u/AdvancedDragonfly306

My husband explodes in anger towards our daughter fairly often and I’m not sure I want him around anymore.

Husband and I have a 4.5 year old daughter. She’s smart, funny and sweet but can be a bit challenging. She doesn’t listen at all and getting her to complete even the smallest of tasks can be super frustrating because she’s so oppositional and just doesn’t give a fuck about consequences. I think it’s mostly normal 4 year olds shenanigans but maybe amped up a bit more than most. That said, parenting her requires a great deal of patience and control and unfortunately my husband lacks both. He cannot deal with her not doing what he says when he says it and within minutes he’s screaming and making empty threats.

She’s been sleeping in our bed for the last 3ish years because she was such a terrible sleeper as a baby/young toddler and would refuse to sleep unless she was next to me. It’s not ideal but she does sleep through the night now. The problem is when she’s overtired or amped up before bedtime she acts out and intentionally disturbs my husband’s sleep (he’s often in bed before her because he goes to lay down before I start her bedtime routine, which I prefer because if he’s awake it just ends up with him screaming and cursing at her). My husband reacts to these disturbances by of course screaming and cursing at her but he’ll also start punching the bed and throwing stuff and just acting like a raging idiot. He threatens to hit her all the time but has never put his hands on her (I think because he knows I’ll kick him out if he did) but he does grab her and “push” her if she’s flailing around in bed.

I get he’s tired and trying to sleep after a long day of work when he explodes like this, but his level of rage towards a 4 year old child is not just concerning to me, but just seems so out of the realm of what I feel anyone would consider normal. Like I can’t imagine ever getting that angry with a small child, especially my own, but this is happening with him like once a week and he doesn’t even seem to feel guilty about it. If I raise my voice at my daughter I feel bad about it so I don’t understand how he can act the way he acts and not regret it.

I also feel like our biggest issue isn’t necessarily our daughter’s behavior problems, which I do recognize and understand need to be addressed, but I feel his complete lack of control over his own emotions is what’s really exacerbating the situation. I actually find myself telling our daughter she needs to do X, Y, or Z so Daddy doesn’t get mad but it feels like I’m asking more of her than him because he can’t even regulate his own emotions or control himself when he’s angry.

Tonight was one of those nights where he went to bed early, she started acting out as soon as she got in bed and he reacted by screaming curses and threats in her face while punching the bed and saying he wants her out of the house. She’s 4, where does he think she’s going to go? Now he’s “sleeping” on the couch and she’s finally asleep in bed next to me and I’m wondering if I should lock the bedroom door so he can’t come back in. But at the same time I wonder if I’m crazy and maybe too soft with her and if he’s just tired and burnt out from work.

My 4.5 year old daughter has a best friend at school who keeps pushing and hitting her but daughter still very much wants to be her friend.

My daughter has gotten very close to one particular little girl in her pre-k class. They play together in school all day, they play together on the playground after school most days, and we’ve had a handful of play dates with this girl. At first I was happy my daughter made such a close friend but I did notice early on that the other little girl could be a bit *not nice* to other kids. She yells at kids that they can’t play with her and my daughter even though my daughter would love for other kids to join them. She teases the little boy in their class who wears pull ups and calls him a baby. She called another little girl creepy looking and told her she can’t play. She’s also quick to tell friends like my daughter that they’re not her friend anymore and she doesn’t like them as soon as they do something she didn’t want them to, like deciding to play another game. She’s also prone to tantrums and melt downs when she doesn’t get her way, like if her nanny doesn’t let her get ice cream after school, she’ll start screaming and stomping.

I always found the name-calling and the excluding other kids concerning but chalked the rest up to typical 4 year old behavior plus maybe some trouble with emotional regulation, but lately her behavior has escalated to being physical. I watched her rip a toy out of another child’s hands and throw it over the fence simply because she doesn’t like that my daughter and that other child are friends. She stomps and growls and screams at kids if they approach her and ask to play. Now if my daughter doesn’t listen to her, she pushes her. The other day they got into a little disagreement about where the finish line to their race should be so she shoved my daughter and then used both hands to grab her by the neck and choke her. I was right there and intervened and took my daughter, who was crying and very upset, away, but the girl’s babysitter just told her that wasn’t nice and to say she’s sorry. I personally feel like a kid who’s almost 5 strangling another child is a little more than “not nice” but I was more concerned with my own kid at the time.

We had two playdates with her in the last couple of weeks and both times she had to be forced by her mother to apologize to my daughter for pushing her—on one play date it was multiple times. The problem is I feel like her mother, whom I actually like and get along with, isn’t really grasping that her daughter’s behavior is a problem and not typical. I know part of it is because she’s not present for all of it as the nanny picks her up from school and takes her to the playground, but I’ve personally witnessed the mom witness it and her responses are kind of lackluster. It also feels like she’s comparing her kid getting physical to my daughter maybe saying something her kid doesn’t like. For example, this friend will regularly call things she doesn’t like “for babies” or “babyish” and on a playdate a couple weeks ago kept calling my daughter a baby for how she danced and told my daughter only she (the friend) could dance to certain songs because my daughter dances like a baby. Now more recently my daughter has sort of picked up on the baby thing and told her friend something she did was “for babies”. The friend’s response was to scream and hit her. She did this in front of both me and her mom and her mom made her apologize but also wanted my daughter to apologize for the baby comment, which I had her do because I know my daughter said what she said to antagonize her friend after having the friend do it to her the week before, but I feel like these offenses are not the same and don’t deserve the same “punishment”. I was already in the process of having a conversation with my kid about not saying things to upset our friends because I knew she only made the baby comment because she knew her friend doesn’t like being compared to babies and was doing what her friend did to her about the dancing at the last play date, but if your kid is repeatedly pushing their friends and now strangling them I think maybe more than a forced apology is in order. I also don’t think the babysitter told the mom about the strangling incident even though she told me she was going to. But it was her new babysitter who is like 22 years old and was literally on her first day of the job when that happened.

I don’t know. Should I be informing the mom of these things? Should I discourage my daughter from playing with this girl? She’s very adamant that they’re the best of friends and even after being hurt by her, will be asking to bring her something she made like a friendship bracelet.