Stressed Out Husband Taking It Out on My Son

They both need to stop. Husband is being abusive, but son is being unintelligent. I would tell the kid to stop poking a stick in the hornet's nest and I would tell the husband to stop being a bully.

Your HUSBAND is the 'Adult" here... not your son.
Your HUSBAND... has to take steps... to CONTROL his anger and stress.
Your HUSBAND is responsible... for the "way" he reacts to others, because of his stress.... HE 'chooses' the way he is... not your son.
Your HUSBAND... is consciously, doing it on purpose... and he knows his problem... so HE has to stop it.
HE is the adult.... not the child.
AND your Husband is affecting the ENTIRE family... and it is causing EVERYONE to walk on eggshells around him... so everyone is his emotional 'hostage' and door-mat. AND your Husband justifies this... which is wrong.
He is affecting the entire family.... and needs help to deal with HIS stress....

I would NOT put up with it. At all.

all the best,
Susan

As much as you recognize what your husband "needs" to do, and as much as he thinks his son "needs" to stop pushing buttons, that's really up to them. We can devote great energy to pondering what other people need, but alas, that has yet to significantly change a single soul.

What often works better is to help/coach other people to recognize their legitimate needs, while doing the same for ourselves. All people need essentially the same things for survival and for emotional well-being, and when viewed in that light, sometimes it's easier to make choices based on our mutual good instead of our individual annoyances.

For your son, a particularly good approach is offered in the wise little book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Kids Will Talk, by Faber and Mazlish. If he's troubled enough by his father's overreactions, he has the choice to do something about it, and this book will help you draw those choices out of him. He sounds smart enough to go a long way on this knowledge.

And perhaps he's not as deeply affected by his dad as you are, in which case there could be an autonomy issue that the guys need to work out between themselves. You will not be able to protect your son from all adversity or criticism. If he keeps knowingly provoking his dad, he could be trying to grow a thicker skin.

Men tend to be pretty bad about separating work stress from the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, tiptoeing around him will actually make it worse. If everybody is concentrating on keeping one person happy all the time, that person's tolerance for even tiny frustrations will shrink enormously. That's true whether it's Dad or a toddler. The trick is to learn to live with frustration, because avoiding it is not possible.

We can tell immediately if my husband has had a bad day at work; it cracks me up, because he honestly thinks he's hiding it well. But, his definition of "hiding it" is "not talking about work." When you literally haven't even closed the door and you start yelling, it's pretty obvious, whether you talk about work or not! Every now and then he'll pick on something I find totally outrageous, like the time he came storming in furious, saying, "Did you know that you didn't park straight? Your rear wheels are a good three feet farther over than your front wheels." My answer was, "I'm in my own single car DRIVEWAY! Who's it going to inconvenience?" My husband is a perfectionist and control freak - and he knows it - so he also knows that when he feels anything is beyond his control, he tries to clamp down and control everything ELSE, with the idea that it'll make him feel better. I frequently tell him not to get his blood pressure up, but to let go of trying to control everything and just accept that he is not Lord Emperor of the Universe. (His response, when he's in a good mood - "Well, I should be." :D)

His reasoning behind yelling at his family when he's stressed about work is, "I can't yell at work. I have to hold it in, or I'll lose my job. It has to come out somewhere." I've had to point out that losing his family is also an option. Stress needs to be channeled into exercise, or a hobby, or chores or something else constructive, not in yelling at people who love him.

He's also harder on our son than he is on our daughters, even when he's not fully aware of it. His reasoning is that men "have it tougher" in a competetive world, whereas girls can choose not to be a primary breadwinner after they're married. Men are also very competetive with each other in general, and he's afraid that people will look down on our son if he doesn't have status enough - through his job or skills or credentials or whatever. So, even when our son does pretty much the exact same work that my husband praised in our girls, he'll be rewarded with, "You can do better." While I understand why he's doing it, it makes me (and our son) crazy, and I have to frequently point out that a good job is a good job, no matter who does it. My husband's working on not having a double standard, but when he's stressed, out it comes.

I know that with my husband, a good deal if this goes back to the family he grew up in. His dad was an alcoholic with an anger problem, and everyone - my father in law, his wife, his friends - excused his bad behavior with, "He wouldn't have done that if he wasn't angry," or, "He wouldn't have done that if he was sober," so it was very hard for my husband, as an adult, to come to terms with the fact that anger (or anything else) is not a free pass. If it's wrong, it's wrong. There's a certain comfort level in saying, "Well, I'm not responsible for that, because I was angry (or drunk, or tired or whatever) at the time," and it was hard for him to give that up. (Thank heaven, he decided at a young age not to drink, so he's never had to wrestle that demon.)

His dad, at least in my husband's eyes, always treated his daughters like princesses and his son like an embarrassment who didn't measure up, so he's had to unlearn that behavior, too. It was easy when we had a little boy, but the more our son looks and sounds like a man, the more my husband worries that his parenting and my son's achievements aren't "good enough," and he starts trying to micromanage. His intent is to have our son be a man that others admire, so that's good; we just constantly fine tune the methods used to get there.

And yes, while your husband is right that deliberately pushing someone's buttons is a bad idea, teenagers aren't "done" yet. I always say they're like dough - all the ingredients are there, but the product isn't finished yet. A teen will push boundaries even when they know it won't end well. That's part of growing up. Yes, your son should - and hopefully will - learn not to push his dad's buttons, but it'll take some time, so Dad needs to grit his teeth and exercise patience.

Try not to feel that all this is about taking sides, or who's right, and just see it as learning to negotiate our way through life. Sometimes, everyone will think different things and still be "right."

I hope this helps! Hang in there!

(Whoops, sent before checking for typos. They're fixed now.)

There was a long standing rule in our house. When daddy pulled into the driveway, the kids went into the living room and read their books. DH would come home, give me a kiss, ask about my day and then go upstairs to take a shower and relax. On the way upstairs he would say Hi kids and the kids would say hi daddy..Period. Then when dinner was ready we all gathered at the table and discussed our day. DH was relaxed, kids were not yelled at and MOM was happy. The person that works outside the home needs down time when they get home. Whether its a martini, watching tv or a nap, it is something a person should do. Tell the kids to make them selves scarce until dad has relaxed. Kids need to learn that adults have pressures and its not always fair if they get yelled at, but that the way it is. Are you going to follow your son to work to protect him from his boss? Try to put yourself in hubbys shoes for a minute.

Find something for you and your kids to do away from your husband let him cool out after a days work.

"I feel my husband needs to find a way to deal with his stress outside of the home so that we're not all walking on eggshells whenever he's stressed out - which is almost always."

You answered your own question.

This is tough on your son - as he's going to always try to measure up to his dad. My husband is very similar - he's a policy sergeant in NYC so when he gets home he has been known to treat us either as perps or as his obedient cops. He didn't change until he was in a serioius accident and was home for 6 months. He got a chance to reconnect with his family, realize how much he loved us and had time to chill - although the first few weeks were very hard. He goes back to work in 2 weeks and we will see then if he returns to that bad habit. Men are less patient than women in general. My husband's family had many of the same dynamics as yours. There's no great way to resolve this as they don't see how their reactions seem to be so disproportionate. I hope someday to be able to video the interaction and wonder if he would see it then?

When I was reading your note, I had this feeling that I was writing it myself. Unfortunately, we have the same problem. Aside from the kids, he overreacted to whatever comments I said to him. Just to soothe his nerves, I would always just agree with him which I hated. He was such a stubborn man and he had a volcanic temper. To have peace in the house, he would always gets what he wants, and it's quite unfair.