'My husband is an overgrown child and I think I've reached my breaking point.' + UPDATE
"My[29F] husband[33M] is an overgrown child and I think I've reached my breaking point."
FrustratedWifeTW
We've been married for 4 years, together for 7. We have two kids; Daughter[4F] and Son[2M]. I'm really not sure where to start. My husband is an overgrown child, he just doesn't know when it's time to be serious.
This is the only problem in our marriage. He's extremely loving, affectionate, and kind. He LOVES being a dad. He loves our children more than anything and they love him as well. He is constantly playing with them, and I think this is where issues start to arise.
My husband cannot understand when it's time to put playtime on pause. I'm serious when I say he's in playtime mode with our children from the moment they wake up, to the moment they go to sleep.
This results in extremely hyperactive children in the morning when I'm trying to get our daughter ready for kindergarden, and it's extremely frustrating to have to struggle to get her fed/cleaned/dressed and out the door on time for school - where he then will drive her too.
At night, this results in hyperactive children who can take up to two hours to get to settle down and go to bed, and by then it's way past their bedtime and will sometimes wake up grumpy in the morning because they didn't get enough sleep.
He will sometimes even be egging our children on at night when we're sitting with them in bed trying to wind then down to sleep. It's incredibly infuriating and I will tell him to stop because I'm clearly trying to get them to sleep and all he's doing is keeping them up. He laughs and says he's just having fun.
Husband doesn't do hard discipline. He tells our kids to stop fighting each other or to stop touching fragile objects, but when it comes to time outs or taking away things like dessert, certain toys, TV time for the day, ect; he all but refuses.
He will leave me to be the "bad guy" and I'm absolutely sick of it. I'm tired of feeling like I'm the mean mom who doesn't like fun or has to ruin their fun, but he just won't do it.
I've told him that he needs to stop leaving all the hard discipline up to me, says he will, but then leaves it all up to me again next time. I dread when the kids are older and things like grounding become a thing.
My husband is constantly breaking our children's toys because HE wants to play with them. He's broken a little kid trampoline we got for them because he wanted to jump and play on it with them.
He's broken 2 (our daughter AND sons) of those toddler sized motorized cars by sitting on them and riding around with them. Like, I would look out the window and see him riding around on these things having the time of his life, meanwhile our kids are standing on the edge of the yard watching him and waiting for their turn.
He's broken a little kid basketball hoop by pretending to be on a pro basketball team and doing dunks, which bend and break the actual hoop. Our daughters birthday was last month, and one of our friends bought her a little scooter.
My husband broke it within a week because he wouldn't stop playing and doing tricks on it every time he stepped outside the house for something. Our daughter was devastated because she loved that thing, even more so because she loves our friend who gave it to her, so to her it was extra special.
I also feel terrible that this toy my friend spent her money in was destroyed by my husband before my daughter barely got any play time on it. Now, my husband is 6 foot and about 20lbs overweight.
He has absolutely no business playing on these children's toys, and I've told him time and time again to stop playing on them because they aren't made for a person his size, and that he will break them!
And then he does! And he'll sheepishly carry the broken toy in to me and say "sorry", but then he's back at it again destroying another toy shortly after. We got our daughter a bike for Christmas so she can start learning, and I don't even want to give it to her because I know he'll ruin it for her like he always does with their toys.
These are just some of the bigger broken toy examples. There are also countless smaller things of theirs he's broken; like balls, dolls, little cars, a doll house, a slide, ect.
He's always making our kids play with him, even when they clearly don't want to or just want to chill out/relax and sit and watch a movie. This mostly applies to our son, who is much more introverted/sensitive than our daughter and usually prefers calm and quiet interaction over the loud and hyperactive playtime my husband always does.
A handful of times he has frustrated/overwhelmed our son by continuously pushing Son to play with him, resulting in Son to start to cry because he just wants to be left alone!
Now finally on to what prompted me to post here. My husband is always telling our kids, and everyone else that our kids are his "best friends". Since our daughter started learning to talk, he's trained her to answer the question "who's your best friend?" with "daddy!".
Our son is in early talking stages and he is starting to train him do this as well. At first I didn't see any issues with this, and actually thought it was cute. But our daughter has made a really good friend[5F, I'll call her Emily] at school this year.
