restrain a child or leave the situation without putting hands on the neck. Even moving a child to the bed in a somewhat rough manner by picking them up around the waist or shoulders....

Your son started swinging at his father. Your son has an anger management problem. Your husband curses at your son. Your husband has an anger management problem. They both need courses for this. Anger management classes.

Whether there were marks or not is irrelevant. An adult does not respond this way even to an aggressive child. Your husband is abusive to his kid, both verbally and physically. It will escalate and you are next. You need to get out and as quickly as you can.

As someone whose husband escalated into abusive behavior, it’s easy to say “get out” but the reality is that it is very hard to keep your kids away from an abuser. DH has been involuntarily hospitalized for being a threat to me, we have a protective order, multiple CPS calls and a finding of “indicated abuse”, visitation is limited and supervised, and my kid still came home with fresh bruises a few weeks ago.

There are no easy solutions.

Exactly this.

The delusion on this thread is incredible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You get the 8 year old to settle down.

Not a troll. The kid was being violent. He went after his brother, then his father. Something is wrong there.

+1. And 8 is old enough to know he can get away with crying to mommy after he got consequences for punching daddy. He’s not a toddler. This kid seems to be a problem child.

Ok, and whose fault is that? The mom or the dad's, who's yelling "eff you" to his child and putting their hands on his neck?

Op now says that he didn't put his hands on the child's neck.

So we have a father who has an anger problem.
A mother who exaggerates/ lies
An 8 year old who lies and has an anger problem
A younger sibling who has to deal with all of the above and get s beat up by older sibling and mom defends the older sibling.
Family therapy and parenting classes at a minimum.

OP here. I have maintained this whole time that DH did indeed put his hands on DS neck. DH himself admits that. I subsequently asked if there is a difference between putting hands on someone's neck vs choking them, ie squeezing on the throat while having your hands around someone's neck.

Ummm yes there’s a major difference and a lot of people in this thread don’t seem to understand it

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your husband sounds insane.

I have an 8 year old son who has anger issues and sometimes lashes out at me and DH so I get how difficult that is. It is very frustrating and hard to know how to deal w/ it especially because in the moment, we get very upset ourselves so it's hard to control ourselves. But I cannot imagine either my DH or myself ever getting to a point of putting our hands on our child the way your husband did to your child. The most I'd ever do physically would be to try to hold/restrain my son by holding his arms still. And that would only be if he was actively trying to hurt me or someone else and for some reason we could not leave the room. My first option when my son is angry and getting violent/or I think he might become violent is to leave the room and close the door and let him calm down for a few minutes. If for some reason I cannot leave the room at that moment, my next option would be to hold his arms still by like a bear hug type of restraint. I would NEVER do anything that could physically hurt my child. And putting my hands around/on his neck would be a totally insane reaction.

Yelling f*ck you! or go f*ck yourself! to an 8 year old is also an insane reaction. Cursing at someone is abusive behavior. Not only that but it will only make the situation worse. Putting hands on a child to physically hurt them or yelling curses at them to emotionally hurt them will only make your son's behavior worse, not better. He needs to be taught how to behave, not shown examples in your husband of how not to behave. Your husband needs to go to anger mgmt/therapy/parenting classes and/or your whole family needs family counseling.

Your husband's behavior seems to be escalating. Maybe in his own childhood, he was similar to your son and the way he's acting now is how his own parents dealt with him so he's repeating that pattern. Maybe he was the same age your son is now when things started getting out of control for him in his childhood/when his own parents started abusing him, so seeing your son's behavior is triggering for him and he has outsized reactions. Whatever the reason, you need to figure it out and work together to get it under control or it will only get worse. This is a crisis situation. This is extreme. Please get help.

Sounds like your way isn't working if you're dealing with this over and over. I wonder if OP's DS will try to swing at his father again.

Yes, it's likely that what the kid will learn from this is to take out his anger on people who are smaller or less powerful than him. So, he might not swing at Dad again, because he's learned that beating up younger kids and eventually women is safer.

Is that the kind of man you want to raise?

Maybe he'll learn, if I'm violent, others will defend themselves and I won't like it, so I'd better not act like that again.

