I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be “quieter” than you would be if it were the middle of the afternoon, but this falls under IDAF since there are many solutions. 1-sleep normal hours, like from 10 instead of midnight 2-use a noise machine 3-get out of bed and help your wife
My H stays up late a lot also and he’ll often fall asleep watching Tv in the evening. His mom was at our house once and was playing a game with DS at the table about 5-6 feet from where H fell asleep. He was 5ish so close in age to your kids. DS got super excited because he was getting close to winning and MIL yelled at him to be quiet because “his dad was sleeping.” I went off on her that a) she wasn’t allowed to discipline my child like that (yelling-which btw wtf, you’re louder than DS) and b) H can sleep during normal damn hours c) he can go somewhere else and close the door if he wants it to be “quieter” because I wasn’t making a 5 yr old be quiet at 6pm. MIL made a comment about H “working so hard and needing rest” and I shut her down repeating the above. H didn’t say a darn word because he knows he’d never win that argument. We’re not going out of the way to be loud, but also not going to cater to one person who sleeps when everyone is normally up.
Post by expectantsteelerfan on Aug 18, 2023 7:38:36 GMT -5
Not a jerk.
My dh is on a different schedule than the rest of us. He often gets up early for work...like 4:45 AM. I do appreciate that he tries to be quiet in our bedroom/the bathroom and the rest of the house and keep lights to a minimum, but we also use white noise. Other times he has to work overnight and sleep during the day. Again, when he's working last, I appreciate when he's quiet at night when the rest of us are sleeping, but we all use white noise, and we still hear him sometimes. And then when he's sleeping during the day, we try to stay somewhat quieter than normal, but he does what he can to block all light and noise too because he understands that life happens during the day for the rest of us.
Oh boy! You are definitely not a jerk. And also your DH needs to get his ass up and help out. Parenting is a team effort. Monday - Friday, no one sleeps in.
Post by Jalapeñomel on Aug 18, 2023 7:54:12 GMT -5
I get that you have a division of labor that works for you, but your DH can’t and should not complain that you’re interrupting his sleep when he could very well adjust his schedule to go to bed earlier without any impact to his parental or work duties.
Eeeh. You’re definitely not the jerk here. I do the morning routine (and I get it, it’s easier for us if DH isn’t in the mix) but the thought of making kids whisper and tiptoe so Dad can sleep in makes me sad.
I’m usually the first up on the weekends and I will ask DD to quiet down if she’s slamming things or whatever but weekday, getting ready for school? All bets are off.
I’d ask him to take over one morning so he “gets” how mornings are.
Post by starburst604 on Aug 18, 2023 8:07:38 GMT -5
Team You. If he starts work at 9am, I assume this means he's done by dinnertime and can go to bed at a reasonable hour and not need to "sleep in". I don't know if you SAH which I realize may shape your roles differently, but I just feel like once you become a parent, the expecation of always being able to sleep as late as you possibly can before you have to get up for work goes out the window. As far as the noise thing, if he's refusing white noise or earphones he's being unreasonable. Three people, two of them young kids, can't be expected to tiptoe and use library voices. My H can sleep in because he mostly works from home too, while I'm up at 5:30 most days to work out, take out the dog and feed him and the cats, then I have to shower and get ready to go to work. Believe me, if he had his way he would just sleep in but I put the kibosh on that long ago. Our agreement is that I take care of the pets and he gets up in time to get DD out of bed and make sure she's dressed and ready for school, he makes her lunch and puts her on the bus (this part is sometimes flexible depending on our work schedules that day).
Nope, not a jerk. I get up with the kids in the mornings. I naturally wake up by 7, just how I'm wired. Kids are 11 and 5, they wake anywhere from 630 to 8am. H has always been the one to go to bed late and get up late. Sometimes he's sleeping in until 830, just before I'm off with Little Kid to daycare of putting Big Kid on the bus. He wakes up to see the kids off. That's all he does in the morning these days. When they were smaller he got up earlier and did more in the morning, before you all villify him. Now that they're bigger he just doesn't need to help out*. He has never, not once, complained that we woke him up or that the kids were too loud. Never. He pops in earplugs if he really needs the sleep, but he knows life is loud.
*He works shiftwork so there are several mornings a week when he's not home, so a routine where we don't have to have him participate in the morning works best for us. That way when he's not home I don't have to make adjustments, it's just always business as usual. After school/daycare when everyone is awake, moving, and not on a time crunch is much easier to adjust between days he's home and when he's not.
My H is a terrible sleeper until it’s past 4 AM and then he gets heavy REM sleep until he drags himself out of bed to go to work. He’s not faking it, no sleep training changes it, and it’s a shame he lives in the modern world where we all have to get up early to make a living. So, as a partner who believes him and cares about him, we don’t start early in the weekends and days off. I am very sympathetic.
