TL;DR - Wife comes in during bedtime yelling at full volume, during a bump in the bedtime routine. Causes complete chaos. What to say this morning?
While the wife does have an issue or two with anger (she's a fucking woman), this is not a normal occurence.
Context/details
Last night, things are going well, got a jump start on the weekend by getting some shit cleaned off the patio (that would've usually waited until Sat or Sun), made burgers, & sat down to watch a movie with the kids.
Earlier in the evening, she mentions she has stuff to prep for tomorrow (she's a teacher, and has a parent teacher thing Sat/this morning). I tell her to go down and get it done while we're watching the movie. It's all good.
Bedtime. Somehow, through the night, kid #2 (we have 3 - age 11, 9, & 6) didn't eat enough, so she's having a slight meltdown (as happens with kids when they don't eat sometimes) in bed, but I'm handling it, or so I think. It's about 9-9:30pm, a little late, but it's Friday, and movie night with Dad, so what the hell.
The wife comes in with both guns blazing and at full volume with essentially, "CAN'T YOU SEE SHE HASN'T EATEN! ARE YOU GOING TO FEED HER? I HAVE WORK TO DO FOR TOMORROW!! ... " and the like. Immediately kid #1 starts crying (parents fighting is scary). And that puts kid #2 into major meltdown. I don't raise my voice for any of this (through the whole experience), but get her out of the room with "Go back to your office, I got this." But she won't. We somehow get to he kitchen (to get kid #2 a snack, if I recall), and I tell her that I got it, while she continues with, "Were you going to actually FEED her?!?!" and the like, still at a pretty good volume. By the time I get back to the bedroom, Kid #1 is curled up on her bed reciting through tears, "I love momma, I love daddy" over and over, while kid #2 is crying and and asking, "I ruin everything. What's wrong with me?" I eventually got the kids calmed down and fell asleep snuggling them. Now I'm up at 5:30am, trying to discern the best way to handle this.
Should I have been a little more on the ball that kid #2 didn't eat after I cooked and sat down for movie time? Sure, I'll own that.
But how to handle the COMPLETE freakout of the wife?
Option 1 - Cold shoulder her (all weekend, or as long as it takes). That shit isn't ok, she knows it (or fucking should) and I withdraw until her hamster gets her shit back on track. Until she came in with guns blazing, it was a night with one kid having a 9 yr old meltdown, she turned it into a fucking shit show. This feels like the better choice to me.
Option 2 - Talk with her. This feels fucking off to me, since I kinda prefer option 1. But at the same time, if she doesn't actually realize that NONE of what she did was helpful, and won't take responsibility, then WTF? On the one hand, I shouldn't need to tell her, on the other, I get the feeling she just had a nice time with herself last night afterwards, watching Netflix by herself, while Friday night for the kids was left in shambles. It's just shitty, and I feel like it should get called out.
Option 3 - Family meeting. Have a sit down with kids + wife, and explain that we all have to take a little more responsibility for our own shit. Kids need to eat at dinner, the wife needs to be helpful when she enters a room.
For clarity, I could give a shit. I can ignore her for a fucking week, but it affects the fucking kids, and she needs to see that her behavior affects them. I mean, our kids will remember last night for YEARS.
I'm headed to the gym for the first part of the day, so I'm doing the cold shoulder until then (about noon on Sat), but I would love input in what others have done in this kind of situation. I'm ready to ignore her for the whole weekend.
EDIT(s) - formatting, spelling and clarity
EDIT -
Option 4 - I'm reading Extreme Ownership right now and am actually leaning a bit in this direction, after initially trying the ignore approach. Something along the lines of, "This isn't the way I want our family to run and I don't think it is for you either. We need to nail down a routine, and stick to it, here's what I'm proposing...blah, blah, blah... do you have any inputs on this, you (the wife) seem to really lack energy to finish the night without yelling and stress."
Just wondering what that total ownership of this situation would look like. As I see value in coming at it from that angle as well. As in, "That was a shit show. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again. Here's the plan."
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