My wife let me sleep in today since work last week kicked my ass and i’ve been staying up late and getting up early to keep up with everything.
I woke up to a bunch of yelling and my soaking wet 4 year old jumping into bed crying. Turns out my wife was bathing the boys (4,1) and the little one was done, so she decided to let our toddler stay in by himself for a little bit. She said she told him to pull the shower plug and he said he would. We recently moved and don’t have a bathtub at the new house so he likes to fill up the shower until right before it flows over which i hate but my wife lets him do. It get the floors soaked and the trim all around the shower is rotting and growing mold. I’ve asked them both so many times to stop, and explained to my son that I’m working on getting a tub put in but it’ll take time.
Well it turns out he did not pull the shower plug, and 10 minutes later my wife went in there to get him and he was trying to dry the flooded bathroom floor with toilet paper. He immediately knew he fucked up so he ran to me because I’m his safe space no matter what, always. I’ve never yelled at him in an aggressive tone, I’ve never hit or spanked him, when he’s in trouble i talk him through it in a calm tone, even if i had to put on my stern voice.
I was not a space space today. My wife called me downstairs in a hurry and the water from the bathroom was coming through the dining room ceiling out of the hole cut for the chandelier light. I know the run of wires there is knob and tube and there was either smoke or steam from the water hitting the bulbs.
From there i lost it, i couldn’t even look at my son for half the day. Even when i wasn’t doing anything and he asked me to play i told him no, when he kept asking i yelled back something about being in no mood and for him to stop asking. I snapped at my wife pretty bad, i told her they have no respect for the house and id been telling them to be more careful for months. I went in on her for leaving our toddler alone in the shower for so long and how she didn’t take the plug herself. I said something about them ruining our house, which i do think they need to do less reckless stuff in the house and have been trying to think of a nice way to frame in a conversation, instead it came out in a fit of rage.
I ended up having a heart fit and chest pain and i yelled at them both to leave me alone. As I’m clutching my chest falling to the floor, my toddler just wanted to help me because its happened before and we talked to him about what to do, and he was doing exactly what we told him, but i told him to leave.
I feel like i really fucked up today as a father and a partner. It was a very stressful situation, and i think my frustration was justified, but i cant stand how it came out and how i handled everything today.
I feel like i spent the whole day hating my family whom i love very much.
Entirely relatable right down to the sheer (temporary) hatred for everyone involved. Like, literally right now that’s how I’m feeling, because my two year old is an asshole who also caused water damage last week under similar circumstances and today, just the terror of them messing up the house and breaking shit while being “watched” by my partner who is on their phone instead of doing stuff.
The crying, the insane decision making, the lack of support, the draining weekday work, and even just not getting fulfilment in life; you shouldn’t beat yourself up over it since I think everyone goes through it and at least you didn’t get physically violent.
It’s only guilty because the kids are innocent, but they can learn that people lose their temper, have bad days, etc. We literally teach them to express their emotions and to be understanding when people are stressed; so as long as you do that for them in return, I’m sure they’ll get over your outburst
We have all been in this situation to one degree or another, so don’t be too hard on yourself. When you are putting in above and beyond effort for the family, yet you look around and see everyone disregarding your legitimate requests, to the detriment of your home, it’s hard not to get angry.
Sometimes you just have to give up hope for the day, and start over fresh tomorrow. The real problem is if your anger follows you from day to day.
Stay up, man. It sounds like you’re a great dad and husband. We all have down days.
These unavoidable days suck. Faltering does not mean failing. Your kids are the age where if you fuck up, and feel bad about it, they can feel you. When they see old dad return, they’ll write it off. They might not even remember it come morning.
It has to be a frequent, recurring problem before they start to expect it or lose faith in the dad they already know.
Throw your hands up and make a face, today got the better of you. Tomorrow, it won’t.
They’re too young to remember, so I wouldn’t worry. But next time something happens, you can demonstrate how to deal with adversity. If a glass breaks, or something catches fire, or the shower overflows, you can freak out and yell, or shrug and tell them ‘accidents happen.’ Just clean up and move on. It’s not the end of the f’ing world.
This way, they grow up to be a lot more chill, resilient, and capable to handle adversities in life.
At 4 years you’re not too young to remember. You’re actually fairly likely to remember this since it’s an emotionally intense moment!
But that also means that an apology is all the more important, as the kid will also remember that.
Good day and bad day happen man. Kids are dumb :) but thats because they are kids. The key is to have more good days than bad days.
Don’t be hard on yourself but also keep in mind a kid is a kid.
In our house my kids can do pretty much anything they wish so long as they have a plan and don’t make a mess. I think your guy had a plan that just fell through.
I would sit with your family and talk through your feelings and apologize though. Turn a shit day into a lesson
A child, or even an adult, can drown in an inch or water, probably less.
Leaving a 4yo alone in a tub or shower is, basically, neglect. That shit needs to stop.
4yo is not an infant. They will not drown in an inch of water.
Stop with the helicopter parenting. No one is drowning in a shower pan you knob.
If you won’t trust your kid to look after themself for a few minutes, they won’t trust themself either. That’s how you get young adults who have no confidence and no independence. That’s how you give your kids an anxiety disorder.
