Argument Over Discipline

My husband is a much better and more consistent disciplinarian than I am and I don't have many complaints because our kids are pretty good, but occasionally I think he goes overboard.

Last night at the dinner table, our 20 month old, Jacob, would not eat his dinner.  We are big on putting our kids in time out.  We ask nicely once and then to the corner they go.  This has worked very well on our four year old, Nicholas, who we started the time out discipline on at 18 months.  He is a near perfect child and doesn't get into a whole lot of trouble.  Jacob on the other hand is a bit more stubborn than his brother.

So Jake wouldn't eat his food and kept spitting out what ever we could get in his mouth. Daddy said, "Alright, that's it.  You are going to the corner!".  Nothing out of the ordinary, except this time he went into an extreme tirade as he put our little one in the corner.  He will always raise his voice and let them know why they are there, but he went above and beyond loud this time and even scared me a little.

When he sat back down at the dinner table I told him he didn't need to yell like that.  I immediately got the "look" followed by, "Don't!! Don't do that!  I do that for a reason!".  "OK" I said in a slightly condescending way.  I wasn't going to have an argument with him at the dinner table in front of Nicholas and with Jake crying in the corner.

Silence continued for the rest of the meal.  Afterwords, my sometimes moody husband retired to the bedroom to do some homework.  I got up, did the dishes, forced Nicholas to eat at least three more bites of pork roast and stewed about the attitude I had just received.

Eventually, I went into the bedroom and told him exactly why I made a comment to begin with.  I asked him, Do I usually make a comment when you yell at the boys?". No reply. I told him that the only reason I said anything was because he sounded like a crazy person screaming at our toddler like that and that if it scared me it probably scarred him for life.  It is one thing to raise your voice, I can fly of the handle also, but he needs to check himself occasionally.

I simply walked out after that.  He didn't look at me once while I was making my case, but I'm sure he thought about it afterward.  We stayed away from each other the rest of the evening and by the time I went to the bedroom for the night he was at least talking to me.

We pride ourselves on our communication with each other.  We don't have squabbles very often and sometimes I don't know how to deal with it when we do, but I always know that we will work through it even if it means having to agree to disagree.