Woman asks if she's wrong for asking her husband not 'correct' her in front of their kids

Marriage and parenting can be hard enough on their own, but when they clash, it gets even trickier. A 43-year-old mom, u/Left_Ratio5836, recently shared her frustrations on Reddit about how her husband handles disagreements when it comes to their kids and the way it is playing out in front of them. The mom has been married to her 45-year-old husband for 24 years. They have two boys, ages 11 and 14, and she explained that they have hit a tough spot in how they handle parenting disagreements.

“I’ve asked him not to ‘correct’ me in front of the kids, as it makes me feel undermined, causes the kids to lose respect for me, and creates tension in our family dynamic,” she wrote. But her husband did not seem to agree with her on this. She shared some examples of what she was dealing with. “For example, if the kids are calling me names or talking back and I get upset (nothing extreme), he often steps in and tells ME to calm down instead of backing me up in my parenting,” she explained.

She had asked him repeatedly to save those kinds of comments for private conversations, but he refused. Instead, he thought she was being unreasonable. “I feel like I’m advocating for respect and teamwork,” she said, but her husband did not seem to see it that way. “He says my boundary silences him and makes it harder for him to step in when he thinks it’s necessary,” she said. He also argued that she was being hypocritical because she ended up saying things like, “Don’t correct me in front of the kids,” in front of them, which he claimed was the same behavior she was trying to avoid. 

Feeling like she needed to stand up for herself, she started addressing the problem "in the moment," even if it was in front of the kids. She asked if she was in the wrong for standing up for herself. The Reddit community had plenty to say, and they were overwhelmingly on her side. u/PerceptionLarge9037 said, "Every time he dismisses you in front of your kids, he’s teaching them to dismiss you too. Also, this whole ‘boundaries shouldn’t exist in a marriage’ thing is utter bollocks—this is nothing to do with your marriage. It’s about raising your children and the importance of having a united front so that they respect both of you."

u/Seed_Planter72 added, "Why isn't the husband 'stepping in' to tell the kids name-calling and disrespecting their mother is not acceptable? Your husband is the problem here. You should be presenting a united front in front of the misbehaving kids. Instead, he's treating you like the naughty child and letting the kids off the hook! He's doing a good job of raising your boys to disrespect women and this will only get worse." u/Away-Ad4393 commented, "If it has got to the stage that your children are actually calling you names, it sounds as though this has been going on for a long time. He is belittling you." u/AnalogyAddict simply suggested, "Start matching his energy and correcting him in front of the kids. Maybe then he'll get it."