Mom Says She’ll Never Trust Her Husband With Their Kids Again After Leaving Their 2-Year-Old Alone With Him For 15 Minutes
Those 15 minutes could have ended very differently if it wasn't for the keen eye of a neighbor.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A | Shutterstock Trusting someone else with your kids is no easy thing, but one parent can typically depend on the other to give their kids the care they need. Right?
Turns out, not always. One mom thought that she could count on her husband to handle watching their toddler, but it only took 15 minutes for her to have a change of heart. Now, she feels like her trust has been broken, and she's afraid to leave Dad alone with either of their two kids.
A mom wrote into an advice column after her husband seemed to put their two-year-old son in danger.
An anonymous mother wrote into Slate’s parenting advice column, Care and Feeding, seeking help after her husband displayed some risky behavior. She said it all started when she asked him to watch their two-year-old for a few minutes. “My husband 'Justin' and I have a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son,” she explained. “Last weekend, my husband did something so negligent I’m not sure if I can ever trust him with our kids again.”
The family was having what should have been a good day, but everything took a turn for the worse. “The weather was finally nice in our area, and we were hosting a barbecue in our backyard with about a dozen friends and family members over,” she continued. “At one point, my daughter spilled an entire bowl of chili on herself. I left Justin to watch my son while I took her inside to get cleaned up.”
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What should have been the end of the story was just the beginning of something more terrifying for this mom. “About 15 minutes later, I had gotten my daughter’s clothes changed, and we were about to return to the backyard when the doorbell rang,” she said. “I opened up to find a neighbor holding our son. He handed him to me and said he was driving home when he spotted my son wandering around in the street halfway down the block from my house.”
This absolutely crossed a line for this woman. “Even though my husband apologized, I no longer feel comfortable having him watch our kids,” she explained. “Until our kids are several years older, I plan on taking them with me when I need to go somewhere rather than have him watch them.”
The advice columnist felt like this mom was perhaps being a bit too hard on her husband.
Aymann Ismail, Slate’s parenting advice columnist, shared that this mom may want to rethink her plan to never allow her husband to watch the kids again. While he acknowledged that the situation was horrifying and could have had a very different outcome, he asked if this was really necessary.
“Let me be as clear as possible: What happened was scary, preventable, and totally irresponsible. Your husband made a potentially dangerous mistake,” he said. “That said, throwing your husband into exile might not be the answer here.”
Ismail urged the mom to take inventory of her husband’s behavior as a whole. “Instead of asking whether you can ever trust him again, ask whether this behavior reflects who he is, overall, as a parent,” he said. “Does he usually keep the kids safe? Is he engaged? Does he understand that parenting can’t be paused? If the answers are yes, then I’d bet this shook him too.”
Men must be allowed to do their duties as fathers, including this one.
Family life coach Rachel Norman shared one very important insight about wives being able to trust their husbands when parenting. “He’s not doing me a favor by watching our kids,” she stated, “he’s simply fulfilling his role as a father.”
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It’s important to remember that dads are equal partner parents, not just there to substitute when a mom isn’t present. If this woman reduced her husband’s role so drastically, she would basically be removing his role as a father.
While her trust may be broken, and it will take some time to rebuild that, she can’t expect her husband to be perfect. Instead, they should learn from this situation and move forward together.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