Daughter is always talking about Emily and asking if Emily can come over/Daughter can go to Emilys house. Today my husband asked our daughter "who's your best friend?" And our daughter paused for a moment, got a huge grin on her face and said "Emily!"
And it looked like my husband had just been given the worst news of his entire life. He asked her "what?" And our daughter started giggling and said "Emily!" again and my husband said "no no, who's your BEST friend?"
And again, still giggling, she says "Emily!" my husbands face went blank and immediately removed himself from her and went into the other room. Our daughter seemed a little confused, but mostly undisturbed and went back to watching cartoons.
I followed him and asked him what was wrong and when he starts talking I realize he's beginning to cry! He tells me that he's "supposed to be" our daughters best friend and that he can't believe she would "toss him aside" like that.
Now up until now, like I said, I thought this best friend thing was cute. I never realized exactly how serious my husband took this, if I had I would have tried to put a stop to it early on (but then again, how exactly can you tell your husband to stop calling his kids his best friends?)
Anyway, I was a bit shocked at this point and I admit I didn't use as much tact in my response as I probably could have, and ask him if he's serious. He says "of course I am" and I tell him that he's the parent.
He's not SUPPOSED to be a best friend to his kids. He's supposed to be the parent. And that he's 29 years older than our daughter, of course she's going to eventually make friends her own age and start considering them her best friends.
He tells me I "don't understand" and I told him he was being ridiculous and childish. He looks at me and tells me I'm being heartless and accuses me of not wanting him to have a good relationship with our kids and leaves the house early to go to work.
I have no idea what to do. I almost feel ridiculous, because how can someone have an issue with their husband loving their kids?! I feel insane, and I haven't been able to talk to any friends about this because I feel like they'll all be "so you're mad at your husband for playing with your kids...? What's wrong with you?"
But I just don't know what to do anymore. I don't know how to address these issues with my husband in a way he'll understand so he'll start being reasonable about them.
I also feel extremely anxious about everything now, because my husband and I have been trying for the last two months to conceive another baby, and now I don't want to bring another child into the world without having this mess sorted out. But I know telling my husband I want to wait on this 3rd child will devastate him.
EDIT: Since it's being asked a few times, I'm just going to put this here instead of typing the same comment over and over. My husbands relationship with his parents growing up was, in his words, great.
He has 3 siblings (all successful adults) and his parents interaction with our kids now give no indication that they are the reason my husband doesn't seem able to grasp parenting himself.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
BrokenPaw
The issue is not that he loves his kids. The issue is that the way he is loving his kids is by trying to be one of them. You really really need to get him a psych eval; this level of stuff, as you describe it, is not healthy for a man in his 30s.
city17_dweller
I would certainly suggest therapy; while I was reading I was wondering if he missed out on having siblings/social interaction at a formative age himself? It almost sounds like he's trying to 'borrow' their childhood.
Either that, or he genuinely doesn't know how to parent and is overcompensating by being the 'best friend ever' and doesn't have a fallback position. Either way, OP needs to stage an intervention before he confuses the fuck out of those kids.
FrustratedWifeTW (OP)
He has 3 siblings; 2 older and 1 younger. His parents are also great and he had a fantastic relationship with them. He's had nothing but great things to say about them raising him. And I know it doesn't necessarily prove anything, but the way his parents interact with our kids give no indication that they're the reason he doesn't seem to be grasping parenting himself.
city17_dweller
I am making o_O face, just for the record. This is confusing me, never mind you and the kids. Perhaps he just really enjoys their company and wants to be their friend for as long as possible, before the reality of serious parenting kicks in (which is a frustrating enough idea, since it's been a serious gig for you from day 1).
Is it worth asking his parents to have a word with him about this? Not to criticize, just to understand his motivation for the 'immersive childhood' parenting approach?
One month later, the OP returned with an update.
FrustratedWifeTW
A few things first, I just wanna thank everyone who commented on my OP. I got overwhelmed with the amount of responses while on mobile (had no computer when I posted), and stopped replying, but I read every single comment and story.
I've received a few PMs asking for an update and I'm sorry it's so late! This update would be extremely long if I typed every single detail (and still is kinda long, whoops), so I'm gonna try and condense it.