Teach your kids to look after themselves, and then trust them to do so. That’s how you build independence. Let them fail, and then show them that they can recover from failure. That’s how you build resilience.
There are literally 100s of dads out there doing this and worse right now. It sounds like you’re a great dad almost every day. That much is obvious from the things you’ve said. This was a bad day for you. It’s okay to have bad days.
I’m willing to bet that if you’re the kind of person to think about this enough to write it out, then you’ll also certainly think about what worked and didn’t work today. You’ll come up with solutions. Either you’ll change yourself or you’ll change something about the family dynamic to ensure that it doesn’t get this bad again. I believe in you; you’ll come away from this better than before.
And never forget that parenting is hard. Much harder than any person realizes before they are a parent. It’s okay to fail at doing hard things some times. Just don’t stop putting in the effort. You’ve got this. We’re cheering for you.
Get a plastic bathtub for him like you probably have for the baby just bigger. Our three years old still bathes in a big bücken which we used to use for cleaning the floors, but slowly it’s getting tight.
Or if not a hard plastic one then one which you can blow up.
You had a stress reaction. It happens. The important thing is to learn from it so that you react in a better way next time. Apologize to your wife and talk to your son about why that frustrated you so much. It’s more important to deal with fuck-ups than it is to worry about never ever fucking up.
Sounds like a great chance to teach the child, they got to see the consequences of a bad decision directly and it will likely be memorable. Perhaps:
- How to forgive someone who makes a mistake
- Making a bad choice doesn’t make you a bad person (and a good lesson for you to remember too)
- How to avoid repeating a past mistake
- How to try and make things right
Also, maybe grab a suction cup toy, vinyl sticker, or other device to mark the highest the shower should be filled. A visual will help them know the limit.
You’ve had a panic attack. You need time to rest and recover. If you don’t take it, this will happen again.
I’m a mostly single father of two kids, boys, 11 and 14. From what I read here, what happened is not your fault, and you are not a bad person by any measure. Nobody is perfect, and in fact there is no one “correct” way to have handled your situation (though there are obviously infinitely many bad ways to have done so, a category which your response does not fall under).
Developmentally, age 4 is borderline for toddler and young child. Some will still be toddlers and others will have entered well into the “pre-developmental phase.” This means there will be a lot of things that they can handle, such as “no” and other boundaries; toddlers begin to test boundaries as early as age 2 (I’m not saying anything your child did was necessarily that, nor am I concerned with whatever your response might be).
As for destroying the house, this is not okay. If any children want to play in water, quite common, they don’t have to do it during every shower or bath day. Buy them a little (big) plastic basin to splash around in, have them go to a pool or water park, get an (economic) water sensory table… There are many options that are available for children to still get to do what they want–play with water–without major risky downsides like destroying your home.
In my opinion, the only potentially really difficult thing here is to talk to their mom. She’s an adult, and she needs to start acting like one instead of just everything “yes” without restrictions or prudence. Children need their parents for guidance and socialization as well as just being “providers.” Adults know better–not always but usually. If your children wanted their diet to consist 100% of candy, I presume both of you wouldn’t just go for it.
If it helps, you can write down and practice what you want to say to your family (so that you can follow the ‘script’ and not get overtaken by rage). You’re evidently eloquent enough to be able to do so. Aside from keeping it short and focused, it can help a lot to start by writing where you’re coming from and how things have felt for you. There’s a good chance they don’t know, and they should–heck, we find out new things about ourselves when we take this time to do so, to consider and refine our understandings of ourself.
Best wishes to you, and I’m very sorry for the extreme pain. That is definitely not something to be ignored or made light of by anyone who cares about you.
I didn’t read everything but at that heart stuff and having a little background in that - when was your last visit at the cardiologist and are you under medical care regarding that? From the story that is my absolute priority as it might well be life threatening.
The last time I went was about 6 months ago when I wound up in the hospital. There’s multiple things that are wrong with my heart that usually aren’t an issue but in combination and the frequency, when I get too wound up my heart just starts breakdancing at a salsa class.
It used to be a pretty frequent issue but they put me on some meds and it’s gotten better. It only happens in very stressful situations where I can’t can down now, but usually I can find a way to relax before it gets bad.
Please take care! Sounds like you could use an implant.
Just don’t underestimate it. Maybe even get into meditation in your case if the more expensive procedures are not possible (as in: sadly usa).
Best of wishes and luck!
Left bundle branch block?
Might as well be.
Your frustration is absolutely 100000% justified. Your kid is a kid. Your wife should know better and stop enabling water damage to the house.
You’re running on fumes. This is absolutely not sustainable, and especially not if you have a heart condition that is serious enough that your 4yo knows what to do in case anything happens to you. Clearly he still cares about you if he was trying to help.
Make amends with your son. Talk to your wife. Someone else said it too, but you have got to be on the same page to survive this insane phase of raising tiny people.
if you articulate this to them, you’ll already be doing better than most parents & partners.
communication is super important to avoid kids getting the wrong message or feeling rejected etc. it’s hard to tell how kids might internalise things, so just being honest about what’s going on in your life (in a simplified way since 4 is so young) & admitting that you’re not proud of your reaction goes a long long way to building a healthy relationship with your kids.
i hope you can access healthcare to get your heart problem seen to, as well, that sounds super worrying. stay safe!
