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Fights in front of the kids?

The Mister and I had a nasty (well, for us...) argument today in front of The Boy. I made a stupid mistake and The Mister yelled and pointed out how stupid my mistake was, then wouldn't stop yelling. If we had been alone I probably would have just gotten some space and talked to him later about it. Because The Boy was there, I couldn't back down. I felt like if this is what The Boy sees when we argue he's going to think he can treat his future partners poorly.

Most of the time things are calm and happy in our family. We don't fight much, when we do we are usually able to keep our voices down and not call each other names. Today we did yell and call each other names. Then The Mister wouldn't acknowledge that he even had anything to apologize for for hours after. The Boy hid in the hallway outside our bedroom, listening while we hashed out our apologies.

I cringed when he said that he feels better now that Daddy has apologized because he really was being mean. I never want him to take sides in our disagreements, even if he's siding with me. It just seems dysfunctional. I also can't have The Boy seeing us being mean to each other. It was so nasty. (for us...) I told The Boy that when his parents are arguing it's really not about him and he shouldn't be eavesdropping or taking sides. It's rude to eavesdrop and our arguments are our concern.

Do your kids ever see you fight? How do you deal with it? Do the kids try to get involved, and if so, what do you do about it?

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Permalink Reply by tbones on March 8, 2010 at 6:01pm

I'm just starting to worry about this. My daughter is 17 months and I still fight in front of her. I agree that kids should see disagreements, but I'm a yeller (although I'm still hoping to grow out of that!). I never saw my parents fight and I wonder if it scares her, or if it will soon. Especially as she's not old enough to reason. I'm sure I knew the right answer before I became a mom. Back then I had all the answers about childrearing.

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Permalink Reply by StitchyWench on March 8, 2010 at 6:13pm

That just sucks! I don't know what I would do. I'm sure I would have tried to bring him back down to Earth at the time and then talked to him later about kindly not doing that to me in front of the kids ever again.

jenra said:

What concerned me most is that my husband was acting sort of verbally abusive. He was actually yelling that I was stupid, he couldn't believe that I had done something like that, what is wrong with you, Jesus Christ! He has absolutely never done this before and I've known him for almost twenty years.

I agree that it's healthy for kids to see people disagree and argue and handle it in a healthy way - how else are they going to learn?

What about when the fights go all Jerry Springer? Nobody was throwing blows, but it felt about as classy.

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Permalink Reply by mcglory13 on March 8, 2010 at 6:27pm

I heart "a castle" so much and T-Rex's quotation of it. I'm going to try to work it into my vocab the way "freaks my head off" has been.

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Permalink Reply by ruth on March 8, 2010 at 9:19pm

This is totally my take-away from this thread as well.

Jenra, I'm sorry it was such a shitty fight, but as T-Rex said, once in 20 years isn't going to scar your little guy.

mcglory13 said:

I heart "a castle" so much and T-Rex's quotation of it. I'm going to try to work it into my vocab the way "freaks my head off" has been.

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Permalink Reply by Daddy Geek Boy on March 8, 2010 at 10:00pm

You ever play boxing on Wii Sports with your spouse? You can get a lot of aggression out virtually.

When I was a kid, I witnessed a fight between my parents that was so severe I swore they were going to break up. They talked me through it and it was really good to hear from them about it, instead of them covering it up.

We're adults in long term relationships. We sometimes fight. Hopefully it's not in front of the kids, but things happen. When they do, it's important to talk to them about it.

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Permalink Reply by Herasmus B. Dragon on March 9, 2010 at 5:38am

Back when we had a Playstation 2, "War of the monsters" saved our marriage. We got soooo into it and always came out laughing, usually after I'd chucked a building at him. Big O was 1.

Daddy Geek Boy said:

You ever play boxing on Wii Sports with your spouse? You can get a lot of aggression out virtually.

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Permalink Reply by mightyninjamom on March 9, 2010 at 6:50am

hee! Yeah, I 'accidentally' kill AlphaGeek during Lego Star Wars. My favorite is playing Princess Leia, because at close range she bitch slaps. I try not to abuse it, but it's soooo fun!

Jenra, if it only happened once, that's actually not too bad. My parents had knock-down, drag out fights all the time - that had me and my sisters cowering in our rooms. Then they always completely denied that it had even happened. It was ridiculous.

When enough time has passed, you may want to sit down and talk about having some rules about fighting in front of your son, so you can avoid anything like this happening in the future.

Herasmus B. Dragon said:

Back when we had a Playstation 2, "War of the monsters" saved our marriage. We got soooo into it and always came out laughing, usually after I'd chucked a building at him. Big O was 1.
Daddy Geek Boy said:
You ever play boxing on Wii Sports with your spouse? You can get a lot of aggression out virtually.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Mama on March 9, 2010 at 3:22pm

Jenra,
I wonder if he was taking out his frustration about something else on you - if this is really out of character for him I would ask him once all the dust has settled. It doesn't make it okay, but 20 years of history give him a little leeway.