Last night, my daughter got home from a 2-day weekend away. Normally, she is quite "sensitive", and a perfectionist. But now, she was fried. When she is tired, she becomes emotionally brittle. Unfortunately, there were some things she needed to get done after her weekend play. She needed to do her chores (empty the dishwasher, walk the dog), finish her homework, and practice the piano. Although I tried to give her down time, when it finally came to asking her to "get to it", each thing got a rise out of her.
These emotional outbursts simply overwhelm my husband. He becomes unbearably tense and starts muttering negative things about everything--the house, my daughter and me. Last night, to my daughter, he made enumerable snide, unloving remarks and imitated her. My daughter then ran to her room and slammed her door. My husband went on a rant about what a defective child she is. When a sliding door to our deck suddenly fell down during this "happy" time, my husband went nuts about how we don't care about the house and how one of us must have broken the door. My daughter started muttering, "I hate him". Finally, when my daughter completely lost it in frustation over her homework, my husband started yelling to me: "shall I call the police?" My daughter responded with, "I hate him. I hate him! and I hate you too". My husband then left the house and stayed elsewhere for the night.
When I talk to my daughter, I tell her the importance of pulling herself away from things that frustrate her, getting a grip, and coming back to them later. Unfortunately, it is impossible to impress these things on her when she both has a genetic predisposition toward emotional lability and has a father who models control so badly. His rants just feed hers and vice versa. I can't fault my husband for leaving. He needed to get a grip. But he needed to leave earlier. He is killing his relationship with our daughter, and harming her in the process.
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