It doesn't work like that.. kids with a violent parent learn to either accept violence and abuse from others or become the violent abuser

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been in this situation, except my kid was older and the horrible offense was literally not handing over a piece of paper when DH asked. My kid is a dream easy straight A kid. He just HAD to have obedience or he felt he was being made “subservient”.
Move money, talk to lawyers, and find a male councilor who deals with domestic violence. I gave mine a choice. He started weekly therapy that week, and hasn’t stopped in 4 years.
If your husband says “no” to at least weekly individual therapy you are in serious danger. Report to the police. Take off work, pack bags, move money, call a lawyer, and leave without telling him. Follow the Domestic Violence Center.

That's entirely different than what OP described. As usual, people with the most extreme experiences get triggered and post the most extreme advice.

I can't imagine taking a swing at either of my parents, or imagine what would have happened. It's beyond my comprehension. If my 8 year old came at me swinging, I would absolutely shove him away and use the f word.

Seriously. My father was not abusive in the slightest to us growing up and we weren’t spanked. But if one of my brothers was throwing haymakers at him after getting in trouble he would not sit there taking it and gently ask little Johnny to stop hitting me pretty please.

It's telling that the only way you can think to get an 8 year old under control is for you to swear at him and throw him around.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone in this thread is massively overreacting

So...it's okay for a father to cuss at an 8 year old and to grab the same 8 yo by the throat and toss them onto a bed? My kids are 13 and 15 and we have never even come close to cussing them and have never been violent to them.

Saying the f-word at your children is completely unacceptable and a line that should never be crossed.

You read through this thread and all of the people saying "you're overreacting!" and you realize why we have so many young men shooting up this country. Everything is an overreaction till it isn't. OP these are giant flaming red flags. Please make changes for your children's sake.

Or you realize that so many young men are not give ANY pushback to violence when they're growing up, so they think violence is okay. He swung at his father. His father pushed him away. I think that's justified. Don't teach your kids the world will treat everything they do as a "teachable moment." Sometime they get back what they deserve, on a gut level.

+1. I think this thread is full of women that find a more overtly masculine-style parenting of man to boy to be too scary and dangerous and want to shelter the boy, even if it means calling CPS on your own husband. Which ironically enough feeds even more into the school shooter phenomenon than having your dad drop an F bomb on you when you’re acting up ever did.

Keep telling yourself that. DH is a former D1 athlete, has never touched our children. I'm from a military family, men in my family don't discipline with their hands. If you feel the need to put your hands on an 8 year old's neck to teach them a lesson, that's not masculine, that's weakness.

Did you even read the post? He wasn't disciplining him -- he was pushing away a kid who was swinging at him.

NP
What you're missing is as a man a full grown man there is no threat of any kind from an 8-year-old. That means I'm so much stronger than you and bigger than you that I can gently grab your hands hold them both in one hand and politely explain to you why you don't hit Daddy. If the kid was swinging a metal rod then it would be a different story. I would still never grab my son by the throat even just to make a point which is I'm sure part of what happened but it would be a different story.

The reason a lot of us posters have brought up cursing is the fact that it shows a lack of control. I say this as a kid who was beaten as a child. When the belt came out it was never a sudden flash of anger proceeded by a curse word. It was hey you didn't do XYZ in school you have been warned several times. Proceed upstairs for your discipline three solid strikes and out. Mind you I also used to bite my dad full force while wrestling, At most he got annoyed and walked away one time.

OP's DH lacks that sort of self control which to me is a man is kind of frightening because we are so much bigger and stronger than a child that if we really get angry for a second and lose it a lot of damage can be done very fast. I'm not going to say that she needs to immediately divorce the guy but there needs to be some kind of counseling. My DW and I don't strike our child under any circumstances, because I was raised differently I had to learn some different tools. For me because I do have a lot of self control reading a book and following a few people on Instagram that deal in gentle parenting was sufficient to provide me a set of tools with which to work with. This dude needs more than that cursing at this child was your first clue the hands on the neck even though there's no choke supposedly. Perhaps it was just a simple lift and toss and he did throw him on the bed which means he was concerned with how his kid landed so I'm not going to scream divorce like some of these people are. That said, this needs to be your family's come to Jesus moment. Also I would try talking with your husband and trying to discern does he consider himself to be fully in control in these moments or is he one of those people that claims "oh, I saw red" (he's in full control no matter what, it's his perspective that is of importance).

