My Husband Made a Dumb Mistake That Disappointed the Kids. Then He Blamed Me!

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column.  Have a question for Care and Feeding?  Submit it here .

Dear Care and Feeding,

A few weeks. ago, my husband arranged to take the kids on a day-out activity. The event had a fixed starting time, so they had to leave the house on time. On the day of, I was working outside in the polytunnel and my husband was in the house. He lost track of time, and when he finally did check, it was too late. Even if they had gotten in the car immediately, they wouldn’t have made it before the doors closed.

The kids were upset, he was embarrassed, and he yelled at me in front of them for not telling him that it was time to go. Later after the kids were in bed, I told him it wasn’t fair to expect me to be in charge of his schedule. The trip was his plan, and he had been inside the whole time with clocks and his phone. He apologized for losing his cool and blaming me.

But since then, the kids have internalised that I was the one responsible for the day being ruined. My older daughter constantly reminds me when things are happening now because she wants to be helpful, and the younger one says things like, “It’s a good thing you didn’t forget!” whenever we go anywhere. They’re not being malicious, but I’m getting sick of this. How do I set the record straight? I don’t want us to be a family where snide comments are made and one parent pits the kids against the other, because my parents were like that. My husband says they’ll forget about it eventually.

—Not Your Clock Watcher

Dear Clock Watcher,

I understand how these snide remarks are hurtful, especially when you’re being blamed for something that is not your responsibility. Your husband needs to get his act together, plan better, and set an alarm on his phone if he loses track of time that easily.

Moving forward with your entire family: I suggest that you (lovingly) tell them to shut the fuck up. Especially your husband—he should never speak to you that way again. And it’s good that he apologized to you, but he needs to do it in front of the kids. They need to hear him say that it was wrong of him to yell at you. They need to feel his remorse! He also needs to be clear that missing the activity was his fault.

It’s best to set the expectations with your family from here on out so this type of behavior doesn’t become the norm. Tell your husband every single painful detail about your childhood and why it hurts to feel like he set the kids against you. He needs to know why this feels like bullying to you, and why it needs to stop. You can set the rules.

—A.J.

I’m a 32-year-old woman. Since my mid-20s, I’ve known that I want to be a parent in some capacity (while I’d love to experience pregnancy and childbirth, I’m also keen on fostering, adoption, or surrogacy). When I was 28, I ended a six-year relationship because my partner couldn’t say that he wanted these things. Within a few days of that, I began dating someone else, and now we’ve been together almost four years. I feel that I’ve been very explicit in what I wanted from day one, and my current partner has never said, “Nope! Not what I want” when it comes to family and kids. When pressed, he says that it’s something he wants but he has no clear picture of when or who or how.