So, I sat my husband down the night he got home from work after posting my OP and we had a loooong talk. Again, this would be incredibly long if I wrote all the details so I'm gonna summarize and go in the order of my points I made in my OP. Keep in mind, our talk didn't follow the order of my post, so I'm sorry if anything seems confusing, since it would have been discussed out of order:
On not knowing when to pause playtime - I told him that I know he loves playing with the kids, and I love that he loves playing with the kids, but that I really need him to work with me during bedtime. I also once again pointed out that their lack of sleep is making them grumpy and harder to manage in the mornings, and that they're growing and need their sleep.
He's had a couple slip-ups since, but he's cooled it down around bedtime now and makes more of an effort to help me with bedtime. He's started reading to them instead (I used to to it) and is 20 times better than me at it because they love the funny voices he gives the characters.
On discipline - I told him its not fair of him to constantly make me feel like the bad guy. And that no parent LIKES disciplining their kids, but they need it to learn and grow into good adults, and that I need him to be united with me on punishments. He's having a little trouble with this one, but has been trying more. Which I appreciate.
On breaking their toys - I, again, told him that I know he loves playing with our kids, but he needs to stop destroying their things. That not only is it upsetting them, but it's causing us to needlessly spending extra money to replace things that we don't need to be.
I took this part of the talk to suggest we finally get a full sized trampoline like we had been talking about for a little while, and that he should dig out his bike from the garage so he can ride with our daughter when she learns.
We're both probably more excited about the trampoline than the kids lol. We talked more about this topic, but these are the most relevant points. He realized he goes a little too far after I described the scene I wrote about in my OP, with him riding around on their little cars while the kids are standing on the sidelines. I'm also happy to report he has stayed off our daughters new bike.
On making the kids play when they don't want to - He agreed that it wasn't cool of him to push just because HE wants to play. I told him our kids are people, and just because they're kids, doesn't mean they don't deserve to have their boundaries respected or time to themselves.
And now on to the best friend thing - This was the first thing we discussed. Long story short, he was feeling hurt and generally having a little trouble accepting our daughter was growing up.
This is really the first big thing shes done or said to show that she is, in fact, growing up. And he just wasn't expecting it and handling it very poorly, which he knew he did. I took a line from a comment on my OP and told him our children will have lots of best friends in their lifetime, but he will always be their only dad.
This visibly comforted him, so thank you to whoever it was who wrote that. I took a suggestion from someone on the OP, and suggested that he call up his own parents and ask them for advice on how they handed watching 4 kids grow up and leave the nest.
He really liked this idea and has since done so. I also showed him stories commenters on my OP shared about their relationship with their parents growing up. I told him that I'm not showing him them because I think he's going to become like those parents, but that I think it's important he see the children's side of things. These stories hit him pretty hard, which led into this:
So, I left something out of my OP that I didn't realize was relevant. Lots of people asked how my husbands relationship with his parents was growing up, and I answered that it was great. However, my own relationship with my parents was horrible.
Long story short, I don't get along with nor even like my parents, and I see/talk to them maybe once a year. Growing up was miserable, to say the least. And it affected me for quite a long time where I was a huge ball of anger and resentment because of the way my parents treated me. I told my husband about all of this a few months after we started dating, so he was aware of everything from the start.
My husband told me he told himself he would be the best dad he could be, because he wanted our kids to have the childhood he knew I wanted, and wanted for them. Now, I started crying here and was a bit of a mess for a few minutes lol.
It was honestly one of the most touching things anyone has ever said to me. I told him he is the best dad, and that I love him so much for it. Finding out that this was essentially the root of everything, it was a lot easier to continue on with the rest of my points.
Everything has been great since. He really listened to what I was saying this time, and has made a big effort to help me out more while also cooling it a bit with the kids. Him and our daughter have been riding around on their bikes together every weekend.
I've also started learning how to ride so I can eventually join. Again, I wanna thank everyone for commenting on my OP and helping me gather my thoughts. I thought a few things said about my husband were a bit extreme, but I realize that's something that happens when people give advice on a situation they only have so much info on.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
Nora_Oie
Great update! Just a little fine tuning and you've got a happy home - and it sounds like, a pretty cool husband. I think the fact that he's so into the kids and loves to play with them is amazing. Good for you for learning to ride a bike!
FrustratedWifeTW (OP)
Thanks! It's admittedly a bit embarrassing for me to be 29 and just now learning how to ride a bike, but my husband has been very patient and we have a big yard with a fence, haha.
spaceagate
The paragraph about this grown man riding on the kids' toys until he breaks them was absolutely wild. I hope these behavior changes lasted.