But seriously just take a 30,000 ft view on this thing. How many men have to grab and hit your old by the neck because of a couple swings??? As I said in the earlier post the day I do that is the day I turn in my man card.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have been in this situation, except my kid was older and the horrible offense was literally not handing over a piece of paper when DH asked. My kid is a dream easy straight A kid. He just HAD to have obedience or he felt he was being made “subservient”.
Move money, talk to lawyers, and find a male councilor who deals with domestic violence. I gave mine a choice. He started weekly therapy that week, and hasn’t stopped in 4 years.
If your husband says “no” to at least weekly individual therapy you are in serious danger. Report to the police. Take off work, pack bags, move money, call a lawyer, and leave without telling him. Follow the Domestic Violence Center.

That's entirely different than what OP described. As usual, people with the most extreme experiences get triggered and post the most extreme advice.

I can't imagine taking a swing at either of my parents, or imagine what would have happened. It's beyond my comprehension. If my 8 year old came at me swinging, I would absolutely shove him away and use the f word.

Seriously. My father was not abusive in the slightest to us growing up and we weren’t spanked. But if one of my brothers was throwing haymakers at him after getting in trouble he would not sit there taking it and gently ask little Johnny to stop hitting me pretty please.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your husband sounds insane.

I have an 8 year old son who has anger issues and sometimes lashes out at me and DH so I get how difficult that is. It is very frustrating and hard to know how to deal w/ it especially because in the moment, we get very upset ourselves so it's hard to control ourselves. But I cannot imagine either my DH or myself ever getting to a point of putting our hands on our child the way your husband did to your child. The most I'd ever do physically would be to try to hold/restrain my son by holding his arms still. And that would only be if he was actively trying to hurt me or someone else and for some reason we could not leave the room. My first option when my son is angry and getting violent/or I think he might become violent is to leave the room and close the door and let him calm down for a few minutes. If for some reason I cannot leave the room at that moment, my next option would be to hold his arms still by like a bear hug type of restraint. I would NEVER do anything that could physically hurt my child. And putting my hands around/on his neck would be a totally insane reaction.

Yelling f*ck you! or go f*ck yourself! to an 8 year old is also an insane reaction. Cursing at someone is abusive behavior. Not only that but it will only make the situation worse. Putting hands on a child to physically hurt them or yelling curses at them to emotionally hurt them will only make your son's behavior worse, not better. He needs to be taught how to behave, not shown examples in your husband of how not to behave. Your husband needs to go to anger mgmt/therapy/parenting classes and/or your whole family needs family counseling.

Your husband's behavior seems to be escalating. Maybe in his own childhood, he was similar to your son and the way he's acting now is how his own parents dealt with him so he's repeating that pattern. Maybe he was the same age your son is now when things started getting out of control for him in his childhood/when his own parents started abusing him, so seeing your son's behavior is triggering for him and he has outsized reactions. Whatever the reason, you need to figure it out and work together to get it under control or it will only get worse. This is a crisis situation. This is extreme. Please get help.

Sounds like your way isn't working if you're dealing with this over and over. I wonder if OP's DS will try to swing at his father again.

Yes, it's likely that what the kid will learn from this is to take out his anger on people who are smaller or less powerful than him. So, he might not swing at Dad again, because he's learned that beating up younger kids and eventually women is safer.

Is that the kind of man you want to raise?

Maybe he'll learn, if I'm violent, others will defend themselves and I won't like it, so I'd better not act like that again.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your husband sounds insane.

