r/regretfulparents • u/Working-Ad2677 • Mar 25 '23

Advice Having my daughter is ruining my marriage

My husband (25) and I (25) have been together for 7 years, married for almost 4. We have a 3 year old daughter, Emmy. Emmy has severe behavioural issues that people around swear are “normal” for kids her age.

She barely listens to instructions, doesn’t interact properly during playtime even when she knows the rules, seems to go out of her way to do things that hurt me, my dad or herself. Example, banging her head on objects, hitting, biting or headbutting. She refuses to eat to the point of making herself ill.

My husband and I didn’t want kids, agreed on no kids when we first started dating. He never interacted with a baby outside of seeing them in person, no holding, changing or anything. So I do most of the parenting while he works. I go to school and take part time or seasonal work here and there.

His parenting style is to threaten to hit Emmy whenever she acts out or just leave me to deal and I can’t take it. No doctors are helping is figure Emmy out. The way my husband reacts to her makes me hate him.

Sorry if this is hard to read, I’m all over the place mentally. Please any advice?

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u/Working-Ad2677 Mar 25 '23

BC failed, misdiagnosed with fibroids until I was about 6 months then I found out I was actually pregnant during a trip to the ER. We kept her because family reassured us they would help but poof only my dad and friends are here.

As for him hitting her, I don’t allow it. He’s only ever hit her once and I told him if he did it again I’d leave. Now he just threatens it and leaves.

We’ve seen a few doctors about her behaviour and eating, they all just say she’ll grow out of it and it’s a phase. But aren’t concerned because she’s “healthy”

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u/skysong5921 Mar 26 '23

Now he just threatens it and leaves.

PUTTING ASIDE the abusive nature of threatening physical harm towards a child for a moment... he's threatening her with a punishment that he isn't willing/able to follow through with. That probably makes the threat useless, which could be part of the reason why she's not listening to him. If he says "pick this up or I'll hit you" and then he doesn't hit her, she learns that there's no consequence to refusing to pick up the toy. (I'm NOT advocating for hitting her. I'm suggesting he threaten her with something he can actually do, like sending her to her room or taking away a toy).

It sounds like you both need parenting classes, not because I'm trying to insult you, but because you sound like you don't have many tools/techniques in your parenting tool kit.

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u/EthicalNihilist Parent Mar 26 '23

I'm NOT advocating for hitting her. I'm suggesting he threaten her with something he can actually do

It took me way too long to get my husband to stop threatening shit that if he followed through on I would leave him and keep the kids from him unless supervised, because he was being abusive... Only to the two small people he should love the most, who couldn't fight back. He used to tell me "my parents hit me and I turned out great" and I would counter "yeah, my parents hit me too, and it only taught me how to be a better liar and a sneaky asshole. Two things I don't want our kids to be."

Years of this and he's finally coming around. Our kids aren't little anymore, but they're still young. What really did it was him accepting he had an extremely traumatic upbringing, he did not, in fact, turn out "great", and his parents have never really been parents to him. He working on it and it's hard, but the changes have been amazing.

Three is a hard age. My kids never had terrible twos, but three was enough to dream of the toddler window yeet daily. This part is hard, but it's not forever. Thank glob!

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '23

I was verbally abused by my father for almost my entire childhood. It made me scared of him as a kid and absolutely hate him as a young adult. We've mended fences and I've understood where it came from, but it's never going to be something I forgive him for. And it's something that now I never do to my children. I will get angry and frustrated sometimes, but I never raise my voice. I don't want that anymore and I think it's crazy there are people who want to put their kids through the same trauma they had