MoaningSickness Wed 02-Jan-19 19:17:42

So my 21 month old is gorgeous and wonderful and of course, irritating as fuck in that way that only a toddler can be.



I mostly manage not to scream and gnash my teeth when I realise she has managed to smuggle food down her shirt from lunch and lovingly spread in on the sofa, or Andrew puppied the loo roll... But DH is getting increasingly cross with her, for what I consider to be normal behaviour for her age.



I popped out this evening as they went into the bathroom. When I returned, they were still in there, she was wailing, and he gave a massive tirade about how she had done X,Y and Z and made a mess 'even when he asked her not to' and apparently they had been locked in a 45 minute stand off where he said they weren't leaving the room til she tidied away the mess she had made and she was refusing/crying.



I told DH to go take a moment and regain his calm, he accused me of undermining him, I said I would get her to tidy but he needed to calm down, so he went and we tidied.



I tried to talk to him later, but he kept saying she needs to learn she can't make a mess, etc, and I think she is just to young to really get the consequences of her actions. He says she is old enough to understand 'no'.



I don't think it helps that she is very verbal so she appears older than she is. For example she will say 'sorry' if you tell her to, but I don't think she understands the concept of being sorry at all. Or DH will get her to say she promises she won't do X, which she faithfully parrots, but I don't believe she has the faintest idea what a 'promise' is, so it's hardly surprising when she does the thing two minutes later.



I don't want to undermine him, but when I came in and he launched into 'she did this, she did that' it was more like listening to a sibling telling tales on how it is all the other child's fault than a 40 year old talking about a 1 year old.



I think DH and I have very different ideas about the level of behaviour to expect from a child her age, and I don't honestly know which of us is off base. Aibu or is he?