Husband always on phone

I guess this is more of a rant 😂 my husband is a great dad to our 13m and involved around the house with cleaning and yard work. He works full-time and I’ve just gone back to work part-time from home. I do the majority of cleaning, all the cooking, food shopping, laundry, and childcare one day a week I have off and when he plays golf. I don’t have any hobbies outside the home—I’m lucky if I get a couple hours a week to read, play video games or watch what I want to watch 🤣 I’ve struggled to make mum friends as I’m managing PND/PNA and everyone’s so busy so we go weeks without seeing friends/other babies sometimes. When my husband’s home, 99% of the time he’s watching TV and on his phone. I’m trying so hard to use my phone less in front of our daughter because she’s interested in our phones. She still loves her toys and doesn’t even pay much attention to TV for more than a few seconds at a time and we want to keep it that way. But it’s sometimes at the point where my husband is so zoned out I have to engage him with her, like “look what she’s doing, Daddy!” We nearly got into an argument after dinner because baby had finished and I was cleaning the floor of the food she’d thrown. My husband was watching football on his phone and I announced that I was going to start cleaning. He didn’t say anything. Usually he picks up the food close to his side of the table but I got impatient and did it myself. He was like “that was passive aggressive. You could see I was texting. Why didn’t you just wait till I was done?” 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 I’m always in the wrong. It would’ve been so easy for him to say “I’ll get to it after I finish this.” That’s fine!!! Just let me know where you’re head’s at because half the time I feel like I’m just being ignored 😵‍💫 So anyway I explained that I wasn’t being passive aggressive on purpose: I just have become conditioned to dropping whatever I’m doing and tending to baby and I saw she was getting antsy so I wanted to clean up before he was ready to. And then I was accused of accusing him of not being as attentive as I am and ignoring his kid 🤪 I know I’m making him sound like a right knob but this is as bad as it gets honestly 😂 just really irritating and I don’t know how to approach the phone thing. I’ve said I both want us to be more conscious of it as she gets older and he agrees but I don’t know if I should be pushier about it!

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100% with you on this one my husband is alwayssss on his phone to the point he’s missing out on so much. I also get nervous to go clean up or leave the room as he definitely isn’t watching the baby he’s to engrossed on his phone. We both go up get our boy for bed and he always does the story whilst little one sits on my knee and as soon as that back page closes the phone is back on in his hand 🙃. I’ve mentioned it so so much as it really bothers me but I get no where with it. It’s just sad as sometimes our boy looks up to him all excited and he’s not even looking. I worry (probs overthinking) that our boys going think the phones more interesting/important to him than he is if he doesn’t pay him any attention. No help or advice just another rant as in same boat 😂🥲😅 x

@Alannah it’s so frustrating isn’t it! At this age they’re learning how to communicate and like you say if they’re looking to us to get a reaction or feedback and we’re not paying attention what does that teach them? 😓 how can we expect our kids not to be addicted to devices when we’re addicted to ours? 🫠 I’m not perfect with it either and phones are such an easy escape when we need a brain break but I definitely don’t trust myself to be as engaged when I’m on it.

Exactly I’m the same I do have a Quick Look every now and again but I try to save it for down time in the evening. If telling them over and over isn’t enough I don’t know how were meant to help the situation 🤷🏼‍♀️ x

Maybe show him some articles or videos on phone use around babies, serve and return by Harvard mentions how you miss valuable learning and bonding opportunities because you miss the chance to react to your childs 'serve', all opportunities to interact and learn. It's quite interesting . We leave phones in the hallway or go to the bedroom to use which helps a lot xx

If it makes you feel any better my dad always was watching TV and ignored me (before mobile days and he never got one) snd I'd say I turned out fine but I do have code pendency issues stemming from that. I had like 0 bond with my dad. Does he want that? She will realise he's not engaged and that's so sad for her. We try to keep phone for photo only while LO is awake but I also noticed recently my partner gave up when he's not working and he's checking his football team stats or fantasy football stats and my LO will grab it and put it in the washing machine or throw it lol 😅 so LO is helping us manage this. No one can expect a quick reply from me and I'm on here when he's asleep only

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