I have an 8 year old son who has anger issues and sometimes lashes out at me and DH so I get how difficult that is. It is very frustrating and hard to know how to deal w/ it especially because in the moment, we get very upset ourselves so it's hard to control ourselves. But I cannot imagine either my DH or myself ever getting to a point of putting our hands on our child the way your husband did to your child. The most I'd ever do physically would be to try to hold/restrain my son by holding his arms still. And that would only be if he was actively trying to hurt me or someone else and for some reason we could not leave the room. My first option when my son is angry and getting violent/or I think he might become violent is to leave the room and close the door and let him calm down for a few minutes. If for some reason I cannot leave the room at that moment, my next option would be to hold his arms still by like a bear hug type of restraint. I would NEVER do anything that could physically hurt my child. And putting my hands around/on his neck would be a totally insane reaction.

Yelling f*ck you! or go f*ck yourself! to an 8 year old is also an insane reaction. Cursing at someone is abusive behavior. Not only that but it will only make the situation worse. Putting hands on a child to physically hurt them or yelling curses at them to emotionally hurt them will only make your son's behavior worse, not better. He needs to be taught how to behave, not shown examples in your husband of how not to behave. Your husband needs to go to anger mgmt/therapy/parenting classes and/or your whole family needs family counseling.

Your husband's behavior seems to be escalating. Maybe in his own childhood, he was similar to your son and the way he's acting now is how his own parents dealt with him so he's repeating that pattern. Maybe he was the same age your son is now when things started getting out of control for him in his childhood/when his own parents started abusing him, so seeing your son's behavior is triggering for him and he has outsized reactions. Whatever the reason, you need to figure it out and work together to get it under control or it will only get worse. This is a crisis situation. This is extreme. Please get help.

Sounds like your way isn't working if you're dealing with this over and over. I wonder if OP's DS will try to swing at his father again.

Yes, it's likely that what the kid will learn from this is to take out his anger on people who are smaller or less powerful than him. So, he might not swing at Dad again, because he's learned that beating up younger kids and eventually women is safer.

Is that the kind of man you want to raise?

Is that really the only way you imagine children learning?

Is that the only thing I imagine a child learning from having someone abuse them? Yes. I'm a special ed teacher, I used to specialize in kids with emotional disturbance including plenty of kids in foster care who had experienced abuse. The idea that physical abuse teaches kids to not be violent is absurd. It just teaches them to turn their violence on people they know can't hurt them, like those who are smaller and weaker, and teachers.

And I, unfortunately, have known plenty of men who think that if their kid doesn't hit them, but hits other people, that's a sign that they're a great parent and the other people are doing it wrong.

Again, that has nothing to do with what OP described, but thanks for sharing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your husband sounds insane.

I have an 8 year old son who has anger issues and sometimes lashes out at me and DH so I get how difficult that is. It is very frustrating and hard to know how to deal w/ it especially because in the moment, we get very upset ourselves so it's hard to control ourselves. But I cannot imagine either my DH or myself ever getting to a point of putting our hands on our child the way your husband did to your child. The most I'd ever do physically would be to try to hold/restrain my son by holding his arms still. And that would only be if he was actively trying to hurt me or someone else and for some reason we could not leave the room. My first option when my son is angry and getting violent/or I think he might become violent is to leave the room and close the door and let him calm down for a few minutes. If for some reason I cannot leave the room at that moment, my next option would be to hold his arms still by like a bear hug type of restraint. I would NEVER do anything that could physically hurt my child. And putting my hands around/on his neck would be a totally insane reaction.

Yelling f*ck you! or go f*ck yourself! to an 8 year old is also an insane reaction. Cursing at someone is abusive behavior. Not only that but it will only make the situation worse. Putting hands on a child to physically hurt them or yelling curses at them to emotionally hurt them will only make your son's behavior worse, not better. He needs to be taught how to behave, not shown examples in your husband of how not to behave. Your husband needs to go to anger mgmt/therapy/parenting classes and/or your whole family needs family counseling.

Your husband's behavior seems to be escalating. Maybe in his own childhood, he was similar to your son and the way he's acting now is how his own parents dealt with him so he's repeating that pattern. Maybe he was the same age your son is now when things started getting out of control for him in his childhood/when his own parents started abusing him, so seeing your son's behavior is triggering for him and he has outsized reactions. Whatever the reason, you need to figure it out and work together to get it under control or it will only get worse. This is a crisis situation. This is extreme. Please get help.