It never means that he plays princess & the pea and makes us be unreasonably quiet in the morning. Not even a little bit.
Knowing what I know and being extremely sympathetic- it’s still a completely unreasonable request from one family member to the rest of the family.
Post by starburst604 on Aug 18, 2023 8:25:49 GMT -5
Also, while you can't make him wear ear plugs, you can plug in a white noise machine and flip it on outside your bedroom or whatever when you get up with the girls.
Also, while you can't make him wear ear plugs, you can plug in a white noise machine and flip it on outside your bedroom or whatever when you get up with the girls.
I would turn on whatever station they use to torture people by sound.
If I ever heard this complaint in my house, my next post would be from prison.
I’m annoyed for you. We have a somewhat similar division, but I just remind the girls if it is before 7 that daddy is still sleeping. And he never complains. He will come out and help earlier if things are too loud because he knows that’s when things are heading south.
Also, this is reminding me that I need to have him do a morning one weekend so I can just be lazy in bed.
Also, while you can't make him wear ear plugs, you can plug in a white noise machine and flip it on outside your bedroom or whatever when you get up with the girls.
I would turn on whatever station they use to torture people by sound.
If I ever heard this complaint in my house, my next post would be from prison.
When my H sleeps what I consider to be late enough and need him to get up, I tell Alexa to play Irish music at top volume. It's what my FIL used to do when they were kids and it was time to get up and do chores on the weekend. He'd put on the Irish Hit Parade and yell "Rise and shine everyone!!! It's a beautiful morning in Germantown!!!". I have to thank him someday for that trick lol.
It seems like you & your H need to have a discussion about it.
I do mornings with DS(7). H does a bulk of the evenings with DS. He has never complained to me about the noise. Never. He runs a fan and/or uses ear plugs.
I get that you have a division of labor that works for you, but your DH can’t and should not complain that you’re interrupting his sleep when he could very well adjust his schedule to go to bed earlier without any impact to his parental or work duties.
This is what is bugging me too. Others have mentioned it and as my DH used to have a job that had weird hours, yes, when it comes to shiftwork, when it comes to working odd hours and needing to sleep at odd times - 100% sympathetic and DS and I would do everything we could to be quiet when DH was home and needed to sleep - DURING THE DAY.
But having a normal "9 - 5" job, getting PLENTY of sleep (8 1/2 hours every night?), and then having the gall to complain? Yeah... no. There are SO MANY SOLUTIONS here that HE could take on himself to deal with this. But no- his option is to try and make 3 other people change what THEY do for him.
I truly want to believe you when you say he pulls his weight, etc. But this is SO egocentric of him, it does make me wonder if he's as big of a contributor to the household as you say he is.
Post by lilypad1126 on Aug 18, 2023 9:30:06 GMT -5
I don’t have kids, but you are definitely NOT the jerk here. My h stays up late, I get up early and work from home. My home office shares a wall with our bedroom. I try to keep it down in the mornings, but when I have early meetings, too bad, H, if it wakes you up. I try to keep it down when I’m making coffee and breakfast, but if he ever complained, I’d be reforming him. Life begins between 6 and 7 in my house. He can have a different, preferred scheduled, but we live in a society here, and no one is tiptoeing around.
I had this discussion with my husband once and once only. We did not have a downstairs bathroom or any private area downstairs to get ready in and I was getting 2 kids out the door. The one time I was asked to keep it down in the mornings I told him that it's not our fault he stays up past midnight and he was welcome to go to bed at a normal hour. He hasn't said a word since because he knows it's a fight he wouldn't win. We weren't being exceptionally loud, but there were footsteps, the hall bathroom being used, doors opening and shutting, me telling the kids to come to breakfast...
Post by purplepenguin7 on Aug 18, 2023 9:54:26 GMT -5
team you are not the jerk here. I get that this routine is working for you but unless he works non-traditional hours there is no reason for him to still be asleep at 8:30am while you are getting two kids ready for school.
Yeah, no. You're not the jerk here. Sounds like he needs to be the one getting the kids up and out the door for a few days to see how hard it is to be that quiet. If he's staying up that late that he needs to sleep until 8:30am to function during the day...he needs to go to bed earlier. Much easier said than done but my night owl husband and I had a similar argument a few years ago and that was ultimately what had to happen. He still wakes up when I'm getting ready for work and getting Kid #1 out the door, but since he's in bed around midnight and not 3am that 7am wakeup is a lot easier for him to handle and he's finding he appreciates having time to drink his coffee and watch tv with Kid #2 before she goes to the sitter's and he goes to work (he's a restaurant manager so most days he's not out the door until 9:30am or so).