Sounds like your way isn't working if you're dealing with this over and over. I wonder if OP's DS will try to swing at his father again.

Yes, it's likely that what the kid will learn from this is to take out his anger on people who are smaller or less powerful than him. So, he might not swing at Dad again, because he's learned that beating up younger kids and eventually women is safer.

Is that the kind of man you want to raise?

Is that really the only way you imagine children learning?

Is that the only thing I imagine a child learning from having someone abuse them? Yes. I'm a special ed teacher, I used to specialize in kids with emotional disturbance including plenty of kids in foster care who had experienced abuse. The idea that physical abuse teaches kids to not be violent is absurd. It just teaches them to turn their violence on people they know can't hurt them, like those who are smaller and weaker, and teachers.

And I, unfortunately, have known plenty of men who think that if their kid doesn't hit them, but hits other people, that's a sign that they're a great parent and the other people are doing it wrong.

Not excusing DH's behavior at all but I wonder if his fast reaction to being physically hurt is rooted in his own trauma history.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your husband sounds insane.

I have an 8 year old son who has anger issues and sometimes lashes out at me and DH so I get how difficult that is. It is very frustrating and hard to know how to deal w/ it especially because in the moment, we get very upset ourselves so it's hard to control ourselves. But I cannot imagine either my DH or myself ever getting to a point of putting our hands on our child the way your husband did to your child. The most I'd ever do physically would be to try to hold/restrain my son by holding his arms still. And that would only be if he was actively trying to hurt me or someone else and for some reason we could not leave the room. My first option when my son is angry and getting violent/or I think he might become violent is to leave the room and close the door and let him calm down for a few minutes. If for some reason I cannot leave the room at that moment, my next option would be to hold his arms still by like a bear hug type of restraint. I would NEVER do anything that could physically hurt my child. And putting my hands around/on his neck would be a totally insane reaction.

Yelling f*ck you! or go f*ck yourself! to an 8 year old is also an insane reaction. Cursing at someone is abusive behavior. Not only that but it will only make the situation worse. Putting hands on a child to physically hurt them or yelling curses at them to emotionally hurt them will only make your son's behavior worse, not better. He needs to be taught how to behave, not shown examples in your husband of how not to behave. Your husband needs to go to anger mgmt/therapy/parenting classes and/or your whole family needs family counseling.

Your husband's behavior seems to be escalating. Maybe in his own childhood, he was similar to your son and the way he's acting now is how his own parents dealt with him so he's repeating that pattern. Maybe he was the same age your son is now when things started getting out of control for him in his childhood/when his own parents started abusing him, so seeing your son's behavior is triggering for him and he has outsized reactions. Whatever the reason, you need to figure it out and work together to get it under control or it will only get worse. This is a crisis situation. This is extreme. Please get help.

Sounds like your way isn't working if you're dealing with this over and over. I wonder if OP's DS will try to swing at his father again.

Yes, it's likely that what the kid will learn from this is to take out his anger on people who are smaller or less powerful than him. So, he might not swing at Dad again, because he's learned that beating up younger kids and eventually women is safer.

Is that the kind of man you want to raise?

Is that really the only way you imagine children learning?

Anonymous wrote:I have been in this situation, except my kid was older and the horrible offense was literally not handing over a piece of paper when DH asked. My kid is a dream easy straight A kid. He just HAD to have obedience or he felt he was being made “subservient”.
Move money, talk to lawyers, and find a male councilor who deals with domestic violence. I gave mine a choice. He started weekly therapy that week, and hasn’t stopped in 4 years.
If your husband says “no” to at least weekly individual therapy you are in serious danger. Report to the police. Take off work, pack bags, move money, call a lawyer, and leave without telling him. Follow the Domestic Violence Center.

That's entirely different than what OP described. As usual, people with the most extreme experiences get triggered and post the most extreme advice.

I can't imagine taking a swing at either of my parents, or imagine what would have happened. It's beyond my comprehension. If my 8 year old came at me swinging, I would absolutely shove him away and use the f word.